Apple | Is the new M2 MacBook Pro worth it or should you buy the predecessor quickly? | macbook

As expected, nothing has changed in the design, because there were only major updates last year and experience has shown that Apple has stuck to the case design for several years. After the normal M2 processor, which was recently presented with the new MacBook Air, was still manufactured in a 5 nm process (N5P), the expectation was that Apple would come up with the new M2 Pro and M2 Max SoCs are already switching to the new 3 nm process. We were disappointed in this regard and Apple continues to rely on the well-known, albeit optimized, 5 nm process. Our experience with the standard M2 processor in the MacBook Air already gives us some clues for the new MacBook Pro models. In our analysis, we saw that the M2 offers more CPU power than the old M1, but it also requires more power and thus loses a little efficiency.

With the new M2 Pro and M2 Max SoCs, Apple continues its strategy and doubles the number of efficiency cores from two to four. In the basic model of the M2 Pro (only offered in the MacBook Pro 14) there are 6 performance cores, all other models are equipped with 8 performance cores, i.e. 2 efficiency cores more than in the old models. As with the M2, Apple will have increased the maximum frequency of the cores. So we expect an increase in performance here, but this will also go hand in hand with higher power consumption and thus probably a somewhat poorer efficiency.

So the bottom line is an upgraded M2 chip with more cores (both CPU and GPU), the upgraded Neural Engine (compared to the M1 Pro & M1 Max) and a larger memory interface. However, as with the old chip, the memory connection remains at 200 GB/s or 400 GB/s on the M2 Max, which again speaks for 256-bit LPDDR5 RAM or 512-bit LPDDR5 RAM. In addition, Apple increases the maximum size of the RAM to 96 GB for the M2 Max with 38 GPU cores, but the memory connection remains at 400 GB/s.