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Everyone's Overall Impressions with 16" MacBook Pro
- Thread starter 16bitplus
- Start date
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My first impression of my MBP16 2.4/32GB/8GBVRAM/2TB ... not very good.
Just opened it up out of the brand new box and there was some weird gunk on the left side of the case, like some adhesive smudge. Immediately noticed a nick on the top lid near the top left thunderbolt ports. Like some tooling error from the factory.
Booted it up only to notice bad pixels in the upper left of the screen.
Returning it immediately. Luckily there's another model with the same specs in-store, and hoping that works. If it has any issues, I'll bail and buy something else.
No coil whine at least.
Update: Replacement is perfect.
Just opened it up out of the brand new box and there was some weird gunk on the left side of the case, like some adhesive smudge. Immediately noticed a nick on the top lid near the top left thunderbolt ports. Like some tooling error from the factory.
Booted it up only to notice bad pixels in the upper left of the screen.
Returning it immediately. Luckily there's another model with the same specs in-store, and hoping that works. If it has any issues, I'll bail and buy something else.
No coil whine at least.
Update: Replacement is perfect.
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I moved up from a 2010 model. You will be blown away in the difference.
Not to create a nit-gate thread but those who have their 16” Pro’s who still also have a 2016-2019 precious 13”/15”, is your screen dimmer than before?
I’ve read some comments that the contrast/colour isn’t as good as previous 15” screen and saw a few reviews mention this screen as around 400 nits when measured instead of 500. Reddit owners seem to have also noticed a dimmer screen side by side with their previous models.
Someone contacted support and they said if your MacBook isn’t 500 nits it might be defective and should be returned. I guess I’m just curious how wide spread it is?
Mine is due tomorrow so I will compare to my 13” MacBook Pro 2018.
I’ve read some comments that the contrast/colour isn’t as good as previous 15” screen and saw a few reviews mention this screen as around 400 nits when measured instead of 500. Reddit owners seem to have also noticed a dimmer screen side by side with their previous models.
Someone contacted support and they said if your MacBook isn’t 500 nits it might be defective and should be returned. I guess I’m just curious how wide spread it is?
Mine is due tomorrow so I will compare to my 13” MacBook Pro 2018.
I have the 16" and my 2018 15" still here and compared them side by side. The 16" is slightly less bright on the same settings. I had True Tone and automatic adjust brightness on both computers and the display wasn't bright enough for me on the 16". I still have True Tone on, but set brightness at about 60% which is perfect for me. I'm looking at both computers side by side now at 100% brightness and the 2018 looks very slightly brighter with and without True Tone on. Part of that may be because my new 16" has a very slightly warmer screen. I can't see any difference in color. This is a very subjective opinion. I'll be interested to see what your finding are tomorrow.
(i9/16GB/5500M-4GB/1TB)
Amateur Photographer / Lightroom/ Photoshop
and other home use
Coming from a Surface Book I and Surface Pro
I love the speed and feel so far on the MacBook, no problems with the new OS as I never experienced Mohave.
Anyway I am looking forward to many years of use. 😎
Amateur Photographer / Lightroom/ Photoshop
and other home use
Coming from a Surface Book I and Surface Pro
I love the speed and feel so far on the MacBook, no problems with the new OS as I never experienced Mohave.
Anyway I am looking forward to many years of use. 😎
Of course older laptops will not get much. I traded in a MacBook Pro 13" early 2018 and received over $700 USD.
from someone who's first ever Mac was a 2019 15" I didn't know what many were talking about when they mentioned they didn't like the keyboard. Have to say this is much better.
Screen does seem much bigger than the 15 (even though its only slightly bigger).
Screen does seem much bigger than the 15 (even though its only slightly bigger).
Arguably, but lots of evidence, total cost of ownership may be lower. It will likely last you longer by a year or two, and have less issues and be easier to use. But it also depends on what you use it for. Graphics professionals a no brainier. FCPX is much more reliable and efficient than Premiere (I didn't say better though). It is beautifully made.
Arrived today... !!
2.4 i9/64GB RAM/2TB SSD/5500 8GB
Upgrading from a 2019 15" - 2.4 i9/32GB RAM/1TB SSD/Vega 20
I've had multiple MacBooks, probably 5 or 6 different butterfly keyboard models of varying sizes. I immediately ordered the new 16" when it was announced. Primary reasons: Keyboard, 64GB RAM option, and far better graphics.
Thoughts/Justifications/Impressions (note: I work in IT - everything from Infrastructure Administration to medium sized development projects):
2.4 i9/64GB RAM/2TB SSD/5500 8GB
Upgrading from a 2019 15" - 2.4 i9/32GB RAM/1TB SSD/Vega 20
I've had multiple MacBooks, probably 5 or 6 different butterfly keyboard models of varying sizes. I immediately ordered the new 16" when it was announced. Primary reasons: Keyboard, 64GB RAM option, and far better graphics.
