Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (Late 2011) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2011 5:10 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- Intel
- MacBook Pro
- Sandy Bridge
- Laptops
Final Words
While I had a hard time recommending the base 15-inch MacBook Pro to users earlier this year, with the GPU upgrade I'm pretty happy with the $1799 configuration. It is pricey for sure, but if you can only have one Mac in your life and you like performance, it is probably the one to get.
The MacBook Air is nice but for demanding workloads it's not enough. The iMac is fast, but I'm not a fan of lugging around a 27-inch display with me wherever I go. The 15-inch MacBook Pro is honestly the best of both worlds. Obviously there are cheaper PC alternatives if you just need affordable compute, I'm speaking only to those users who have their sights set on something running OS X.
The only changes I'd make to the system are an upgrade in display resolution and the addition of an SSD. Both are options that Apple offers, and with the latter you can always handle that upgrade on your own.
At some point Apple will have to outfit these things with SSDs standard, similar to the MacBook Air. There's such a huge difference in user experience that it only makes sense to, the question is when?
For a while now we've heard rumors of a thinner, redesigned MacBook Pro without an optical drive. Removing the optical drive alone isn't enough to significantly decrease the thickness of the machine, Apple would have to move away from the 2.5" HDD form factor as well. Given that there are no reasonable performing HDDs in a smaller form factor, one would assume that if and when Apple removes the optical drive from the MacBook Pro, it will also remove the hard drive.
Ivy Bridge would be an interesting time to make such a drastic move, as Intel's 22nm process should be able to significantly reduce power consumption. Although the time may be right from a processor perspective, I wonder whether the MacBook Pro audience would be fine with only 128GB or 256GB of storage.
There is of course another option: expand the MacBook Air line with a larger (thicker?) 15-inch model. The trick here would be cramming a 35W quad-core chip into the system, otherwise it just becomes a 13-inch MBA with a bigger screen. That's where the thicker comment comes into play. Currently the MacBook Air only has to worry about dissipating 17W from the CPU, which includes the GPU. The 15-inch MacBook Pro however has a 45W quad-core CPU and a discrete GPU. Ivy Bridge will significantly increase integrated graphics performance, but not enough to truly eliminate the need for a discrete GPU. I suspect for Apple to do the ultra thin 15-inch MacBook Pro the right way it would have to wait until Haswell, where integrated graphics performance is supposed to be much better.
Of course all of this is speculating out loud, anything (or nothing) could happen. If you need a system today, the upgraded MacBook Pro line makes an an already great system a better value. If you can wait, Ivy Bridge will likely be very good for notebook users in about 6 - 8 months.
That's the downside to Intel's tick-tock cadence. When the ticks and tocks are major, there's almost never a good time to buy. Ivy Bridge will significantly reduce power consumption and improve GPU performance and then there's Haswell...
The next two years aren't going to be easy on anyone's wallet.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
101 Comments
View All Comments
james.jwb - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Yep.Big audience here where some (read: most) stay out of the silliness and others only take part in the silliness. The Mac reviews--just like PS3 vs Xbox, COD vs BF3--attracts a certain type of.... weird individual that needs to rethink a few things about their deep emotional attachment to little boxes with plugs, in my opinion.
I don't blame some for defending their positions when attacked by these crazy, biased people, because it's quite annoying and borderline trolling, and sometimes it's hard not to let loose and troll a troll back.
But to grown ups it reads as tiresomely embarrassing drivel and just looks like there is something wrong with some people, which is likely.
ananduser - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
This is(was) a site for tech enthusiasts. They traditionally are against pre-configured machines and more into the hardware side of things. Apple reviews are fine but the mac users that comment on those Apple related articles, more often that not, do not address the tech side of that said Apple machine. They are almost always something like "...which is why Apple will always win against..." or "...why cant other brand makers do this...".freespace303 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
No 6770m benches for us windows gaming lovers eh? :(I would love to see how this laptop handles BF3 and Skyrim.
KoolAidMan1 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Same, I'd love to see how the 6770m compared with the 6750m.Death666Angel - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
"My current setup is a Samsung 830 in the primary drive bay and an Intel SSD 510 in place of my optical drive"You are such an SSD hog! Most people are still finding it hard to put one SSD in their case because of the prices. :D
Otherwise, good read.
Torrijos - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Anand should really try to review Mac Hardware with a bunch of Windows benchmark too, just to gage where they sit compared to the windows crowd, reducing OS & software optimization influence on the measures.This would be particularly interesting with the advent of the ultrabook where the MBA seems to be the reference but doesn't show up in any of the charts of the ultrabook reviews.
This would also reduce speculation on hardware performance benchmarks the only nagging point remaining would be the drivers given by Apple.
Death666Angel - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I agree! While I am unfortunately not in the market for such a thing while I'm still a student (another year or two), some of the MBPs do look nice and offer good performance. But I would not use OSX with them. So a comparison with bootcamp Windows would be appreciated. :-)KoolAidMan1 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
1:1 comparisons in the past have yielded consistent results in terms of battery life and game performance. Windows gets less battery life along with better game performance, the latter due to GPU drivers from vendors being much more optimized than the OpenGL drivers Apple puts out themselves. There were several updates from Apple last year when Valve ported Source games to OS X that yielded very good improvement, but it's still generally not as good as DirectX performance in Windows. There are a few exceptions like WoW, but then you have games like Starcraft 2 where the differences seem to swing wildly depending on the version number.Doesn't affect me much personally, I segregate work to my OS X machine and play to my Windows box. :)
ananduser - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Load of bull. DirectX and OpenGL performance in Windows is a no contest compared to Apple's. It all amounts to Apple's shitty bootcamp. Apple's drivers for Windows don't use the integrated graphics at all - they just turn on (and leave on) the discrete GPU - even if your machine doesn't need the graphics horsepower - hence the battery penalty. Apple also only provides Windows IO drivers that make the HDD subsystem look like an old IDE drive, reducing IO bandwidth and increasing IO latency considerably. Legacy IDE mode hinders the performance of all disk IO.KoolAidMan1 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Yes, I'm fully aware that those are reasons for Windows performance having less battery life than OS X. That said, I didn't go into that, instead focusing on differences in graphics performance (Windows DX drivers are more optimized than OS X OGL drivers) which we do agree one, even though your response makes it seem like we don't.The one thing you do need to consider is Anandtech's battery tests on Macbooks without dedicated graphics. Even with an integrated GPU, battery life is more with OS X. Furthermore, Boot Camp battery life is roughly in line with other notebooks running identical specs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2645/13
Why are you so mad? These aren't major disagreements we're having.