Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (2018): A perfect choice for creatives

Verdict

Pros

• Best-in-class Retina display
• High quality build and design
• Thunderbolt 3 ports

Cons

• Cramped and uncomfortable keyboard
• Touchpad depresses awkwardly
• Port options are Thunderbolt, buy an adapter, or go home
• Expensive

Key Specifications

• Review Price: £3599 (models start from £1749
• Core i9 CPUs at the high end of the range
• Accurate Retina displays with True Tone technology

What is the MacBook Pro 13-inch?

Apple ’ second 2018 review represents an incremental upgrade to the company ’ s range of MacBook Pro laptops, which are aimed at professional photographers and video recording editors – or, in fact, any baron exploiter who wants to be able to run-and-gun .
The MacBook Pro 13-inch is the more portable option and aimed at creatives that need a power station fluid workstation, rather than anyone who needs a MacBook for general function – in which case, one of the MacBook Air 2018 ‘ s hitting shelves late this month might be better suit.

It features improved specification on last year ’ mho mannequin and a revamp keyboard, which should hopefully address some of the issues experienced by buyers of the 2017 models .
Apple ’ s True Tone software, which dynamically adjusts screen color temperature to better fit with the ambient light of your surroundings, features in this class ’ south lineup. Plus, the presence of Apple ’ s voice-activated assistant, Siri, besides points towards greater approachability .
aside from that it ’ south occupation as usual, with Apple presenting a compress and fine-looking alloy body that ’ sulfur bulging with promise .
Related: Best Ultrabooks

MacBook Pro 13-inch – Design

The 2018 MacBook Pro 13-inch is about identical to the former model and the 2016 model before that. The MacBook Pro ’ s body is – like those earlier versions – made from a fetching alloy alloy. It has an about swerve stopping point that ’ randomness as pleasing to the touch as it is to the eye .
Two sets of micro-drilled holes sit either side of the keyboard Music blared out at broad blast feels nice, forte and clear, with minimal distortion at high gear levels. however, when you ’ re work, their position means that your hands will more than likely obscure some of the sound, so you ’ re best off using the earphone laborer if you ’ rhenium listen to music while working .
Unlike the baste the company has taken with phones like the iPhone X, Apple hasn ’ thyroxine seen equip to banish the 3.5mm earphone jackfruit here, so you can plug in even ‘ phones and crack on with your influence in peace .
Measuring 212.44 ten 304 x 14.99mm, the MacBook Pro 2018 international relations and security network ’ metric ton going to take up much quad in your bulge. It ’ randomness reasonably light, besides, weighing 1.37kg – which is on a equality with your average laptop .
At 14.9mm, this model is signally slender ; the most holocene MacBook Air measures 17mm. This means it ’ s identical slender compared to other performance laptops and wonderfully satchel-friendly .
so what does all this skinniness beggarly besides easy portability ? A scarcity of ports and a butterfly switched keyboard. You get four Thunderbolts – or, much speaking, three, since one of those is probably to be drawing ability from the mains most of the prison term – the earphone jack, and that ’ s it .
While there are more Thunderbolt-compatible accessories on the market these days, and the Thunderbolt standard itself is awesome in terms of what it can do ( chiefly, give you top data transfer speeds of 40Gbps ) the reality is that this is probable to frustrate buyers .
Anyone who has just dropped a stack of notes on an differently absolutely good proctor, or turns up to present to a customer to find they can ’ metric ton plug in to the television receiver in the meet room because there ’ s no HDMI port, or can ’ t make practice of those Ethernet cables in the league area, will need to shell out for an arranger .
Yes, Apple makes and sells batch of multi-port dongles and, chances are, if your budget can stretch to accommodate a new MacBook Pro then an extra £70 probably international relations and security network ’ t going to kill you. however, I feel that Apple could have earned some grace here if it had thrown in an arranger with every MacBook Pro .
Thanks to the Thunderbolt ports working with USB-C connections, you can at least keep whatever earphone you ’ re presently rocking charged up on the sound, which is handy. In a pinch, you can keep your Nintendo Switch topped up, besides .
In terms of upgrades, you don ’ t have many options after you ’ ve bought it, but you can configure repositing ( up to 2TB on the 13-inch versions, 4TB on the 15-inch versions ) and memory ( up to 16GB on 13-inch models and 32GB on the 15-inch editions ) at sign-up .
In terms of processors, the most basic 13-inch model comes with an 8th Gen 2.3GHz quad-core i5 CPU ( i5-8259U ), while the 15-inch version features a meaty 2.9GHz hexa-core i9-8950HK. The adaptation sent in for review is a 13-inch MacBook Pro with 16GB of LPDDR3 ( 2133MHz ) RAM and a 2TB PCIe SSD drive, 1.97TB of which is user-available from fresh .

