Nope, same speed on basic tasks as at 16" was.
I don't think that I'll see any difference at speed except graphics.
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MacBook Pro 2020 13" USER Reviews
- Thread starter citivolus
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I don't think that I'll see any difference at speed except graphics.
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Do you like the 13 better than your 16? What made you switch?
I'm coming from a 2012 13" that I feel sometimes cramped on. Looking to upgrade very soon but I tested the 2020 13" in the store and it seems even smaller than my current one?? But then I'm like the 16" might be uncomfortable to use in bed or lounging on the couch ?
The 14" would have been my golden ticket
The 16" MBP is gorgeous and I loved it. But too much bulky for my taste, I need portability more than power and extra screen space, so I decided to return it.
MacBook Pro 13 10th gen just came in yesterday and it's running like a champ.
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports)
2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16 GB 3733 MHz LPDDR4
1 TB SSD
The new keyboard is amazing and significantly better than the old.
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports)
2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16 GB 3733 MHz LPDDR4
1 TB SSD
The new keyboard is amazing and significantly better than the old.
Had a 13" i7/32/2TB for a week (had been in stock, as 1 and the best out of 5 predefined configurations, in an Apple store in Germany).
Decided to return it and to stick with my 13" rMBP early 2015 (i5/8/512). Why?
* very good machine, of course, but it didn't wow me enough
* a little bit snappier than the old one, but no quantum leap
* this is because I have a professional workflow but little pictures and video, rather word processing, mails (MS Office) and video conferencing. The 2015 machine is still fully capable of doing this, and of driving a 4K UHD Monitor. Back then, I ordered the "Pro" because of the beautiful retina screen the Air had not.
* the old machine runs warm bordering hot sometimes. The new machine got hotter, especially at the palm rest, even unter light workload.
* Magic keyboard is ok, but in my opinion still behind the one in my old device and in the A1243 keyboard.
* Sidecar is something to miss.
Should I need a replacement in near future, I will probably go for the Air. As it is retina now, and no more "butterfly"...
Decided to return it and to stick with my 13" rMBP early 2015 (i5/8/512). Why?
* very good machine, of course, but it didn't wow me enough
* a little bit snappier than the old one, but no quantum leap
* this is because I have a professional workflow but little pictures and video, rather word processing, mails (MS Office) and video conferencing. The 2015 machine is still fully capable of doing this, and of driving a 4K UHD Monitor. Back then, I ordered the "Pro" because of the beautiful retina screen the Air had not.
* the old machine runs warm bordering hot sometimes. The new machine got hotter, especially at the palm rest, even unter light workload.
* Magic keyboard is ok, but in my opinion still behind the one in my old device and in the A1243 keyboard.
* Sidecar is something to miss.
Should I need a replacement in near future, I will probably go for the Air. As it is retina now, and no more "butterfly"...
I returned it to the store. No issues at all, except some kind of minor Catalina bugs such as kernel panic when wake from sleep or fans noise while using with external monitor. But I decided to return it because it just too bulky for me.
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how would you know if it was at 500 nits?? I have a new 13 its bright, not as bright as usual, bright enough...
I measured my 16” with an XRite colorimeter.
I am sorry, but my impression is that people who have equipment to objectively measure and the knowledge to evaluate the results seem to think the display is ok. But this is MR and some people just like to complain.
I am sorry, but my impression is that people who have equipment to objectively measure and the knowledge to evaluate the results seem to think the display is ok. But this is MR and some people just like to complain.
If your MacBook is running warm you may want to replace the thermal paste, its probably all dried up after all these years. It will likely drop your temperatures and even make the computer run cooler
Well, I didn't say it was. I said it wasn't. I guess you can find it out visually comparing the brightness with another older MBPr 13' equipped less maximum nits screen.
Check my comment before.
