Returned My 16” MacBook Pro

[MacBookGamer]

Once the honeymoon phase ended I just knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get used to this display. While it appears that the display is pretty close to the 13” in terms of brightness, the contrast is less vibrant. You can confirm this on Notebook Check. It just doesn’t have the ability to display images as vivid as the 13”.

Not only that, the ghosting is twice as bad. Playing games on this display is like having a really bad motion blur. All MacBooks seems to have some form of ghosting, but this is really bad. You’ll also notice the effect in movies.

The value for the price isn’t that great either. I realized that returning this laptop (and getting a used 13” from 2018) would give me enough money to to upgrade to a used iPhone Pro, used iPad and a used Apple Watch. It also leaves enough money for a AMD 5700 eGPU that’ll allow 60 FPS gaming at native resolution vs. 30 FPS on the 16”.

Also, while the larger MacBooks have seen significant gains in gaming performance, this is all going to go out the window once Apple launches a 4K MacBook. An eGPU will be cheaper in the long run to keep up with AAA titles compared to buying a $3,000 Mac every year.

Throttling is still an issue on the 5500M. You can get rid of most throttling by setting the CPU to it’s lowest performance, but games take forever to load. Sometimes you’ll get kicked off a server for waiting so long. I don’t understand how Razer can cram in a 2080 with no problem but Apple can’t even use a card comparable to something from 4 years ago without throttling to 50-75%.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think I’ll miss the keyboard too much. I understand that we needed this keyboard to prevent dust from destroying it, but the typing experience is still underwhelming. Everything is mushy and feels weird. This feels more like Butterfly 2.0 than an actual upgrade.

All in all, if you’re fine with the display, need the portability and don’t care about gaming, then this is the perfect laptop for your needs. Otherwise, it just didn’t fit my personal preferences.

I’m still really excited for the new 13”. It would be the perfect laptop if they’d increase the display, it’s resolution and implement keyboard that won’t fail. Bonus points if they could improve performance and make it lighter like some of the new Windows 13” laptops.

 

[fs454]

Once the honeymoon phase ended I just knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get used to this display. While it appears that the display is pretty close to the 13” in terms of brightness, the contrast is less vibrant. You can confirm this on Notebook Check. It just doesn’t have the ability to display images as vivid as the 13”.

Not only that, the ghosting is twice as bad. Playing games on this display is like having a really bad motion blur. All MacBooks seems to have some form of ghosting, but this is really bad. You’ll also notice the effect in movies.

The value for the price isn’t that great either. I realized that returning this laptop (and getting a used 13” from 2018) would give me enough money to to upgrade to a used iPhone Pro, used iPad and a used Apple Watch. It also leaves enough money for a AMD 5700 eGPU that’ll allow 60 FPS gaming at native resolution vs. 30 FPS on the 16”.

Also, while the larger MacBooks have seen significant gains in gaming performance, this is all going to go out the window once Apple launches a 4K MacBook. An eGPU will be cheaper in the long run to keep up with AAA titles compared to buying a $3,000 Mac every year.

Throttling is still an issue on the 5500M. You can get rid of most throttling by setting the CPU to it’s lowest performance, but games take forever to load. Sometimes you’ll get kicked off a server for waiting so long. I don’t understand how Razer can cram in a 2080 with no problem but Apple can’t even use a card comparable to something from 4 years ago without throttling to 50-75%.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think I’ll miss the keyboard too much. I understand that we needed this keyboard to prevent dust from destroying it, but the typing experience is still underwhelming. Everything is mushy and feels weird. This feels more like Butterfly 2.0 than an actual upgrade.

All in all, if you’re fine with the display, need the portability and don’t care about gaming, then this is the perfect laptop for your needs. Otherwise, it just didn’t fit my personal preferences.

I’m still really excited for the new 13”. It would be the perfect laptop if they’d increase the display, it’s resolution and implement keyboard that won’t fail. Bonus points if they could improve performance and make it lighter like some of the new Windows 13” laptops.