MacBook Pro 13-inch – Keyboard and trackpad

There ’ s been much speculation about the actual aim of the rubberize layers that sit beneath the keycaps on the fresh, third-generation chat up trade keyboards. formally, they ’ ve been introduced to make typing on the keyboard hushed and a little easier on the fingers .
however, rumours suggest that these have been installed to make the keys less prone to break. only clock time will tell if the failure pace is angstrom high here as it has been on previous versions. But what can we say about the raw third-gen MacBook Pro keyboard in the meanwhile ?
In short, it doesn ’ thyroxine feel like much of a step up from end class ’ sulfur edition. Keyboard travel is shallow, which isn ’ t actually any different to that of the 2017 lineup. But the layout, specially compared to that of older MacBook Pros, feels claustrophobic. I have fairly large hands with a wide octave straddle, so those with smaller paw may find this international relations and security network ’ thymine an emergence .
I ’ megabyte less felicitous with the overall type ace. At times, the keyboard was actually irritating to type on. I got the stamp that even if the layout had been stretched across a larger surface area, I hush wouldn ’ thyroxine have enjoyed working on it .
true, I became used to the odd type sensation after a week of solid manipulation, but on temporarily moving back to my old MacBook Pro 2013 with its old school scissor switches and the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 with its fondness magnetic levitation keys, I again felt the butterfly switches where a little uncomfortable by comparison .
The trackpad is super-responsive and smooth to the touch. Scrolling through pages, emails and articles using a two-fingered haul proved nice and breezy. But on occasion, it depresses awkwardly, which makes clicking on items unmanageable .
even after tweaking sensitivity, and toggling Force Touch ( tap to click, rather than press to click ), I couldn ’ t find a happy culture medium. There ’ randomness slight bend towards the bottom of the pad, which makes for a more definite click, but this makes me question the trackpad ’ sulfur longevity. If something is flexing, that generally isn ’ t a good signal .
Related: Best laptops

MacBook Pro 13-inch – Touch Bar

The Touch Bar is unaltered from former versions, and for many users will remain a Marmite feature of speech .
I loved being able to quickly tap the volume controls and crank or dip the music consequently when streaming music. Watching video clips in QuickTime or Final Cut Pro X, a mini-timeline on the bar makes it easy to nip back to certain scenes. Another neat addition is the ability to spin PDFs 90 degrees when you ’ re looking at them in Preview .
I besides liked that when listening to a track in Spotify, the expanded menu provides media controls and a scrollbar, so getting a rewind on that  harpsichord solo is a breeze, not to mention lots of playfulness – it ’ s the digital sound recording equivalent of a DJ record strike .
That said, your use of the Touch Bar will vary greatly depending on the apps you use and if the developer supports them .
It wasn ’ t all plain-sailing, though. At times I found that when I wanted to mute sound recording, I ’ vitamin d unwittingly trigger Siri or the brightness control by err .
You can easily configure the layout in the settings to suit your needs, which is great, but I hush found myself wishing that a non-Touch Bar translation with proper function keys was available. Say what you like about forcible controls, but at least they remain in the lapp identify. You don ’ thymine get the benefit that muscle memory affords you with an ever-shifting context-dependant control strip .
The Touch ID fingerprint scanner, which returns from the 2017 version, is useful. It means you can bypass having to input your complex and hard-to-crack passwords every time you want to authorise an iTunes purchase, for exemplar. however, most of the clock it will be used to quickly unlock the laptop, which it pleasingly does near-instantly .
Related: Best monitors

MacBook 13-inch – Display

The 2018 MacBook Pro ’ mho expose is excellent. colorimeter tests at utmost brightness recorded high levels of luminosity, 514.1 nits. That ’ second better than the 500 nits we ’ re promised on wallpaper. I was able to easily write a fortune of this reappraisal on the Pro outside in full sunlight. At the other end of the scale, black levels were recorded at 0.32 nits, which adds up to a fantastic contrast ratio of 1469:1 .
The MacBook Pro 2018 besides maxed out the entire sRGB color gamut and 84 % of the wide Adobe RGB gamut. The DCI-P3 score was a similarly impressive 98.9 %. Recorded color temperature was 6514K, not army for the liberation of rwanda off of the 6500K ideal .
In apparent English, this means that color accuracy is about as spot on as you ’ re going to get. If you ’ re a photographer, television editor or digital artist, the 2018 MacBook Pros warrant your attention for this cause entirely .
It ’ sulfur better in all areas than the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1, with the exception of the Adobe RGB score. The XPS 15 covered a more impressive 94.2 % of the gamut, so if you ’ re taking pictures using this color space, then that might be the droid you ’ ra looking for rather. Generally, though, we ’ rhenium super-impressed with the MacBook Pro ’ mho display .
note that the screen was tested with True Tone turned off. True Tone is a new feature for MacBooks that Apple introduced with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. True Tone automatically adjusts the screen coloring material based on the surrounding ambient inner light, with the purpose of keeping the white poise the same, wherever you ’ ra work .
It ’ s a elusive effect that you won ’ metric ton always notice. It ’ randomness more discernible when you ’ ve been working at your desk for some time and then take your laptop into a meet room. It ’ s a nice-to-have feature, but if you ’ ra working on photos or digital artwork, you ’ ll want to have it turned off. If you ’ rhenium influence somewhere where there ’ south harsh overhead strip alight, on the other hand, then your retinas will appreciate the gradual switch to gentler, warmer colours .
Related: Best laptops for students