My new Macbook Pro 13 10th gen i5 with 16GB, 512 GB SSD arrived last week and I've been using it since then. I moved from both a 2015 MacBook Air 11 4 GB, 128 GB SSD as well as a 16 inch gaming laptop (MSI GS65 with a discrete NVIDIA RTX 2060).
I was hoping the MacBook Pro would meet my needs in both daily productivity work as well as entertainment and gaming as I much prefer MacOS and the Mac touchpad. I specifically purchased the 10th gen for the upgraded integrated graphics, hoping they would meet my needs from a gaming perspective. I play a lot of older games but also enjoy some newer titles like Cities Skylines, Tropico 6, and Two Point Hospital. Two Point Hospital would play okay on the MacBook Air, but both Cities Skylines and Tripico 6 were unplayable (with Tropico 6 not even loading).
None of these games need very high frame rate which makes them ideal for the Macbook Pro. I was very happy to see that all of the more modern games are fully playable on the MacBook Pro with settings between Low and Medium, getting frame rates similar to the gaming laptop (albeit with much higher graphical settings enabled). The fans do kick in, though not to max, and are much quieter than the gaming PC. Luckily all games also were already compiled for 64 bit so they ran fine under Catalina.
One older game I like to play, Rise of Nations, sadly no longer is playable under Wine, but with the much larger SSD I installed Windows 10 via Bootcamp and am now happily playing that along with a few other old Windows games. The ability to install Windows 10 via Bootcamp is a huge plus for this computer, versus the old MacBook Air with it's anemic 128 GB SSD.
As for the rest of the computer I'll echo what others have said. I'm very happy with the new keyboard (having used a butterfly keyboard for a bit) and find it nicer than the old MacBook Air keyboard; it's a great mix between the two, bringing the travel of the old scissor switch keys while keeping the butterfly's stability. The trackpad is leagues better than the gaming PC which appeared to have absolutely no palm rejection and would drive me insane; about the same as the MacBook Air, just bigger and with force touch. And those speakers, wow, so much better than both the Air and the PC!
The Touch Bar is new to me as I've never owned a Mac with one before. I customized it using the standard costomization options and so for I'm not hating it like I was somewhat expecting based on reading the internets. I don't have any issues with the volume or brightness controls, have found the emoji keyboard to be useful ?, and also use the keyboard auto-complete when I'm having trouble typing out an unusual word. I may customize it more with something like BetterTouchTool, but wanted to try the defaults for a bit first.
I also finally switched over to Safari after using a combination of Chrome and the new Microsoft Edge browser after running Intel Power Gadget while watching YouTube and seeing that Chrome/Microsoft Edge used more than double(!) the amount of package power. My one sticking point was no uBlock Origin for Safari, but I was able to find a similar Adblock plugin called Wipr that successfully blocks YouTube ads without issue. I'm now easily getting over 8 hours of use while doing simple tasks such as Numbers, Messages, and browsing the web.
Overall I'm very pleased with my purchase and am so happy to be able to combine both of my old computers into one. It's great to have a modern Mac with all of it's bonuses (iMessage, iCloud, FaceTime, etc.) and still also be able to play Mac and PC games without issue.
I was hoping the MacBook Pro would meet my needs in both daily productivity work as well as entertainment and gaming as I much prefer MacOS and the Mac touchpad. I specifically purchased the 10th gen for the upgraded integrated graphics, hoping they would meet my needs from a gaming perspective. I play a lot of older games but also enjoy some newer titles like Cities Skylines, Tropico 6, and Two Point Hospital. Two Point Hospital would play okay on the MacBook Air, but both Cities Skylines and Tripico 6 were unplayable (with Tropico 6 not even loading).
None of these games need very high frame rate which makes them ideal for the Macbook Pro. I was very happy to see that all of the more modern games are fully playable on the MacBook Pro with settings between Low and Medium, getting frame rates similar to the gaming laptop (albeit with much higher graphical settings enabled). The fans do kick in, though not to max, and are much quieter than the gaming PC. Luckily all games also were already compiled for 64 bit so they ran fine under Catalina.