Apple is not launching a "4K MacBook". The 5500M doesn't throttle when I'm running Battlefield 4 or Halo Reach on high settings native res - I get 60fps for hours of gameplay. And on this note, the display has the exact same amount of ghosting as my Late 2013 and Late 2016 models did. The colors are punchy, it's proper DCI P3, the brightness is absolutely a few notches higher than my Late 2016, and I can regularly top the scoreboards in Halo Reach. The motion blur is not noticeably different than my Dell P2715Q monitor I run with my gaming rig. Motion blur is a key aspect of cinematic filmmaking and I expect to see it in movies.

The keyboard is not "Butterfly 2.0" - it's the same scissor switches as the magic keyboard and similar to the keyswitches they've had in the MacBooks since the 2009 Unibody model all the way up to the 2015 Retina models. I don't think the previous gens felt mushy, I just think we've been on clicky butterfly models for the past few years and it feels different. Got used to the difference in a few days of use.

I also don't think there's anybody "buying a new MacBook every year" to keep up with gaming performance - I played BF4, BF1, and BFV on my Late 2016 model for three years. It didn't run above low settings on the latter two, but I got at least 45-50fps and was able to game when away from my gaming PC. Now I can run those games on much higher settings and native res. Halo Reach, one of my favorite games of all time, just had its rerelease on PC and it runs on the highest setting, native resolution, at a locked 60fps. I was getting 20fps on the Late 2016 with Reach same settings. I get it's an older title, but it looks great, runs perfectly, and has a massive playerbase right now. This is also my primary work machine and to be able to travel and still play my favorite PC games without carrying a dedicated gaming machine is awesome. My MBPs spend the rest of their time crunching video transcodes and being hammered with Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere open all at once.

I get it, the 16 MBP isn't going to be for everyone, and people who love 144/240hz displays for competitive gaming will likely be disappointed, but I am extremely happy with the notebook as a whole and surprised at the gaming performance. I do agree on the sentiment to definitely not buy it for gaming, it's a bad value for that. It's a workhorse productivity machine with the bonus of being able to satisfy your gaming craving on the side, pretty much no matter what title you want to play.

 

[MacBookGamer]

Apple is not launching a "4K MacBook". The 5500M doesn't throttle when I'm running Battlefield 4 or Halo Reach on high settings native res - I get 60fps for hours of gameplay. And on this note, the display has the exact same amount of ghosting as my Late 2013 and Late 2016 models did. The colors are punchy, it's proper DCI P3, the brightness is absolutely a few notches higher than my Late 2016, and I can regularly top the scoreboards in Halo Reach. The motion blur is not noticeably different than my Dell P2715Q monitor I run with my gaming rig.

The keyboard is not "Butterfly 2.0" - it's the same scissor switches as the magic keyboard and similar to the keyswitches they've had in the MacBooks since the 2009 Unibody model all the way up to the 2015 Retina models. I don't think the previous gens felt mushy, I just think we've been on clicky butterfly models for the past few years and it feels different. Got used to the difference in a few days of use.

I also don't think there's anybody "buying a new MacBook every year" to keep up with gaming performance - I played BF4, BF1, and BFV on my Late 2016 model for three years. It didn't run above low settings on the latter two, but I got at least 45-50fps and was able to game when away from my gaming PC. Now I can run those games on much higher settings and native res. Halo Reach, one of my favorite games of all time, just had its rerelease on PC and it runs on the highest setting, native resolution, at a locked 60fps. I was getting 20fps on the Late 2016 with Reach same settings. I get it's an older title, but it looks great, runs perfectly, and has a massive playerbase right now. This is also my primary work machine and to be able to travel and still play my favorite PC games without carrying a dedicated gaming machine is awesome. My MBPs spend the rest of their time crunching video transcodes and being hammered with Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere open all at once.

A 4K MacBook in the future is inevitable. They wanted to do a higher resolution in 2019 but sacrificed it for battery life. NotebookCheck claims the 13" display is 20% better than the 16" which seems about right with my observation. The motion blur is definitely worse than the 13". There isn't even a debate when you compare them side by side.