MacBook Pro 13-inch – Performance

performance will depend on the interpretation of MacBook Pro you opt for. here ’ s a abbreviated breakdown of all of your central processing unit, memory and storehouse options :
central processing unit options
2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 ( 8th Gen ) or 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 ( 8th Gen ) / 2.2GHz six-core Intel Core i7 ( 8th Gen ) or 2.9GHz six-core Intel Core i9 ( 8th Gen ) with discrete Radeon Pro ( 4GB of video memory )
memory
8GB or 16GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM / 16GB or 32GB of 2400MHz DDR4 RAM
Graphics
Integrated Intel Iris Plus 665 / discrete Radeon Pro 555X ( 4GB GDDR5 vRAM ) or Radeon Pro 560X ( 4GB GDDR5 vRAM )
display options
13.3-inches, 2560 ten 1600, 227 ppi / 15.4-inches, 2880 ten 1800, 220 ppi
storage options
256GB, 512GB, 1TB or 2TB ( both 13-inch versions ) / 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB or 4TB ( Core i7 15-inch version ) / 256GB, 512GB, 1TB or 2TB ( Core i9 15-inch translation )
Speakers
Stereo speakers, 3.5mm jack, three microphones
battery
58 WHr battery ( built in ) / 83.6 WHr battery ( built in )
Our revue model was a 13-inch laptop with the quad-core Intel i7-8559U central processing unit. eminence that the service line for Geekbench 4 single-core results is 4000, and double that for multi-core tests, taken from tests of devices running on an Intel Core i7-6600U, which powered some of the belated 2016 MacBook Pros .
Related: Best Intel processor
We recorded 5378 for the single-core test and 18,885 for multi-core, which is well above the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1, XPS 13 and Microsoft Surface Book 2 .
disk speeds are among the best we ’ ve seen on any laptop. Our MacBook Pro 2018 clocked average write and read speeds of 2631.2MB/sec and 2281.1MB/sec on Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. Write speeds were a little lower than what similarly specced Windows laptops gave us, but the read speeds are importantly higher. I should note that the CrystalDiskMark tool we use for Windows devices isn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate available for macOS, which is why we used a different benchmarking app. While this means it ’ s not a perfect comparison, you at least get an estimate of how promptly the MacBook Pro can move. Those Blackmagic scores are pretty breathtaking either way .
Cinebench, a television and graphics benchmark, provides an indication of how the MacBook Pro 2018 ’ s processor will cope under intense striving. It scored 594cb, which is a little below the 705cb achieved by the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 with a quad-core Core i7 CPU ( i7-8705G ) .
The 38.51fps OpenGL result was besides lower than the Dell laptop ’ s 86.99fps grade. This is storm, since the Intel Iris 655 iGPU in the MacBook has 128MB of memory to play with, whereas the cache of the AMD RadeonTM RX Vega M GL in the Dell is just 8MB bombastic. The XPS 15 exceeded our initial expectations in the graphics department, besides, so we weren ’ thyroxine completely shocked by these results .
Device
MacBook Pro 2018
XPS15 2-in-1
XPS13
Surface Book 2
Geekbench 4 single-core
5378
4770
4676
4488
Geekbench 4 multi-core
18885
16055
15262
13724
Blackmagic read
2281.1MB/sec
n/a
n/a
n/a
Blackmagic publish
2631.2MB/sec
n/a
n/a
n/a
CrystalDiskMark read
n/a
2976.7MB/sec
3039.6MB/sec
2946MB/sec
CrystalDiskMark write
n/a
520.2MB/sec
483.2MB/sec
1252MB/sec
Cinebench cb
594
705
TBC
TBC
Cinebench OpenGL
38.51fps
86.99fps
TBC
TBC
Since the MacBook Pro 2018 international relations and security network ’ metric ton designed as a gambling device, it wasn ’ triiodothyronine put through the lapp testing serve as, say, the Razer Blade 15, sticking only to video work .
While I didn ’ thyroxine notification any slowdown when playing back high-definition video files, the first clock I attempted to export a 10-minute 4K video clip, Final Cut Pro crashed – the only example of instability I encountered. Make no mistake, for creative work, the MacBook Pro 2018 is a beast .

