The Cupertino giant has made an announcement last night. They announced their latest silicon product, the M2 Pro and M2 Max. You can also find them on the MacBook Pro in 14-inch and 16-inch guises. These are the most powerful silicon products that Appel has ever made.
Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max
Apple’s M2 chip is technically a bigger, badder M1 chip. It is, in physical form, a tad larger than the M1 but with more horsepower than ever before. In its MacBook Air guise, it proved to be a potent chip for anything that is optimised and tuned to run on it.
Just like the M1 Pro and M1 Max, the M2 Pro and M2 Max are even bigger and in turn, even faster than the M2 chip. The M2 Pro adds four more cores to the eight-core set-up of the original M2. It now also has a 19-core GPU and up to 32GB of unified RAM. The M2 Max comes with the same 12-core CPU but carries double the GPU core count at 38 cores. The unified fast memory is also expanded to 96GB for even better and faster productivity. Additionally, both chips features Apple’s new 16-core neural engine and media engine.
Of course, like the M2 chip, the M2 Pro and M2 Max are built on 5nm process technology. That allows Apple to fit more transistors within the chips than before, about 40 billion transistors on the M2 Pro, 20% more than before. The M2 Pro packs twice the memory bandwidth of the regular M2 at 200GB/s. There are more GPU cores on the M2 Pro than the M1 Pro too. All this adds up to a 20% better multithread performance over the older chip and 30% graphics performance bump.
On the M2 Max, there are 10 billion more transistors over the older M1 Max. That is about three folds of the regular M2. Its memory bandwidth is even faster at 400GB/s. At 96GB as well, there is nearly no wait time for large files to open, especially useful if you are working with plenty of video folders and such. Its 38-core GPU with larger L2 cache also allows the M2 Max to process graphic-intensive projects much better and more efficiently.
The New MacBook Pro, Featuring the New M2 Pro and M2 Max
When we say new, there is technically nothing too new about the new MacBook Pro for 2023. It comes in 14-inch and 16-inch flavours. They look the same as before too. They sort of come in the same Retina display guise with no change in resolution. The weird forehead notch is still there. The display is not even a touch-sensitive one.
Yes, the big difference between the 2022 MacBook Pro and 2023 one is more than skin deep. You have the massive jump in power from the M2 Pro or M2 Max you find within. According to Apple, the massive jump in power also comes with even more efficiency than before too, resulting in a long-lasting battery life; up to 22 hours to be exact.
Obviously, with a massive power bump, comes greater performances and capabilities. Image processing in Photoshop is claimed to be up to 40% faster than before. Thanks to better optimisation in the SoC as well, Adobe’s Photoshop can process images 80% faster than the most powerful Intel-based MacBook Pro (keep in mind, Intel-based MacBook Pros are a thing of the past). With the M2 Max, colour grading with DaVinci resolve is now 30% faster than before allowing for a much faster video workflow.
They also mentioned that they have upgraded the HDMI port on both the Macbook Pro to an ‘advanced’ HDMI port. The HDMI port now can support 8K displays for the first time. Why they could not say that it is an HDMI 2.1 port is beyond us; but hey, you can connect your MacBook Pro 8K displays now. There is also WiFi 6E support now for even better wireless connectivity. You also want to keep in mind that the latest router technology tops out at WiFi 6 too, so there is some future-proofing with the MacBook Pro. You will also find the usual Thunderbolt 4 port that can double as display outputs as well, an SDXC card slot, and the ever popular MagSafe 3 charging port. Of course, the latest MacBook Pro with M2 Pro and M2 Max comes with MacOS Ventura.
Price and Availability
The Apple MacBook Pro is now available for pre-order in the United States (U.S.) and 26 other countries and regions. The first Apple MacBook Pros will ship out 24th of January 2023 onward. The MacBook Pro with M2 Pro and M2 Max will be available also in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, New Zealand, and Singapore from the 3rd of February 2023 onward. There are no mentions on when the new MacBook Pro with M2 chips will reach Malaysia just yet. But Apple’s local website has already listed them. The MacBook Pro, as mentioned, comes in 14-inch and 16-inch flavours. The M2 Pro equipped 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at MYR 8,799, while the M2 Max variant comes in at MYR 13,199. The 16-inch variant will set you back MYR 10,799 onward for the M2 Pro while the M2 Max variant will set you back MYR 14,799 onward. For more information on the new Apple MacBook Pro with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, you can head over to their website.