Halo Reach is a game from 2010. It's not going to throttle because it's probably only using 25% of your GPU. Run any modern title that pushes the GPU to its max and it'll throttle from 1,200 MHz to 800 MHz. If you don't limit your CPU, then it'll drop to 600 MHz (50% of its performance).

The new keyboard is good but not great. The old Butterfly keyboards are just so bad that anything is superior.

 

[iJustines]

I can feel why you want to return it. The subtle increase in resolution is a complete joke and doesn't make sense to the people. It cant even get the symmetric bezel to look right and missing out MagSafe port can be a deal-breaker.

 

[fs454]

A 4K MacBook in the future is inevitable. They wanted to do a higher resolution in 2019 but sacrificed it for battery life. NotebookCheck claims the 13" display is 20% better than the 16" which seems about right with my observation. The motion blur is definitely worse than the 13". There isn't even a debate when you compare them side by side.

Halo Reach is a game from 2010. It's not going to throttle because it's probably only using 25% of your GPU. Run any modern title that pushes the GPU to its max and it'll throttle from 1,200 MHz to 800 MHz. If you don't limit your CPU, then it'll drop to 600 MHz (50% of its performance).

The new keyboard is good but not great. The old Butterfly keyboards are just so bad that anything is superior.

Proof that they wanted to do a 4K display but ultimately sacrificed it? I don't believe there's any evidence of that out there. To each their own, the display looks great to my eye and I spend all day looking at footage on it. It's just not their perogative and would have very little benefit to the user - same reason the iPhones aren't adhering to any particular resolution standard. It looks great as it is and further increasing the density at the cost of battery life doesn't line up with anything Apple's ever done post-retina. I would much rather see them go OLED or miniLED at the current pixel density.

 

[iJustines]

A 4K MacBook in the future is inevitable. They wanted to do a higher resolution in 2019 but sacrificed it for battery life. NotebookCheck claims the 13" display is 20% better than the 16" which seems about right with my observation. The motion blur is definitely worse than the 13". There isn't even a debate when you compare them side by side.

Halo Reach is a game from 2010. It's not going to throttle because it's probably only using 25% of your GPU. Run any modern title that pushes the GPU to its max and it'll throttle from 1,200 MHz to 800 MHz. If you don't limit your CPU, then it'll drop to 600 MHz (50% of its performance).

The new keyboard is good but not great. The old Butterfly keyboards are just so bad that anything is superior.

The battery life doesn't decrease much if using a higher resolution and check out this comparison

 

[kave]

Slow loading times of your online games can be anything but a throttling cpu.
The 16” is obviously not about value for money, as a used 13”. If you are mostly in to gaming a 1000$ gaming portable pc will satisfy your needs better and work with more games. Be prepared to hear a blowing fan all the time.

 

[iJustines]

Proof that they wanted to do a 4K display but ultimately sacrificed it? I don't believe there's any evidence of that out there. To each their own, the display looks great to my eye and I spend all day looking at footage on it. It's just not their perogative and would have very little benefit to the user - same reason the iPhones aren't adhering to any particular resolution standard. It looks great as it is and further increasing the density at the cost of battery life doesn't line up with anything Apple's ever done post-retina. I would much rather see them go OLED or miniLED at the current pixel density.

A 4K resolution doesn't drain much battery on the 16-MacBook Pro if is not running an intensive application like gaming. It makes sense to do an upgrade to 2400p on 16-Macbook Pro

 

[MacBookGamer]

Proof that they wanted to do a 4K display but ultimately sacrificed it? I don't believe there's any evidence of that out there. To each their own, the display looks great to my eye and I spend all day looking at footage on it. It's just not their perogative and would have very little benefit to the user - same reason the iPhones aren't adhering to any particular resolution standard. It looks great as it is and further increasing the density at the cost of battery life doesn't line up with anything Apple's ever done post-retina. I would much rather see them go OLED or miniLED at the current pixel density.

