Thursday, March 28, 2024

Apple | Apple MacBook Pro 16.2 inch 2021 review | macbook


Apple has managed to trump the performance of last year’s M1 processors with the current new edition. The excellent performance is clearly evident in our current benchmark test. Since there are variants of the M1 CPUs for the first time this year, we were spoiled for choice and opted for the maximum performance level for the 16.2-inch notebook. We tested the M1 Max with 8 performance and 2 efficiency cores as well as a 32-core GPU. Apple has optimized the memory bandwidth here: With the predecessor, this was still around 70 GBit per second, the M1 Pro achieves 200 GBit per second in the current version and the Max version we tested is even twice as high at 400 GBit per second quickly.

The strong performance can be seen, for example, in our CPU benchmark Geekbench 5: Here the processor achieves a single-core score of 1783 points and a multi-core score of 12786 points. We tested the smaller 14.2 model with 1764 points in single-core and 10002 points in multi-core. In contrast, last year’s 13.3-inch model falls significantly short with 1,715 (single-core) and just 7,560 (multi-core). However, what we found even more impressive was the fact that the CPU performance does not collapse even under permanent full load. In addition, the fans remain quiet and can hardly be heard even when working at full capacity. In general, they only start when the GPU is used.

The equipment is rounded off by 32 GB of RAM and, thanks to PCIe 4.0 support, an extremely fast, two TB SSD. You can connect external devices to one of the three Thunderbolt 4 ports. You will find two of them on the left side of the case and one on the right. We were particularly surprised that Apple again supports SD card readers and an HDMI 2.0 connection in this model. Above all, the card reader was a wish of those who were tired of having to copy their photos from the digital camera to their MacBook in a roundabout way or with long waiting times. In addition, Apple uses a well-known standard for the power supply with the MagSafe 3 connection, which Apple fans missed.

You can connect a headset to the notebook using the 3.5 mm headphone jack. Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax standard) is also on board for connecting to the home network, and version 5.0 is available for Bluetooth connections. The whole thing is rounded off by an excellent FaceTime webcam (1,920 x 1,080 pixels), the image quality of which is literally impressive, and a small six-channel sound system including woofers and Dolby Atmos. If you use AirPods (from the third generation), AirPods Pro or AirPods Max you can use 3D audio including head tracking. Finally, three microphones ensure that your voice is transmitted clearly and distinctly.

The lack of native software support for the M1 processors remains a point of criticism – especially for games. Here you usually have to use the “Rosetta 2” program, which allows software originally written for Intel CPUs to run on the Apple M1 machines. Widespread software for programming or for image and video editing, such as Adobe Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, Postman or Homebrew, can be used without any problems.

Tag: macbook issue, macbook pro, macbook release, macbook macos

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