After unleashing the power of its new M1 chip on the crowd favorite Macbook Air, Apple is bringing the same chip to its all time bellwether, the 13 inch Macbook Pro. And before you start wondering on the price, Apple has surprisingly retained the same $1299 price tag for the new, much more faster Pro.
Thanks to the new M1 chip, and the powerhouse 8-core CPU that comes inside it, the new Macbook Pro offers up to 2.8x faster performance compared with the previous 13-inch MacBook Pro. And again, thanks to the efficiency of the M1 chip, the new MacBook Pro offers up to 20 hours of video playback on a single charge. That is twice of the 10 hours that Apple quoted in its outgoing Intel-powered models. Ouch Intel, more hurt.
Furthermore in terms of performance, Apple claims that the new Pro model is over 3 times faster than comparable Windows options out there.
With M1’s advanced computing prowess, other less glamourous components are also getting some much needed upgrades. The mic array for example, is the new ‘studio quality’ mic array for 13 inch Macbook Pro. In terms of webcam too, there has been significant upgrade, thanks to better image signal processing performance that comes from M1.
The new 13 inch Macbook Pro also features two USB-C ports that support USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4, allowing the computer to drive the 6K Pro Display XDR at full resolution.
As a system on a chip (SoC), M1 combines numerous powerful technologies into a single chip, and features a unified memory architecture for dramatically improved performance and efficiency. M1 is the first personal computer chip built using cutting-edge 5-nanometer process technology and is packed with an astounding 16 billion transistors, the most Apple has ever put into a chip.
