Key Takeaways
The 14 and 16-inch MacBook Execs are unbelievable laptops for professionals who want a robust and dependable instrument to assist them do their work, with a wide variety of ports and excellent shows. However do not trouble upgrading if you have already got the M2 Professional mannequin—there is no efficiency enhance.
Apple 16-inch MacBook Professional (2023)
$2299 $2499 Save $200
Apple up to date its extra highly effective MacBook Execs to finish 2023 with two new processor selections, a barely brighter show, and a Area Black coloration possibility. The 16-inch MacBook Professional is a powerhouse that features arguably the perfect show on a laptop computer, highly effective efficiency with the M3 Professional and M3 Max chips, substantial battery life, and loads of ports so that you can use. It is an impressive laptop computer for any skilled.
Working System macOS Sonoma
CPU M3 Professional (12-core)
GPU 18-core
RAM 18GB
Storage 1TB
Battery 22 hours
Show (Dimension, Decision) 16.2-inches (3456 × 2234)
Audio system Six-speaker system
Colours Area Black, Silver
Ports MagSafe, Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, Headphone Jack, HDMI, SDXC
Community Wi-Fi 6E
Weight 4.7 kilos
Value $2,699
Model Apple
Mannequin November 2023
Show sort Mini LED
Webcam 1080p
The Hefty, Premium Design
In 2021, the MacBook Professional turned heavier and thicker than the earlier TouchBar fashions. A number of enhancements resulted from the added weight and thickness, like including ports and that includes higher thermal efficiency. Nonetheless, there isn’t any getting round it—the 16-inch MacBook Professional is an enormous laptop computer.
Based on Apple’s web site, it measures up at 0.66 inches thick (17mm), and the M3 Professional model weighs 4.7 kilos (2.1kg). As somebody who has owned each MacBook Professional sizes (14-inch and 16-inch), I can say the 16-inch is significantly much less moveable than the 14-inch mannequin. Nonetheless, the trade-off is price it, provided that the bigger mannequin gives extra display actual property and higher battery life.
Given the advantages within the show dimension and battery life that greater units sometimes present, I at all times are likely to favor bigger units.
I do want the 16-inch MacBook Professional was just a little lighter, although. You definitely really feel the heft when carrying it round if you’re used to one thing like a earlier technology 15-inch TouchBar MacBook Professional or perhaps a comparable PC laptop computer. The scale and weight are why a number of well-known tech YouTubers, akin to iJustine and her sister Jenna Ezarik, switched from the 16-inch MacBook Professional to the smaller 14-inch mannequin for higher portability.
Apart from that, the MacBook Professional continues to have among the finest laptop computer designs regardless of remaining unchanged from the earlier technology. It’s a premium and durable laptop computer with no flexing in any respect and falls according to Apple’s different merchandise relating to high quality.
Nonetheless, there’s one design distinction with the late 2023 mannequin that I’ll cowl subsequent.
The Area Black End Is a Good Contact
The M3 Professional and M3 Max MacBook Execs are available a brand new coloration: Area Black. When this coloration was first proven off in particular person at Apple’s small press occasion in New York Metropolis, everybody wished to see the way it held up towards fingerprints. Apple stated it used a brand new anodization course of that’s supposed to assist stop fingerprints from exhibiting.
Apple realized from the Midnight coloration it gives on the M2 MacBook Airs, provided that Midnight is an absolute fingerprint magnet and appears dirty over time, as we have talked about in each our 13 and 15-inch MacBook Air opinions. I’ve even heard Apple retail workers warn clients about fingerprints simply exhibiting with that coloration. That is how blatant it’s.
Nonetheless, in my use, the Area Black end is a lot better towards fingerprints than the Midnight MacBook Air. It isn’t resistant to them, although. You’ll be able to in all probability spot some fingerprints within the images on this overview.
Must you keep away from Area Black altogether and simply get Silver? I don’t assume so. Area Black can also be a lot darker than Area Grey, as you may see under.
Area Black won’t be a pure black shade, nevertheless it’s an awesome coloration that matches the professional theme. The colour virtually jogs my memory of the Black iPhone 7 Plus (not Jet Black).
The Glorious Liquid Retina XDR Show
Because the 2021 redesign, the MacBook Execs have supplied among the greatest shows on a laptop computer by far, and the 2023 fashions are not any completely different. This MacBook Professional encompasses a 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR show. It consists of two specs you may’t discover on one other Mac in Apple’s lineup: mini LED, and an adaptive 120Hz refresh fee.
