13-inch Retina MacBook Pro Review (Late 2012)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 13, 2012 2:53 AM ESTThe 13-inch Retina Display in Numbers
The latest rMBP features a 13.3-inch, 2560 x 1600 LED backlit IPS LCD panel. Apple maintains a total of four aspect ratios across all of its product lines:
| Apple Display Aspect Ratio | ||||||
| Aspect Ratio | 3:2 | 4:3 | 16:9 | 16:10 | ||
| Apple Product | iPhone 4S | iPad, iPad mini | 11-inch MBA, iPhone 5, iPod Touch (5th gen) | 13-inch MBA, MacBook Pro, Retina MacBook Pro | ||
I'm not sure if you can read anything into this, other than Apple seems to be fine with choosing a different aspect ratio to fit the form factor of whatever device it's building.
The 4MP panel has around 226 pixels per inch, compared to approximately 220 pixels per inch on the 15-inch rMBP's display. The slight increase in pixel density isn't really noticeable.
At first sight, the 13-inch rMBP panel is somehow less impressive than the old 15. Part of the problem is the 15-inch surface is just so much larger that it manages to deliver a pretty substantial impact. It's the problem of being compared to such an overachieving sibling: anything you do is just never good enough.
Despite its inability to outshine the 15-inch rMBP panel, the display on the 13-inch model is gorgeous. Viewing angles are great thanks to the use of IPS technology. Brightness and contrast are both top notch as well:
Color accuracy and gamut are both within the range of the 15-inch model, putting them among the best we've tested:
I also ran the 13-inch rMBP through our CalMAN smartphone/tablet workflow to compare it to Apple's iPad and iPhone 5. The results are very impressive (remember for the dE2000 values, lower numbers are better/more accurate colors):
| CalMAN Display Comparison | ||||||||
| Apple iPad (3rd gen) | Apple iPhone 5 | 13-inch rMBP (uncalibrated) | 13-inch rMBP (calibrated) | 15-inch rMBP (calibrated) | ||||
| Grayscale 200 nits Avg dE2000 | 3.7333 | 3.564 | 1.7825 | 1.6997 | 1.8074 | |||
| CCT Avg (K) | 6857K | 6925K | 6632K | 6545K | 6583K | |||
| Saturation Sweep Avg dE2000 | 3.193 | 3.591 | 2.1663 | 1.2269 | 1.335 | |||
| GMB Colorchecker Avg dE2000 | 3.0698 | 4.747 | 2.4521 | 1.0966 | 1.1714 | |||
Straight from the factory, the 13-inch rMBP display is a bit more accurate than what you get from the 3rd gen iPad and the iPhone 5. With an additional calibration pass using our i1 Pro spectrophotometer the rMBP display is in a different league. Once again we see relatively similar performance between the 13 and 15-inch rMBP displays.
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jeffbui - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
How are you displaying wifi xmit speed in OS X? Thanks.timmyj9 - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
looks like the bands for the wifi test might be the other way aroundgreater range and less throughput over 5GHz (comp. to 2.4GHz)?
iwod - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
I was about to post that. the 2.4Ghz is faster then 5Ghz and they concludes Very good WiFi?Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Thanks for the correction :)Take care,
Anand
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Option + click on the WiFi indicator to display the additional details. Generally speaking, option-clicking on various things in OS X tends to reveal more information.Take care,
Anand
Henk Poley - Monday, November 19, 2012 - link
Hold Option and click the WiFi menu icon.Henk Poley - Monday, November 19, 2012 - link
Ah doh, comment threads wrap around page boundaries on this site..Galatian - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
You know the 256GB SSD 13" 2012 MacBook Air runs at 1362€ on the Apple Store(with Apple on Campus rebate). The 11" is even less with 1275€. For a very similar specced 13" rMacBook Pro I'll have to spend 1802€ which is roughly 500€ more. I can understand the lack of discrete graphic card but not the lack of quad cpu at this price point. As much as I would like to have a retina display, as I use my MacBook Air mostly in university to write stuff and look at my ebooks, 1802€ get's you actually in the territory of "high" performance notebooks. even then bigger 15" rMacBook Pro is "only" 200€ but in my eyes bring so much more value on the table. Either the 15" is priced to low or the 13" to high IMHO.
hvv - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Agreed. Personally I think Apple made far too many compromises to get the device retina enabled. No 16GB Ram BTO option, No quad core option, no discreet graphics. What's left is essentially a thicker, heavier MBA with retina screen and some additional ports. Even the CPUs in the 13" rmbp and the 2012 mba's (notably absent from the perf charts above...) are similar in real performance. Oi.jramskov - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
"Once again, UI elements, text, windows and icons are also rendered at 4x their size so everything remains legible, but things like images and videos remain unscaled allowing you to fit more content on your screen at the same time."This makes the machine much more interesting. I thought everything was scaled and hence made the machine "unsuitable" for things like working in Lightroom.
Do I understand correctly that the images I work on in Lightroom will not be affected by the scaling?