Thoughts/Justifications/Impressions (note: I work in IT - everything from Infrastructure Administration to medium sized development projects):
- Even with all the revisions of the butterfly keyboard, I can't type accurately on it and have always hated the feel. The new keyboard on the 16" is *phenomenal* ... I can fly on this thing and I love the feel. GREAT upgrade, albeit a sad situation that we all had to deal with this poor excuse for a keyboard for so long. The MacBook finally has a premium keyboard again.
- Love the 64GB RAM option... I can now easily run my test environments on the go (several VMs mixed with k8s clusters)
- ESC key!! vim already feels faster
- Initial impressions on fit/finish/screen/etc. are fantastic. The screen is beautiful, the sound is unreal ...
- Booted it up for the first time and installed all updates to make sure the pre-boot environment was up to latest version, then booted in to recovery, wiped the drive and did a fresh install of Catalina. Everything running well so far. All of my software is re-installed and working well.
- Some common issues are appearing on the forums ... of all of those, I do have one: the speaker "popping" ... assuming this is a software issue. It sounds like a (the?) small amp shutting off / turning on. Not loud enough to bother me and assuming this will be fixed in a future Catalina release. No other issues for me.
Great ”review”, especially from someone with a nearly identical machine performance wise .
.
You have 8 total posts and 3 trashing a computer you weren't interested in in your first post. But I'm sure you actually own it.
Great review there and incidentally I’m looking to get the same spec as you and like yourself also plan to use it for running multiple VMs/K8s clusters as well - would be great if you could give a more detailed review on how the 64GB Ram i9 machine copes with running multiple VMs/K8s multi node cluster etc, in terms of performance and thermal/ fan noise , battery life as well. Does it run comfortably to leave multiple VMs running all the time?Arrived today... !!
2.4 i9/64GB RAM/2TB SSD/5500 8GB
Upgrading from a 2019 15" - 2.4 i9/32GB RAM/1TB SSD/Vega 20
I've had multiple MacBooks, probably 5 or 6 different butterfly keyboard models of varying sizes. I immediately ordered the new 16" when it was announced. Primary reasons: Keyboard, 64GB RAM option, and far better graphics.
Thoughts/Justifications/Impressions (note: I work in IT - everything from Infrastructure Administration to medium sized development projects):
Overall, very happy. I've never had a real great sense of security with the butterfly models... I finally feel great about this one. It's a near perfect machine for me. It's amazing how much power they've managed to pack in to a small/efficient case!
- Even with all the revisions of the butterfly keyboard, I can't type accurately on it and have always hated the feel. The new keyboard on the 16" is *phenomenal* ... I can fly on this thing and I love the feel. GREAT upgrade, albeit a sad situation that we all had to deal with this poor excuse for a keyboard for so long. The MacBook finally has a premium keyboard again.
- Love the 64GB RAM option... I can now easily run my test environments on the go (several VMs mixed with k8s clusters)
- ESC key!! vim already feels faster
- Initial impressions on fit/finish/screen/etc. are fantastic. The screen is beautiful, the sound is unreal ...
- Booted it up for the first time and installed all updates to make sure the pre-boot environment was up to latest version, then booted in to recovery, wiped the drive and did a fresh install of Catalina. Everything running well so far. All of my software is re-installed and working well.
- Some common issues are appearing on the forums ... of all of those, I do have one: the speaker "popping" ... assuming this is a software issue. It sounds like a (the?) small amp shutting off / turning on. Not loud enough to bother me and assuming this will be fixed in a future Catalina release. No other issues for me.
That's a week with the new machine (base model) and overall impression is that this is going to become one of my favourite machines.
Its not hard to write about the positives - the keyboard feels great (that's coming from someone who didn't mind the butterfly ones); the speakers are amazing; the mic array has changed how I work - my phone is now redundant for conference calls as the quality is so good on this.
I'm not using the laptop in clamshell mode as I think that's a waste of a screen, keyboard and touchpad, but I do have it hooked up to a 4K LG when at my desk. I've not had any performance/fan issues with this setup unlike others.
Screen is really nice - plenty bright enough although I do need to play around with the different colour profiles.
Performance wise its very good - my daily workflow involves the usual productivity stuff, a couple of VMs, some photo work and very light video stuff. Doesn't skip a beat when doing any of these things, often with many, many apps and tabs open at one time and Apple Music open while airplaying to a HomePod.
Battery life seems the usual Apple fare in that it will easily last all of a working day so long as I'm not hammering it with something like video encoding.
I need to get Pock and/or BettterTouch installed to make more use of the TouchBar. I'm very much in the middle-ground on that one, don't love it but don't hate it. I really like the sliders for volume & brightness. Having spent a lot of time using iPads for work, I do find myself using the typing suggestions a bit more than other people I've seen - I think reaching up to touch the Touch Bar comes a bit more naturally to me, just because of my muscle memory from iPads.