The MacBook Professional’s show offers extremely easy animations and scrolling, HDR help, increased brightness ranges, and extra, in comparison with the usual Liquid Retina show discovered on the Air. The MacBook Professional, after all, nonetheless encompasses a notch on the high of the show, although I do not see it as an issue when utilizing the pc. I not often discover it.
Regardless of being largely the identical this yr, the show has one small distinction with this late 2023 mannequin: it could now attain an SDR brightness of 600 nits, much like the Studio Show. Earlier than, the utmost was 500 nits.
General, it’s a implausible show, and also you would possibly end up wanting to make use of the MacBook Professional over different screens. Many individuals, myself included, need Apple to place the show expertise that’s on this laptop computer into an exterior monitor. It’s that good.
Good Keyboard and Trackpad Mixture
The times of damaged butterfly keyboard keys on Apple’s present laptops have been lengthy gone for a while. Though I favored the butterfly keyboard for probably the most half, it was an objectively inferior keyboard by way of sturdiness, and many individuals did not benefit from the typing expertise in comparison with what Apple has now on the MacBook Professional.
The newer MacBook Professional keyboards have extra key journey and have confirmed to be extra sturdy than the butterfly keyboard. The keyboard additionally has what Apple calls a black effectively behind the keys, distinctive to the MacBook Professional. That may very well be a part of why I get pleasure from typing with this keyboard greater than the one on the 15-inch MacBook Air. It offers a passable typing expertise.
The trackpad on the 16-inch MacBook Professional is very large, supplying you with loads of floor space for navigating and gestures. And as you’ll count on, the trackpad is nearly good. It’s extremely responsive and utilizing gestures and double-clicking with it are intuitive, because it has been for years now on MacBooks.
I am nonetheless impressed with how Apple’s Drive Contact trackpads work and really feel. It makes use of vibrations to copy a bodily press, for the reason that trackpad does not really transfer. With that and the opposite particulars talked about above, Apple continues to have among the finest trackpad experiences on a laptop computer thus far.
M3 Professional Is Extra Than Succesful
The M3 Apple silicon chips are the flagship characteristic of the late 2023 MacBook Professional refresh. With the high-end MacBook Execs, you may have the selection between two processors: the M3 Professional and M3 Max. For this overview, we’re going to deal with the M3 Professional.
I selected the bottom 16-inch mannequin, which incorporates the 12-core CPU, 18-core GPU M3 Professional chip, and 18GB of unified reminiscence on board. Nonetheless, I did improve the SSD to 1TB since 512GB was a bit too small.
The M3 Professional has spurred controversy given the supposed minimal CPU efficiency improve, much less reminiscence bandwidth, and fewer efficiency cores than the earlier M2 Professional, launched in January 2023. In its presentation, Apple didn’t point out how a lot sooner the M3 Professional’s CPU is in comparison with the M2 Professional, main us to consider that there isn’t a lot of a efficiency acquire in any respect. Nonetheless, there are another notable enhancements to the M-series chips this time.
The M3 chips at the moment are constructed on a 3-nanometer course of (the primary for a pc processor) for improved energy and effectivity. Moreover, they embrace new options akin to ray tracing, much like the A17 Professional within the iPhone 15 Professional, and what Apple calls Dynamic Caching, which is meant to make the GPU extra environment friendly in distributing reminiscence for duties.
CPU and GPU Efficiency
For the CPU, the M3 Professional consists of six efficiency cores and 6 effectivity cores. Diving into the efficiency, in Geekbench 6, the M3 Professional had a single-core rating of 3177 and a rating of 15552 in multi-core efficiency. Based on Geekbench’s web site, the M3 Professional beats the earlier M2 Professional in each single-core and multi-core efficiency, which is sweet to see.
To place these leads to perspective, the MacBook Professional beat my M1 Max Mac Studio in the identical benchmark check, which is a desktop that I’ve been extremely happy with since I bought it.
Whereas the M3 Professional does not have as many GPU cores because the M3 Max, it nonetheless carried out effectively within the GPU benchmark check total. In Cinebench 2024, the M3 Professional scored 6049 factors, once more beating my Mac Studio (3929 factors).
The M3 Professional handles all the things I sometimes use a laptop computer for and extra. As anticipated, I didn’t expertise any stuttering or points throughout common use. When engaged on a easy seven-minute 4K 60FPS challenge in Ultimate Reduce Professional, the expertise was tremendous easy. The MacBook Professional dealt with it completely, provided that the M3 Professional chip is fairly succesful and Ultimate Reduce Professional is optimized for Apple silicon.
