The next-gen MacBook Pro with Retina Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 23, 2012 4:14 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Pro
- Laptops
- Notebooks
The Retina Display in Numbers
I already published preliminary analysis of the Retina MacBook Pro’s display. In short brightness is down a bit, black levels are considerably improved and contrast as a result takes a huge step forward compared to previous models. My personal MacBook Pro used the anti-glare matte screen and the improvement in contrast ratio compared to that reference is over 50%.
Apple made no mention of impact to color accuracy or color gamut. It turns out that the omission was for good reason, the Retina Display offers no improvement along either vector. The numbers show a slight regression compared to last year’s panel but the difference is imperceivable.
Technically Apple’s use of the word Retina in reference to a display only refers to the inability for the human eye to resolve individual pixels at a specified distance (18-inches for the MacBook Pro). In practice however Apple has delivered tightly integrated IPS panels with wonderful performance characteristics as a part of the Retina brand. I do hope that for the years to come Apple does not compromise on these fronts.
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RaygunV - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
Apple has done nothing. Higher resolutions were already in the pipeline before apple released theirs. Apple releases first only so that the public DOES think they are innovative.Apple has done nothing special, just using maturing technology like all vendors will.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Higher-Reso...
designerfx - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
the same as apple: improving on plenty of things while missing the boat.apple: lack of improvements on hardware (not their fault, but raising resolution without a substantially more powerful GPU = things tend to suck if you try to take advantage of the resolution).
Note all the benchmarks at the scaled down resolution on the GPU testing. You don't even want to know what these games will run at with 28xx by 18xx.
If 1680x1050 is achieving 60fps, it's not hard to guess that 15fps might be an optimistic answer at 2800x1800.
Meanwhile, all this "Scale the appropriate elements while letting the rest display full resolution" is an important part of the OS that windows 8 probably will miss, entirely.
Spunjji - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Sony, Vaio Z, 13" 1920x1080. Thanks, Apple? :|starburns - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition...Super resolutions have been around since 2005, this retina display is still only half the resolution that other companies have achieved years ago.
KitsuneKnight - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
Displays that cost enough to buy 5+ of these laptops (if you find them on firesale!). Not really comparable.optics261 - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
One review to rule them all!zappb - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
With 4k resolution screens to bind them. Apple=progress (finally).After years of ignoring screen quality Lenovo, dell, hp....thanks pingguo.
yhselp - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
One Review to rule them all, One Review to show them, One Review to teach them all and in the darkness more objective make them.eron - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
What software was used to measure the frame rate?Spoony - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Quartz Debug. Part of Apple's developer tools. There is a string you can use to expose additional functionality in Quartz Debug such as resolution scaling factor and manual GPU switching.$ defaults write com.apple.QuartzDebug QuartzDebugPrivateInterface -boolean YES