Recent iPhones already increased their PPI by 30%. To be fair I doubt Apple is ever going to have the exact 4K resolution, but they'll go with a slightly different resolution with the same PPI if not higher.
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Slow loading times of your online games can be anything but a throttling cpu.
The 16” is obviously not about value for money, as a used 13”. If you are mostly in to gaming a 1000$ gaming portable pc will satisfy your needs better and work with more games. Be prepared to hear a blowing fan all the time.

RDR2 loads in about 1 minute with max CPU and 2 minutes with lowering the clock speeds.

 

[iJustines]

Once the honeymoon phase ended I just knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get used to this display. While it appears that the display is pretty close to the 13” in terms of brightness, the contrast is less vibrant. You can confirm this on Notebook Check. It just doesn’t have the ability to display images as vivid as the 13”.

Not only that, the ghosting is twice as bad. Playing games on this display is like having a really bad motion blur. All MacBooks seems to have some form of ghosting, but this is really bad. You’ll also notice the effect in movies.

The value for the price isn’t that great either. I realized that returning this laptop (and getting a used 13” from 2018) would give me enough money to to upgrade to a used iPhone Pro, used iPad and a used Apple Watch. It also leaves enough money for a AMD 5700 eGPU that’ll allow 60 FPS gaming at native resolution vs. 30 FPS on the 16”.

Also, while the larger MacBooks have seen significant gains in gaming performance, this is all going to go out the window once Apple launches a 4K MacBook. An eGPU will be cheaper in the long run to keep up with AAA titles compared to buying a $3,000 Mac every year.

Throttling is still an issue on the 5500M. You can get rid of most throttling by setting the CPU to it’s lowest performance, but games take forever to load. Sometimes you’ll get kicked off a server for waiting so long. I don’t understand how Razer can cram in a 2080 with no problem but Apple can’t even use a card comparable to something from 4 years ago without throttling to 50-75%.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think I’ll miss the keyboard too much. I understand that we needed this keyboard to prevent dust from destroying it, but the typing experience is still underwhelming. Everything is mushy and feels weird. This feels more like Butterfly 2.0 than an actual upgrade.

All in all, if you’re fine with the display, need the portability and don’t care about gaming, then this is the perfect laptop for your needs. Otherwise, it just didn’t fit my personal preferences.

I’m still really excited for the new 13”. It would be the perfect laptop if they’d increase the display, it’s resolution and implement keyboard that won’t fail. Bonus points if they could improve performance and make it lighter like some of the new Windows 13” laptops.

The new redesign XPS 13 supported 4K 3840 x 2400. The 16” Macbook Pro look mediocre with subpar resolution.

 

[maflynn]

The value for the price isn’t that great either. I

Ultimately, this was one of the reasons why I opted to move away from apple laptops. Life is not black and white and so my reasons were multilayered but value/price was a major factor.

I’m still really excited for the new 13”. It would be the perfect laptop if they’d increase the display, it’s resolution

I hope they don't, in all seriousness what I found on my 15" Thinkpad, 4k is simply too high of a resolution on such a small display. More so on a 13" form factor. Granted, macOS's scaling is much better then windows, but the fact remains its just too high of a resolution in a small display.

A 4K MacBook in the future is inevitable

Inevitable? Hardly. Likely? Possibly.

I think Apple goes to the beat of its own drum, and I can see Apple doing something other then 4k - what that may be, is a mystery. I fully agree with the implication that Apple's display technology is growing stale in comparison to its competitors.

 

[jbachandouris]

I fully agree with the implication that Apple's display technology is growing stale in comparison to its competitors.

Interesting as I moved away from PC laptops for 2 reasons (well 3 if you count dealing with Windows):
1. Battery life (which isn't as great as it used to be)
2. DISPLAY (the PC laptops displays USED to look like garbage compared to a MBP. Not anymore. )

 

[Howard2k]

The battery life doesn't decrease much if using a higher resolution and check out this comparison

That's totally irrelevant, completely different scenario.

