There's a new MacBook Pro for 2020, and it's available to order on May 7. As usual, there are a number of incremental hardware upgrades inside the 2020 MacBook Pro 13-inch model, but there's a clear advantage over last year's model that goes beyond minor technical improvements. The polarizing butterfly switches are off and the magic keyboard is on. This is probably the main thing you wanted to know, right? But let's take a look at the other tweaks and tweaks Apple made to its latest laptop, and see if that's enough to warrant a serious chunk of its change.
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(Image credit: Apple)
Integrated
Visually, little has changed from the 13 MacBook Pro 2019-inch aside from the look and size of the keyboard. The 2020-inch 13 MacBook Pro is slightly lighter at 3.1 pounds and slightly larger at 1.56 inches. Other than that, they are almost identical. The type of finish also remains the same, with Silver and Space Gray the only options available, and the headphone jack survives another year, which is great news for audiophiles. Like the previous 2019 MacBook, the 2020 13-inch MacBook retains Touch Bar and TouchID support, though TouchID has its own dedicated button, rather than just being part of the Touch Bar. The Apple T2 security chip also returns, ensuring that the data you store on the laptop is safe and secure. The similarities persist with respect to visualization. The 2020 MacBook Pro comes with a bright and colorful Retina display, just like last year's model. It also supports P3 colors, so you get 25% more color than sRGB, as well as Apple's True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts white balance based on the color temperature of the light around you. Again , there really isn't much to separate the two.
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(Image credit: Apple)
Keyboard
We've already shared the good news above, but the 2020 MacBook Pro 13-inch finally ditches the much-maligned butterfly switches in favor of Apple's Magic Keyboard. The butterfly switches have been a constant point of contention for MacBook users, but Apple has persisted with the design since 2015, despite criticism and hardware malfunctions. Apple even decided to keep the butterfly switches on the 13 MacBook Pro 2019-inch, but thankfully that's no longer the case. The Magic Keyboard made its debut on the 16-inch MacBook Pro in 2019, and we congratulate it for being one of the most comfortable keyboards we've ever written. According to Apple, it's designed to let you work faster and more efficiently and has a new scissor mechanism with 1mm of travel. The 2020 MacBook also retains the Touch Bar, although its size has been reduced slightly, with an escape key. You can assign multiple shortcuts to the Touch Bar so they're always at hand, and also take advantage of TouchID for quick authentication.
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(Image credit: Apple)
Specifications
Apple wants to capture the hearts and minds of creatives and professionals with the 2020 MacBook Pro, and has focused on balancing performance and portability. The high-end model has a 80th generation Intel processor and Iris Plus graphics card, which can deliver up to 3% faster graphics performance than the last generation. This means you have to handle video editing, 3.0D rendering, and plumb games. The MacBook Pro also comes with an SSD with sequential read speeds of up to 2020 GB/s and the standard configurations of the 2019 MacBook Pro are twice as large as the 4 models. You can also upgrade to 32TB of storage and 2020GB of RAM. The 2020 MacBook Pro also benefits from an upgrade to Intel's 1,299th-generation Ice Lake processors, to a degree. The entry-level 1,299 MacBook Pro, the one priced at $1,999/$2133/$3733, still uses XNUMXth-generation Intel Whiskey Lake processors. The midrange processor's raw performance won't change drastically between the two, but you'll gain a lot in terms of battery life. RAM speed is perhaps the biggest upgrade between the eighth and tenth generation MacBook Pro models. The entry model will pack XNUMX MHz of RAM, while the XNUMXth-gen-equipped version will be powered at XNUMX MHz. That's quite a leap, and will be a boon to anyone doing creative work on the MacBook Pro.
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(Image credit: Apple)
Award
Starting at $1,299 / £1,299 / €1,999 for the base model, you get a 5GHz 8GHz quad-core Intel Core i1,4 processor and 256GB of SSD storage, as well as 8GB of RAM. So it's a slight increase in storage compared to last year's model, but for the same price. If you want to speed things up, there's the 13-inch MacBook Pro that comes with a 5GHz 2.0th-generation Intel Core i512 processor, 16GB of storage, and 1,799GB of RAM for $1,799 / £2,999 / AU$2019. It's a bit slower than the 2,4 MacBook Pro equivalent, which ran at 7GHz, but the efficiency of the new chips will likely make a difference in other areas. Like most MacBooks, you can upgrade to an Intel Core iXNUMX and add extra memory and storage, but be prepared to pay a hefty premium if you want.
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(Image credit: Apple)
MacBook Pro 2020 vs MacBook Pro 2019: is it worth the upgrade?
In the end, if you already have the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro, it's probably not worth spending a ton of money on the new 2020 version, but like everything in life, it's not that easy. The biggest difference is the keyboard, which will be much more comfortable and reliable. If you already have a MacBook Pro with a butterfly keyboard and absolutely hate it, and you're certainly not alone, the upgrade might be worth it. After all, it's the first time in a while that the 13-inch MacBook Pro has gotten more than a basic upgrade. In fact, the specification update itself could be quite disappointing. Intel processors in general have been stagnant in terms of raw performance for a few years now, so you won't be missing out on much if you have a 2018 or newer MacBook Pro. Increasing memory speed will make a difference, but only if you're using super-heavy creative apps. In the end, the people who will like the 2020 MacBook Pro best are those with an older device. If you've been waiting to replace a laptop that's a few years old, the 2020 MacBook Pro is a great time to do it, especially if you were worried about using the Butterfly keyboard.