One older game I like to play, Rise of Nations, sadly no longer is playable under Wine, but with the much larger SSD I installed Windows 10 via Bootcamp and am now happily playing that along with a few other old Windows games. The ability to install Windows 10 via Bootcamp is a huge plus for this computer, versus the old MacBook Air with it's anemic 128 GB SSD.
As for the rest of the computer I'll echo what others have said. I'm very happy with the new keyboard (having used a butterfly keyboard for a bit) and find it nicer than the old MacBook Air keyboard; it's a great mix between the two, bringing the travel of the old scissor switch keys while keeping the butterfly's stability. The trackpad is leagues better than the gaming PC which appeared to have absolutely no palm rejection and would drive me insane; about the same as the MacBook Air, just bigger and with force touch. And those speakers, wow, so much better than both the Air and the PC!
The Touch Bar is new to me as I've never owned a Mac with one before. I customized it using the standard costomization options and so for I'm not hating it like I was somewhat expecting based on reading the internets. I don't have any issues with the volume or brightness controls, have found the emoji keyboard to be useful ?, and also use the keyboard auto-complete when I'm having trouble typing out an unusual word. I may customize it more with something like BetterTouchTool, but wanted to try the defaults for a bit first.
I also finally switched over to Safari after using a combination of Chrome and the new Microsoft Edge browser after running Intel Power Gadget while watching YouTube and seeing that Chrome/Microsoft Edge used more than double(!) the amount of package power. My one sticking point was no uBlock Origin for Safari, but I was able to find a similar Adblock plugin called Wipr that successfully blocks YouTube ads without issue. I'm now easily getting over 8 hours of use while doing simple tasks such as Numbers, Messages, and browsing the web.
Overall I'm very pleased with my purchase and am so happy to be able to combine both of my old computers into one. It's great to have a modern Mac with all of it's bonuses (iMessage, iCloud, FaceTime, etc.) and still also be able to play Mac and PC games without issue.
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Had my 10th gen i5/32/1tb for 4 days now.
Fans were audible for the first 24 hours during installs / indexing / migration but now running quietly.
Speed is excellent
Keyboard is excellent
Runs my 4K LG Ultrafine brilliantly well
A very nice upgrade in performance from my late-2016 i7 in terms of speed and running the external display.
No comment on battery life yet- I've been plugged in nearly constantly.
Fans were audible for the first 24 hours during installs / indexing / migration but now running quietly.
Speed is excellent
Keyboard is excellent
Runs my 4K LG Ultrafine brilliantly well
A very nice upgrade in performance from my late-2016 i7 in terms of speed and running the external display.
No comment on battery life yet- I've been plugged in nearly constantly.
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Did you use the previous MBPro also connected to the external monitor all the time as a portable machine? If so, did the battery perform well in the long-term? Is the 32GB sufficient for heavy multitasking? Thanks.
I received my i5/16/1 TB model from Best Buy the other day. Took advantage of the $1799 sale price. Very happy with it. This replaces a 2018 model I had for about 15 months. Even though I had zero issues with the butterfly keyboard on that model, I decided I didn't want to risk it eventually messing up. The new keyboard is very nice to type on. I won't need a new one for years.
Don't want to derail the review thread with a specific issue but I've just returned my 2020 10th gen Macbook Pro 13" as I felt like the display on it was causing me a lot of eyestrain. It felt like it was difficult to to focus on text and almost like text around what I was focussing on was shaking/shimmering/flickering? I don't notice the effect on my 2016 12" Macbook?
I noticed there's a similar thread regarding this issue on the 16" Macbook Pro so feel free to reply to that if you'd prefer to avoid cluttering up this one.
forums.macrumors.com
Just wondered if anyone has noticed similar issues with their 2020 13" Macbook Pro display or if I just had a defective/bad display on the one I tried?
I noticed there's a similar thread regarding this issue on the 16" Macbook Pro so feel free to reply to that if you'd prefer to avoid cluttering up this one.