 

[fokmik]

if they go 4k on a laptop...the smaller imac goes 5k and the bigger one 6k?
come on....they need to increase the size to make a difference...remember 6k has 32" not 27"
So 4k on the 13" MBP is useless and gpu hungry for nothing
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I hope they don't, in all seriousness what I found on my 15" Thinkpad, 4k is simply too high of a resolution on such a small display.

Agree

 

[Hanson Eigilson]

The battery life doesn't decrease much if using a higher resolution and check out this comparison

you are drawing the wrong conclusion and also his test is bad.
by reducing the resolution in software you can save power on 3d animation details and basically nothing else, his game was a 2d game as were the apps he showed. By having lower native resolution you save on powering pixels, changing pixel state, smoothing effects for the "reduced" pixels etc etc. as well as the reduced 3d animation load.
having the option to lower resolution is not as effective as a lower native resolution in any situation, and has practically 0 effect in most.

 

[iJustines]

you are drawing the wrong conclusion and also his test is bad.
by reducing the resolution in software you can save power on 3d animation details and basically nothing else, his game was a 2d game as were the apps he showed. By having lower native resolution you save on powering pixels, changing pixel state, smoothing effects for the "reduced" pixels etc etc. as well as the reduced 3d animation load.
having the option to lower resolution is not as effective as a lower native resolution in any situation, and has practically 0 effect in most.

The power-saving through lower resolution just isn't practical and the newer laptop battery and CPU wouldn't suffer badly by native 4K. Apple is using an odd resolution to match the PPI for 16” MacBook Pro rather than enhancing the battery life and that's a bad thing for most people who need higher dpi for its workflow.

 

[Viamusic10000]

It would be cheaper for Apple to just grab 16 inch off the shelf 4k display than to order a custom display so if they wanted to do a 4k display they would have done it by now. They probably aren't doing it because most people won't ever be ale to tell the difference between the current 3k display and the 4k display while it would come with a notable performance cost. It's like downloading all your music in lossless compression - technically higher quality and some people may be able to tell the difference on a few tracks, but if this is on your internal storage you're sacrificing a significant amount of space for a marginal and barely noticeable increase in quality. It's more likely that we'll see MicroLED in the next 5-10 years as that becomes available.

Also agree with above, key board is fine. Not as good as Thinkpad keyboards but I have a magic keyboard for my monitor and I'm already used to it.

 

[htnt7919]

You are already in wrong mindset before buying Mac laptop for gaming. I think you would be better off to buy chromebook and save money for your gaming needs and still have $$ left for your starbuck.

 

[Whackman]

Once the honeymoon phase ended I just knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get used to this display. While it appears that the display is pretty close to the 13” in terms of brightness, the contrast is less vibrant. You can confirm this on Notebook Check. It just doesn’t have the ability to display images as vivid as the 13”.

Not only that, the ghosting is twice as bad. Playing games on this display is like having a really bad motion blur. All MacBooks seems to have some form of ghosting, but this is really bad. You’ll also notice the effect in movies.

The value for the price isn’t that great either. I realized that returning this laptop (and getting a used 13” from 2018) would give me enough money to to upgrade to a used iPhone Pro, used iPad and a used Apple Watch. It also leaves enough money for a AMD 5700 eGPU that’ll allow 60 FPS gaming at native resolution vs. 30 FPS on the 16”.

Also, while the larger MacBooks have seen significant gains in gaming performance, this is all going to go out the window once Apple launches a 4K MacBook. An eGPU will be cheaper in the long run to keep up with AAA titles compared to buying a $3,000 Mac every year.

Throttling is still an issue on the 5500M. You can get rid of most throttling by setting the CPU to it’s lowest performance, but games take forever to load. Sometimes you’ll get kicked off a server for waiting so long. I don’t understand how Razer can cram in a 2080 with no problem but Apple can’t even use a card comparable to something from 4 years ago without throttling to 50-75%.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think I’ll miss the keyboard too much. I understand that we needed this keyboard to prevent dust from destroying it, but the typing experience is still underwhelming. Everything is mushy and feels weird. This feels more like Butterfly 2.0 than an actual upgrade.

