Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2021): Most [insert superlative here] MacBook ever

The most environmentally friendly chassis ever

On the design side, Apple takes it to the extreme by announcing a 100% recycled aluminum case. On this chassis, we find a rather standard configuration, with a keyboard surrounded by two large bands of speakers (we will come back to this), a touchpad, and… no, no touch bar! It has been "replaced by physical touches", but you can hardly call it a revolution. Apple did not want to expand too much on the subject.

Connectors on the left side

In terms of connectivity, however, we are spoiled! On the right side we find an HDMI port, a Thunderbolt 4 port and an SDXC card reader, and on the left side a jack port, two other Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MagSafe 3 charging port. "Recharge your MacBook and connect a camera without the need for a dongle!" ”(One wonders who initiated the trend of the notebook with a single port).

Obviously, with a 16-inch screen, don't expect an ultra-small size. It nevertheless remains relatively "compact" for its screen diagonal: 355,7 x 248,1 x 16,8 mm for all the same 2,1 to 2,2 kg (depending on the variant).

The best notebook display ever

But let's take a look at the display with this monster. It is a 16,2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display with a definition of 3456 x 2234 pixels, or a density of 254 pixels per inch. It is a miniLED backlit LCD panel, like the iPad Pro. This allows it to display a contrast of 1000000: 1 and a brightness of 1000 nits, with peaks of 1600 nits in HDR. Apple also boasts of its billion colors and its wide P3 gamut.

But the mini LED is not the only novelty of this new MacBook. ProMotion is also in the game. Understand by this that the screen of the MacBook Pro 16 (2021) is able to go up to a refresh rate of 120 Hz. The latter is nevertheless adaptive to avoid consuming too much battery and can be set at a given value for videographers who need to work at a specific frame rate.

Note that thanks to all the available ports, we can add to this screen up to 3 Pro Display XDR screens and a 4K TV.

The best notch ever?

Like the iPhone since the iPhone X, the MacBook Pro 16 ″ sees its screen eaten away by a small notch housing the new 1080p camera with f / 2.0 4-element optics. This makes it possible to reduce its borders: 3,5 mm at the top and on the sides. The notch is nevertheless designed to integrate into the macOS interface and only eat away an empty part of the status bar.

To accompany your videoconferences as it should, Apple has also integrated 3 microphones with beamforming in its chassis for a sound of "podcast" quality and six speakers: 2 tweeters and 4 woofers, larger for more bass.

The Most Powerful MacBook Pro Ever

If you have followed the course of the evening a little, you have certainly seen the announcement of the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, engraved in 5 nm. These chips offer up to 32 GB of unified memory for speeds of up to 200 GB / s on the M1 Pro and 400 GB / s on the M1 Max. At the same consumption, Apple announces that it can deploy 1,7x more power than a traditional 8-core PC CPU and 2,5x more graphics power than the GPU of a competing laptop.

For the architecture, count on a 10-core CPU with 8 of them dedicated to performance and a 16 or 24-core GPU for the M1 Pro or 32 cores for the M1 Max. Add to that 16 cores dedicated to the neural engine for calculations dedicated to artificial intelligence. With all this, Apple promises that you will be able to compose with 30 streams in 4K ProRes on Final Cut, or 7 streams in 8K ProRes.

For memory, count 16 to 32 GB on M1 Pro models and 32 to 64 GB in M1 Max. Finally, in terms of storage, SSD space (7,4 GB / s) ranges from 512 GB for the most affordable model to 8 TB for the most expensive.

The most enduring ...

Autonomy is not to be outdone! With its thrifty chip, the MacBook Pro 16 offers up to 21 hours of video playback time, 10 hours more than the 16 MacBook Pro 2021 which was already very durable. On Lightroom, this represents doubled autonomy. On xCode, 4 times more code compiled. Enough to last until the end of your project ...

In addition, fast charging is in the game. Allow only 30 minutes to recover 50% of your battery. It remains to be seen how long it will take for the remaining 50%.

Not the cheapest ...

The MacBook Pro 16 ″ (2021) is available today for pre-order on the Apple website and select reseller partners. The first price starts at 2749 euros with an M1 Pro chip, or 3849 euros with an M1 Max chip. Depending on storage, prices can soar to over 6800 euros.

Where to buy the
Apple MacBook Pro 16 2021 at the best price?

• Amazon € 2 Discover the offer
• Baker € 2 Discover the offer
• Darty € 2 Discover the offer
• Rakuten Marketplace € 2 Discover the offer

Sales are announced from October 26, but some models do not show availability until November.

The Apple event gave pride of place to other new products, such as the new AirPods 3 wireless headphones, a brand new Apple Music subscription at a low price and in new colors specific to the HomePod mini.

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