16 inch MacBook Pro causes eye strain/pain while 15 inch Retina does not?
Bear with me on this one. I just bought a 16 inch MBP to replace my 15 inch Retina (late 2013). I've noticed something very weird: when looking at the 16 inch screen, my eyes immediately feel strained and the back of my eyes hurt, like when you're wearing glasses that are too strong, or like...
forums.macrumors.com
Just wondered if anyone has noticed similar issues with their 2020 13" Macbook Pro display or if I just had a defective/bad display on the one I tried?
Sorry you had problems, I know how frustrating that is.Don't want to derail the review thread with a specific issue but I've just returned my 2020 10th gen Macbook Pro 13" as I felt like the display on it was causing me a lot of eyestrain. It felt like it was difficult to to focus on text and almost like text around what I was focussing on was shaking/shimmering/flickering? I don't notice the effect on my 2016 12" Macbook?
I noticed there's a similar thread regarding this issue on the 16" Macbook Pro so feel free to reply to that if you'd prefer to avoid cluttering up this one.
16 inch MacBook Pro causes eye strain/pain while 15 inch Retina does not?
Bear with me on this one. I just bought a 16 inch MBP to replace my 15 inch Retina (late 2013). I've noticed something very weird: when looking at the 16 inch screen, my eyes immediately feel strained and the back of my eyes hurt, like when you're wearing glasses that are too strong, or like...
Just wondered if anyone has noticed similar issues with their 2020 13" Macbook Pro display or if I just had a defective/bad display on the one I tried?
I have a 2020 10th gen i5 MBP 13" and no problems with the display with my unit. This computer replaces my 2018 MB Air. My employer just replaced my 2016 MBP with a 2020 MBA. On all four computers, the display has been great, no eye strain.
Don't want to derail the review thread with a specific issue but I've just returned my 2020 10th gen Macbook Pro 13" as I felt like the display on it was causing me a lot of eyestrain. It felt like it was difficult to to focus on text and almost like text around what I was focussing on was shaking/shimmering/flickering? I don't notice the effect on my 2016 12" Macbook?
I noticed there's a similar thread regarding this issue on the 16" Macbook Pro so feel free to reply to that if you'd prefer to avoid cluttering up this one.
16 inch MacBook Pro causes eye strain/pain while 15 inch Retina does not?
Bear with me on this one. I just bought a 16 inch MBP to replace my 15 inch Retina (late 2013). I've noticed something very weird: when looking at the 16 inch screen, my eyes immediately feel strained and the back of my eyes hurt, like when you're wearing glasses that are too strong, or like...
Just wondered if anyone has noticed similar issues with their 2020 13" Macbook Pro display or if I just had a defective/bad display on the one I tried?
You can at least try another one, just in case. You can always return it. I had the same problem with a 16''. No problem at all with 2020 13''. It felt like the screen was an alive entity doing something weird, like projecting holographic stuff. To be honest I also tried another 16'' and felt the same. Then another one and it was fine. I don't know what to think.
Anyway there are also other threads about this, but don't mind the object(it's not only about 16'', but eye strain), any contribution is more than welcome.
I've experienced similar effects also on windows laptops and it seems it's all related to some dithering algorithm. But maybe you may get used to it, don't really know.
It could also be PWM related. It is worth noticing that on the new 13'' I have brightness always set on 100%, so no PWM. On the 16'' it was impossible for me because at 100% it was too bright, blindingly bright.
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Thanks for the replies and advice. I'll post a review when I get a chance. I'm annoyed at having to send it back to be honest as I really liked the device and would happily buy another if it does turn out that the one I had was faulty. I've tried changing brightness, disabling true-tone, disabling auto-brightness, changing colour profiles, bootcamp and several other settings but nothing seemed to really improve the issue for me.