All in all, if you’re fine with the display, need the portability and don’t care about gaming, then this is the perfect laptop for your needs. Otherwise, it just didn’t fit my personal preferences.

I’m still really excited for the new 13”. It would be the perfect laptop if they’d increase the display, it’s resolution and implement keyboard that won’t fail. Bonus points if they could improve performance and make it lighter like some of the new Windows 13” laptops.

I think the screen is a huge upgrade from my mid 2013 retina MBP.

I do think the speakers suck. Whenever you play soemthing with deep bass they make weird sounds. But i mostly listen trough headphones or external speakers anyway. I'm very happy with it. But i don't play games. The ghosting is indeed significant. It's fine for my work.

 

[Viamusic10000]

I think the screen is a huge upgrade from my mid 2013 retina MBP.

I do think the speakers suck. Whenever you play soemthing with deep bass they make weird sounds. But i mostly listen trough headphones or external speakers anyway. I'm very happy with it. But i don't play games. The ghosting is indeed significant. It's fine for my work.

The 16in speakers suck? They are the best laptop speakers I've tried. Of course they don't have bass, but they have clear mids and decent highs and you can hear the separation.

 

[Whackman]

The 16in speakers suck? They are the best laptop speakers I've tried. Of course they don't have bass, but they have clear mids and decent highs and you can hear the separation.

They are the best i've heard as well. But something strange happens when i play a song with a lot of bass in it. It makes a very starnge sound when the bass sound is played. Sometimes like you stamp your foot on ice (on a river). You know that sound. It's weird. For most stuff they sound good (for laptop speakers). But they somehow wanted more bass, resulting in a rather unnatural sound at times.
Anyway, not a big problem for me. I never wanted to listen to laptop speakers anyway when it comes to music. But yes, for highs and mids, certainly better than i've heard on laptops (not that that says much, haha).

 

[Viamusic10000]

They are the best i've heard as well. But something strange happens when i play a song with a lot of bass in it. It makes a very starnge sound when the bass sound is played. Sometimes like you stamp your foot on ice (on a river). You know that sound. It's weird. For most stuff they sound good (for laptop speakers). But they somehow wanted more bass, resulting in a rather unnatural sound at times.
Anyway, not a big problem for me. I never wanted to listen to laptop speakers anyway when it comes to music. But yes, for highs and mids, certainly better than i've heard on laptops (not that that says much, haha).

It's not strange they just have next to no sub bass so you're hearing a bunch mid bass where you're used to hearing sub. I don't hear what you're hearing at all and I usually listen to music on pretty decent studio monitors and reference headphones (LSR305's and 6xx's - budget audiophile stuff) and just hear a lack of sub bass not some strange, broken sounding thing.

 

[erigas]

The 5500 GB is Godsend for those of us doing CAD...(especially NX and Solidworks)
It will absolutely smoke the 280...(as unusable that Nvidia crap is for any pro engineering design work that many of us do)

 

[Zen_Arcade]

At least you tried it for yourself.

That said, your screen name is a dead giveaway that the MBP specifically, and Macs in general, are not for you. Apple has never cared about gaming, and it is not about to start now.

Also, you may have gotten a lower end (in terms of manufacturing quality) screen - I have a 16" and a 2019 13" and the screens are, aside from size, virtually indistinguishable.

 

[CE3]

At least you tried it for yourself.

That said, your screen name is a dead giveaway that the MBP specifically, and Macs in general, are not for you. Apple has never cared about gaming, and it is not about to start now.

While I agree that you don’t buy MacBooks for great gaming performance, the 16-inch models are a solid step forward and more than suitable for casual gaming. I also think Apple Arcade is a sign Apple is starting to care more about gaming. MacBook Pros are premium laptops, and as mobile cpu and gpu technology continues to improve it‘s quite possible that soon they’ll be excellent for gaming too.