Exterior Show Assist
The M3 Professional additionally offers a characteristic that’s not obtainable on the M3 MacBook Professional or M2 MacBook Airs: the power to hook up with multiple exterior show. I related the MacBook Professional to my two Studio Shows, and it labored rather well. If you have already got a workspace with greater than two shows, nevertheless, the MacBook Professional M3 Max model can hook up with as much as 4 shows, so hold that in thoughts when you plan to purchase one.
So, what are you able to spec the MacBook Professional as much as? The high-end MacBook Execs can characteristic as much as an M3 Max chip (16-core CPU and 40-core GPU), 128GB of unified reminiscence, and as much as an 8TB SSD, which interprets to a particularly highly effective and succesful laptop computer. In fact, it’ll price you some huge cash: $7,199 earlier than tax for the 16-inch mannequin.
The Versatile I/O
With a professional laptop computer, having quite a lot of ports is arguably a necessity. Fortunately, Apple reversed its USB-C-only transfer with the MacBook Execs that began in 2016. The 2023 16-inch MacBook Professional gives seven ports: MagSafe, three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a headphone jack, HDMI out, and an SDXC card slot.
You don’t should depend on dongles to attach easy peripherals to your laptop computer with the MacBook Professional, besides if you must use one thing with USB-A, which stays absent from Apple’s MacBooks.
Photographers can merely come out the SD card from their cameras and put it straight into the MacBook Professional to entry their images. The HDMI port on the MacBook Professional helps you to join the laptop computer to numerous shows, together with TVs. The HDMI port is 2.1, which suggests the laptop computer is in a position to hook up with as much as an 8K show or a 4K show as much as 240Hz.
Due to this fact, you may theoretically have the identical refresh fee throughout your MacBook’s show and a 120Hz exterior monitor. And due to the inclusion of MagSafe, you may cost the laptop computer with out having to fret about somebody by chance yanking the twine and taking your laptop down with it.
Regardless of being able to charging by way of the USB-C ports as effectively, I would advocate sticking to MagSafe since you may quick cost and presumably keep away from harm to your laptop. The MacBook Professional consists of the mandatory ports that professional customers want frequently, eradicating the additional price and problem of carrying round dongles to carry out primary laptop computer features.
Connecting completely different peripherals to the MacBook Professional ought to have at all times been this straightforward, however I am glad it is this straightforward once more.
Battery Life That Compliments the Efficiency
You in all probability have heard a minimum of as soon as by now that Apple silicon has dramatically modified the battery life in MacBooks in comparison with Intel variations. In 2020, I used to be shocked by the advance in battery life after I first used the M1 MacBook Professional. Based on Apple, the 16-inch MacBook Professional ought to stand up to 22 hours of Apple TV video playback and as much as 15 hours of wi-fi internet searching, although that doesn’t inform the entire story of what you may count on.
Regardless of having a feature-packed show and a strong chipset, I can say that the 16-inch MacBook Professional nonetheless will get glorious battery life. Throughout easy laptop computer utilization, on one cost, I used to be ready to make use of the MacBook Professional for about two days earlier than it wanted to be plugged in (6% remaining on the battery). In case you use extra power-hungry functions and have actually demanding workflows, after all, you gained’t get that very same degree of battery life, nor would you when you went with the M3 Max since it’s a extra highly effective processor.
The 16-inch M3 Professional MacBook Professional definitely has higher battery life than the M1 Professional 14-inch MacBook Professional and the 15-inch MacBook Air Ithat ‘ve used for many of 2023. And each of these machines additionally carry out effectively within the battery division.
Ought to You Purchase the 2023 M3 Professional 16-Inch MacBook Professional?
The 16-inch MacBook Professional is among the greatest laptops I’ve ever used. It holds its place as a top-tier choose for anybody who wants energy on the go. And now it is available in a implausible Area Black coloration that compliments the skilled nature of the pc. Anybody who must do skilled work ought to try the 16-inch MacBook Professional.
However do not rush out to purchase one if you have already got an M2 Professional MacBook Professional, as simply the brand new coloration and processors are usually not well worth the a whole bunch of {dollars} you’ll have to spend to improve.
Apple 16-inch MacBook Professional (2023)
$2299 $2499 Save $200
Apple up to date its extra highly effective MacBook Execs to finish 2023 with two new processor selections, a barely brighter show, and a Area Black coloration possibility. The 16-inch MacBook Professional is a powerhouse that features arguably the perfect show on a laptop computer, highly effective efficiency with the M3 Professional and M3 Max chips, substantial battery life, and loads of ports so that you can use. It is an impressive laptop computer for any skilled.