I'm going to venture into an Apple store when they re-open in future so I can check out some of the devices there to see if I notice the same issue. If they do then I guess I'm stuck waiting until mini-LED/120Hz comes out to see if the change in display technology resolves the issue for me. That's probably 6-12 months away at least and I don't really want to be stuck on my 12" Macbook for the next year as it's struggling with a lot of the apps I use.
I'm going to venture into an Apple store when they re-open in future so I can check out some of the devices there to see if I notice the same issue. If they do then I guess I'm stuck waiting until mini-LED/120Hz comes out to see if the change in display technology resolves the issue for me. That's probably 6-12 months away at least and I don't really want to be stuck on my 12" Macbook for the next year as it's struggling with a lot of the apps I use.
No as I only got the monitor recently, and my batteries were replaced last year when the keyboard / bottom case got replaced on my 2016.
32gb seems ample, but not sure if I'd say I'm a heavy multitasker
So I had a 13" 10th gen Macbook Pro 2020 for about a week and my thoughts were :-
It's a lovely machine in terms of the design, the build quality is still ahead of any competitors. The new keyboard is great and as good as the best out there like the MS Surface line. The trackpad is still amazing and easily the best on the market. The touchbar has a few nice featues but I didn't find anything overly exciting for the tech. Some things like predictive text/spelling autocorrect, calculator functions, prompy commands, etc are useful but not essential IMO.
The performance is great as your expect in terms of CPU speed. The fan manages to remain silent when browing the web or using light apps. Even when the fans ramp up during more intensive tasks it's still reasonably quiet. The laptop can get pretty hot and it's noticeable when sitting on your lap though not uncomfortably so.
I was slightly disappointed but the GPU performance. I know the onboard graphics are nothing to shout about but it struggled to run even 5+ year old titles on low detail at acceptable framerates. On the plus you side it's more than powerful enough to run an external 2k/4k monitor. Works great with the laptop open and connected to an external display as a secondary monitor.
The display is really nice though I'm not keen on the true tone effect. Likewise, I find that the auto brightness tends to default to an overly dim setting IMO. The colours and contrast offered by the display are superb though. Text is also crisp and the 16:10 13" display gives you a lot of screen real estate for running apps and web pages. Unfortunately I noticed and weird shaking/shimmering effect on the display which was particularly noticeable when viewing pages of text. I don't know if it's my eyesight or a fault with the panel.
Sound is fantastic and you really notice the separation between left/right speakers which is impressive on such a small laptop. An added bonus of the laptop was with having bluetooth 5.0 I can connect both my mouse and headphones at the same time without issue. This didn't work previously on my 12" Macbook as the devices kept interfering with each other. I think that device only has bluetooth 4.0.
Battery life was kind of mediocre at around 7 hours. It's not terrible but there are similar Windows laptops which last longer. You'd think with the extra optimisations Apple have they could say least match the best Windows devices out there. Also, I'd say on average the battery life is marginally worse than my 2016 12" MacBook. I realise the 13" pro is 3-4 times more powerful but for a brand new MacBook to weigh half as much again and not match the longevity of a 4 year old device disappointed me. Still, at least you can charge off USB C so it's not really a problem if you do need longer than that.
Actually, speaking of Windows laptops and battery life though bootcamp performance on the 13" Macbook was great the (already average) battery life takes a serious hit when running bootcamp. I was only getting around 4 hours of runtime on battery which is honestly terrible. Hopefully Apple can tweak the bootcamp drivers and settings somewhat as there's clearly potential to improve that.
Unfortunately, though I really like pretty much everything about the laptop, due to the display issue I had to return the device as I can't be sure whether it's faulty or not. I need to head down to an Apple store when they re-open to view the devices there. I'm hoping it's just an issue with the device I had as if it is I'll definitely buy another one. My only change would be to drop to a 512Gb model as it's clear from installing a couple of apps that I really don't need 1Tb even using boot camp.
It's a lovely machine in terms of the design, the build quality is still ahead of any competitors. The new keyboard is great and as good as the best out there like the MS Surface line. The trackpad is still amazing and easily the best on the market. The touchbar has a few nice featues but I didn't find anything overly exciting for the tech. Some things like predictive text/spelling autocorrect, calculator functions, prompy commands, etc are useful but not essential IMO.