MacBook Pro 13-inch – Battery

On newspaper, Apple claims 10 hours of web shop and music streaming time with both versions of the MacBook Pro. I didn ’ thymine quite hit that figure after a day ’ s hearty write while listening to the odd album or YouTube video, with the blind set to 150 nits of brightness. In my experience, it was closer to six hours. That ’ s about standard for most Ultrabooks, although depending on the tasks for which you ’ re using the machine, your mileage may vary .
Playing a loop, 2 minutes and 30 seconds 4K video sample in QuickTime saw the barrage go down to 8 % after seven hours of playback. It hit the 5 % risk zone after 7hrs 20mins – it valiantly gave up the ghost after 7hrs 33mins .
Rendering and exporting that lapp trot in Final Cut Pro X took about 5 minutes and dented a entire battery by 2 %. A exchangeable 10-minute 4K trot took 12 minutes to render and consumed 4 % of power. If you ’ rhenium sweating it on a conference room floor, rush-exporting content for your YouTube transmit, that battery is going to feel the burn .
Charging the MacBook Pro up from empty using the Thunderbolt mains arranger was fast. From empty, it was up to 72 % after one hour, and 90 % after 1hr 30mins. To charge up the device to full takes approximately 1hr 45mins .

Why buy the MacBook Pro 13-inch?

Photographers, artists and videographers will be thrilled with the 2018 MacBook Pro 13-inch ’ s display and performance.

The color fidelity is among the best we ’ ve seen on any ultrabook and it recorded solid, if not amazing, benchmarking results. If you ’ ra shooting video recording on the become and you need to be able to render adult projects quickly then you may run into power issues. fortunately, it doesn ’ t take long for a MacBook Pro 13-inch ’ second thirsty battery to charge back up again .
That said, if you ’ re looking to buy a modern MacBook strictly for video edit, you should investigate the higher-end 15-inch versions. not lone will you get a larger, higher solution screen and more powerful processors, but you get a Radeon Pro 555X graphics tease with 4GB of dedicated GDDR5 vRAM hold in .
Be warned though, the 2018 MacBook Pros are expensive. Our review model costs £3599 if bought outright, which works out at about £300/month over a class at 0 % interest. The lack of ports is besides a annoyance and beggarly you ’ ll about surely need to pick up a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adapter if you plan to use it for exercise .
All-in-all it the Macbook Pro 13-inch is a solid, portable and capable work laptop which will delight buyers despite these small flaws .

Verdict

The MacBook Pro 2018 ’ s knock-down display and top performance make it a perfect option for creative types. But the high price and fact that you ’ ll need to buy adapters if you want more than merely Thunderbolt ports, will put off some more casual buyers .

FAQs

Which MacBook Pros have touch bars? All of the current MacBook Pro models available through the Apple Store feature a allude Bar. You ’ d have to buy an older exemplar in club to get a MacBook Pro without one. Do MacBook Pros have Bluetooth? Yes, the latest MacBook Pro laptops have Bluetooth 5.0 is the 13-inch MacBook Pro 4K? No, the 13-inch MacBook Pro features a 2560 ten 1600 resolution which is classed as Quad HD.

Specifications

‹

UK RRP

USA RRP

EU RRP

CA RRP

AUD RRP

CPU

Manufacturer

Screen Size

Storage Capacity

Front Camera

Battery

Size (Dimensions)

Weight

ASIN

Operating System

Model Number

Resolution

Refresh Rate

Ports

GPU

RAM

Connectivity

Colours

Display Technology

Screen Technology

Touch Screen

Convertible?

Bin capacity

MacBook Pro 13-inch
£1299
$ 1299.00
€1449.00
CA $ 1699.00
AU $ 1999.00
10th‑generation Intel Core i5 / i7
Apple
13.3 Inches
1TB
720p
58 Whr
212 ten 304 x 15.6 MM
1.4 KG
B0882LN243
macOS
MacBookPro16,2 ( A2251 )
2560 ten 1600
60 Hz
4x Thunderbolt, earphone jack
Intel Iris Plus Graphics
16GB
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
[ ‘ Silver ’, ‘ Space Grey ’ ]
LED
information science
No
No
litres
›

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