13-INCH MACBOOK PRO (MID2020) REVIEW: $1,799 MODEL DELIVERS MODEST CPU AND BIG GRAPHICS BOOST

APPLE’S LATEST PRO LAPTOP HAS ENOUGH TO SATISFY PROFESSIONAL USERS WHO NEED EVERY OUNCE OF SPEED

- ROMAN LOYOLA

We hoped that when the 16-inch MacBook Pro was released, an upgrade to the 13-inch MacBook Pro (go.macworld.com/mc16) would shortly follow. But it didn’t. Then Apple upgraded the MacBook Air (go.macworld.com/20ai), and then we thought that surely a new 13-inch MacBook Pro was imminent.

Over a month after the MacBook Air update, the much-anticipated new 13-inch MacBook Pro finally dropped. The new models feature new CPUs, faster RAM, and new GPUs to boost its speed, and the new Magic Keyboard will bring back customers who decided to stay away from the version of the laptop with a butterfly keyboard.

If you currently have a high-end 13-inch MacBook Pro that you bought within the past four years, you might consider sticking with that laptop a little while longer. While you’ll see nice speed gains with the new MacBook Pro, it may be hard to justify the cost right now. Unless you really, really want to get rid of the laptop because of the butterfly keyboard and replace a painful typing experience with a more pleasant one.

This review takes a look at the $1,799 standard configuration of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, which has a 2.0GHz quad-core Core i5 processor, 16GB of memory, Intel Iris Pro Graphics, and a 512GB SSD. The $1,999 model is the same except with a 1TB SSD. Apple’s $1,299 and $1,499 versions have the same eighth-generation 1.4GHz quad-core Core i5 processors as they did when they were released last year, but they now have the Magic Keyboard and double the SSD capacity.

RIP, BUTTERFLY KEYBOARD