The performance is great as your expect in terms of CPU speed. The fan manages to remain silent when browing the web or using light apps. Even when the fans ramp up during more intensive tasks it's still reasonably quiet. The laptop can get pretty hot and it's noticeable when sitting on your lap though not uncomfortably so.
I was slightly disappointed but the GPU performance. I know the onboard graphics are nothing to shout about but it struggled to run even 5+ year old titles on low detail at acceptable framerates. On the plus you side it's more than powerful enough to run an external 2k/4k monitor. Works great with the laptop open and connected to an external display as a secondary monitor.
The display is really nice though I'm not keen on the true tone effect. Likewise, I find that the auto brightness tends to default to an overly dim setting IMO. The colours and contrast offered by the display are superb though. Text is also crisp and the 16:10 13" display gives you a lot of screen real estate for running apps and web pages. Unfortunately I noticed and weird shaking/shimmering effect on the display which was particularly noticeable when viewing pages of text. I don't know if it's my eyesight or a fault with the panel.
Sound is fantastic and you really notice the separation between left/right speakers which is impressive on such a small laptop. An added bonus of the laptop was with having bluetooth 5.0 I can connect both my mouse and headphones at the same time without issue. This didn't work previously on my 12" Macbook as the devices kept interfering with each other. I think that device only has bluetooth 4.0.
Battery life was kind of mediocre at around 7 hours. It's not terrible but there are similar Windows laptops which last longer. You'd think with the extra optimisations Apple have they could say least match the best Windows devices out there. Also, I'd say on average the battery life is marginally worse than my 2016 12" MacBook. I realise the 13" pro is 3-4 times more powerful but for a brand new MacBook to weigh half as much again and not match the longevity of a 4 year old device disappointed me. Still, at least you can charge off USB C so it's not really a problem if you do need longer than that.
Actually, speaking of Windows laptops and battery life though bootcamp performance on the 13" Macbook was great the (already average) battery life takes a serious hit when running bootcamp. I was only getting around 4 hours of runtime on battery which is honestly terrible. Hopefully Apple can tweak the bootcamp drivers and settings somewhat as there's clearly potential to improve that.
Unfortunately, though I really like pretty much everything about the laptop, due to the display issue I had to return the device as I can't be sure whether it's faulty or not. I need to head down to an Apple store when they re-open to view the devices there. I'm hoping it's just an issue with the device I had as if it is I'll definitely buy another one. My only change would be to drop to a 512Gb model as it's clear from installing a couple of apps that I really don't need 1Tb even using boot camp.
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Thanks for the review. Some of the UK stores are opening on Monday so hopefully you won't have long to wait before you can try one out. It'll be interesting to know what you find. I've got my fingers crossed for mine coming on Monday. Was going to be Monday, then yesterday, now Monday again!
Thank you for the elaborate real-life-scenario-review, this thread could do with more of those ?
I would like to add some thoughts - please do take this as thinking aloud, not criticizing what you said:
Display
You could just switch True Tone off, though I really have a hard time understanding why one would do this. Really learned to love the feature and every time I'm using other screens in dim enviroments now it bothers me.
I do agree that auto brightness tends to be a bit dim - even with the laptop connected to the mains - though to be honest I got used to this very quickly.
Battery
I'm not sure whether it's fair to bash the battery life like you do.
Are the Windows machines you are comparing it to really as powerful, have the same screen real estate etc.?
As for Bootcamp I'm not using this, but sure it's disappointing that the battery doesn't last longer, it's the same issue with Parallels though for example so maybe that just the way it is with emulating OS's, I don't know.
Had to laugh when I read about the speaker seperation, I actually noticed this first with the "email sent" wwwwwwwhhhhooooosh, going from left to right; thought to myself you've got to be kidding me
?