Size wise, it feels identical to the 15". Even in the store the you have them side by side, its really difficult to spot the difference. I've complained before that the 16 is unwieldy when in some situations like train & planes, but the trade-off is that screen size really lets me work more quickly/productively compared to a 12/13" one. The larger screen also makes me more inclined to work in different rooms on the house, with the laptop on my knees etc which is a plus point for me.
Very happy with it.
Its not hard to write about the positives - the keyboard feels great (that's coming from someone who didn't mind the butterfly ones); the speakers are amazing; the mic array has changed how I work - my phone is now redundant for conference calls as the quality is so good on this.
I'm not using the laptop in clamshell mode as I think that's a waste of a screen, keyboard and touchpad, but I do have it hooked up to a 4K LG when at my desk. I've not had any performance/fan issues with this setup unlike others.
Screen is really nice - plenty bright enough although I do need to play around with the different colour profiles.
Performance wise its very good - my daily workflow involves the usual productivity stuff, a couple of VMs, some photo work and very light video stuff. Doesn't skip a beat when doing any of these things, often with many, many apps and tabs open at one time and Apple Music open while airplaying to a HomePod.
Battery life seems the usual Apple fare in that it will easily last all of a working day so long as I'm not hammering it with something like video encoding.
I need to get Pock and/or BettterTouch installed to make more use of the TouchBar. I'm very much in the middle-ground on that one, don't love it but don't hate it. I really like the sliders for volume & brightness. Having spent a lot of time using iPads for work, I do find myself using the typing suggestions a bit more than other people I've seen - I think reaching up to touch the Touch Bar comes a bit more naturally to me, just because of my muscle memory from iPads.
Size wise, it feels identical to the 15". Even in the store the you have them side by side, its really difficult to spot the difference. I've complained before that the 16 is unwieldy when in some situations like train & planes, but the trade-off is that screen size really lets me work more quickly/productively compared to a 12/13" one. The larger screen also makes me more inclined to work in different rooms on the house, with the laptop on my knees etc which is a plus point for me.
Very happy with it.
Some subjective “SOTP” feelings below, will report back once I stretch its legs a bit more:
With 8 4GB 1vCPU Windows Server VMs, I was able to boot them all at the same time and install patches. Performance was great but the fans were going a bit nuts, but I was expecting that. Responsiveness was great on all of them throughout the patching process. Once patching was complete the fans went almost completely silent, granted the machines weren’t doing much at that point. I’ll do some more testing this weekend and introduce some k8s linux hosts with moderate workloads over the next few days, will post back with some more objective information when I have it.
thanks , look forward to your views after further testing - but that already sounds really promising if you’ve managed to run 8 x Windows server VMs concurrently and you actually had a moment of silence with the fans ?
Sounds good - which of the base models did you go with, the i7/16GB/512GB or slightly upgraded i9/16GB/1TB? I've concluded that 16GB is enough RAM for my needs so it's one of these that I am going to order. Probably the latter as I'd like a bit more storage.
I just went with the 512GB one. I've now got all my apps installed, 4 different VMs and am sitting with 280GB free. But I guess the i9/1TB option is pretty tempting at that price.
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Thx. It is, although as per my last post on that thread Apple have spooked me about buying from Amazon
I don't do anything crazy on my current 2018 MacBook Pro. I ordered it the day the Vega 20 GPU was available, so barely a year old and it has only 14 charge cycles on the battery, so it doesn't even get used a lot. I just like having the newest tech I can get, so I bought the new one. I may give last years to my wife or daughter. I'm looking forward to comparing it with my Dell XPS machine as I use it the most.
- What spec did you order? I went with the i9 2.4GHz, 64GB ram, 2TB hard drive, Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB GPU
- What are you upgrading from? I wouldn't really say upgrading as I'm keeping them still but I currently have a 2018 MBP 15" i7, 32GB ram, 1TB SSD, Vega 20 GPU and a Dell XPS 7590 15" with i7, 32GB ram, 1TB SSD and GTX 1650 GPU
- What kind of work do you do on it? This will be browse the web, Lightroom, Photoshop, iMovie and a little autocad machine. Nothing too crazy.
- How is it performing for you so far? It won't be here until December 3-5
Same Coil Whine noise here. I returned the first unit but the second one still has the same noise. Really annoying. And the speaker is another problem. It would make a weird noise when I jump from one video to another. Also, same problem on both machines.I've only been using mine for a few hours. It's interesting. I got completely used to the butterfly keyboard, using it for three years. Two seconds on this new keyboard and I'm totally over the butterfly keyboard. This is significantly better.
Otherwise, colors look great, computer is noticeably faster than my previous one, it isn't getting too warm.
Unfortunately I am noticing the cool whine/squeaking noise. All computers have this to a degree, but on my past MBP I could only hear it if I put ear up next to it. This is more noticeable. So we'll see. I'm picky about these kinds of things. One of my friends has an MSI laptop that has that noise to a horrible degree; I don't see how he can stand to use it. This does seem to be SSD-related.