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Criteria
Comments
Rating
- Speed and features The processor crunches everything with aplomb and makes the OSX experience as smooth as silk.
- Design and form factor It's a premium feeling product with no flex and the simple unibody design.
- Battery life Will go 6+ hours with a mix of internet surfing, productivity suites on, and music listening.
- Display A lot of computers in this price range have more pixels and less glare, but it gets by.
- Durability Well structured from aluminum, but there remains the possibility of dents, which ruins the aesthetics.
- Expandability Can't access the battery, ram, or hdd easily, but the option of expanding is still there.
- Noise Silent for the majority of purposes except for demanding applications, where there is a slight whine.
- Portability (size / weight) For the same price you can get the MBA, but given the hdd and processor it's still easy to tote about.
Detailed review
I received this MacBook Pro for work and I absolutely love it. I've been a PC user all my life, but I have fallen in love with the keyboard and trackpad. There is simply nothing like it. It feels comfortable, the gestures are amazing, and the spacing is perfect.
It feels like a premium product, 99% of the software I use have a Mac version that is just as good, and the interface is intuitive.
That data transfer speeds are slower than my PC, but I updated my PC with an SSD, so the difference is understandable, but the processor on the Mac is far greater than my PC, so there is no lag at all.
Possibly the greatest thing, aside from the keyboard and trackpad, is the fantastic battery life. I can go all day away from an outlet, but if I do the AC adapter is extremely portable and adds no bulk to my backpack.
Basically it is everything that I wanted in a laptop, but I still prefer Windows 7, so I'll probably run boot camp or parallels to get the functionality of Windows.
The sole downside is that the MacBook Air 13" offers much of the same functionality but significantly lighter. If the Mac I have wasn't a work computer I would probably remove the optical drive, put a 1TB hard drive into that spot and put an 120GB SSD as the boot drive. Although it is heavier than the Air, I would still prefer the long battery life and ridiculous hard drive space.
It feels like a premium product, 99% of the software I use have a Mac version that is just as good, and the interface is intuitive.
That data transfer speeds are slower than my PC, but I updated my PC with an SSD, so the difference is understandable, but the processor on the Mac is far greater than my PC, so there is no lag at all.
Possibly the greatest thing, aside from the keyboard and trackpad, is the fantastic battery life. I can go all day away from an outlet, but if I do the AC adapter is extremely portable and adds no bulk to my backpack.
Basically it is everything that I wanted in a laptop, but I still prefer Windows 7, so I'll probably run boot camp or parallels to get the functionality of Windows.
The sole downside is that the MacBook Air 13" offers much of the same functionality but significantly lighter. If the Mac I have wasn't a work computer I would probably remove the optical drive, put a 1TB hard drive into that spot and put an 120GB SSD as the boot drive. Although it is heavier than the Air, I would still prefer the long battery life and ridiculous hard drive space.
good review!
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review history
- 2012-08-07
-
Portability (size / weight) rating changed from 5 to 4
Edited comment on Noise
Edited comment on Portability (size / weight)
Edited comment on Expandability
Display rating changed from 4 to 3
Edited comment on Durability
Edited comment on Display
Edited comment on Speed and features
Edited comment on Battery life
Edited comment on Design and form factor
- 2012-06-05
-
Expandability rating changed from 2 to 3
Updated detailed review