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15-inch MacBook Pro With Touch Bar (2016) Review: Three Key Killer Metrics

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This article is more than 7 years old.

[UPDATE] If you're thinking about a MacBook Pro, these 3 key design elements might -- or might not -- persuade you to buy.

I've been using the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and Touch ID for a month and found it to be a keeper, despite serious skepticism about the price when Apple announced in October of last year. If you can find a sizable discount, it's worth it. (I've already seen off-and-on $150-$200 discounts on the $2,399 model at Best Buy and other major authorized Apple retailers.)

Portability: at first I thought, how portable can a 15-inch, quad-core laptop really be? Answer: Apple is very good at squeezing the essentials into a thin/light but usable, high-quality chassis. And Apple nailed it with the 2016 redesign: it's the pinnacle of Apple's thin-and-light industrial design as applied to a MacBook. Case in point: I have a backpack that I got initially for carrying a 12-inch MacBook (2 pounds) but the 15-inch MBP slips easily into the same compartment that the 12-incher does. Four pounds (the weight of the new MBP) is perfectly tolerable and totable on a daily basis, even with a lot of other stuff in my pack.*

Speakers: this is what finally sold me. I compared the 15's speakers with the 13-inch MBP Touch Bar. Short answer: no comparison. The 15 MBP speakers boom and deliver loud but clear/undistorted audio. The 13's are tinny by comparison. This is important to me because I prefer to play music through a laptop's built-in speaker. And there's really no reason with the 15-inch Touch Bar MBP to get external speakers (imo). And it's all the more impressive that Apple pulled this off in such a thin and light design.

Touch Bar and Touch ID: this has been covered ad nauseam but...here goes. I had doubts initially, like a lot of people, but it's not a gimmick. Historically, Apple doesn't allow gimmicky technology to see the light of day. Non-utilitarian projects (ultimately) are terminated before they're productized in a shipping product.

That said, Touch Bar is a work in progress. Some things work really well, others so-so. What follows are some of the best applications of Touch Bar.  Music: for me, this is what the Touch Bar is all about. When I'm playing music, all of the essential iTunes controls are right there. This is a godsend for me and soooo much better than fixed function keys (think: quick-access slider bars) and it beats a Touchscreen. Photos: try flipping through all of your photos/videos with Touch Bar and its potential is immediately apparent. It's very efficient at ploughing through thousands of photos and or a quick canvassing of a series of photos. Safari: I'm a hardcore Chrome browser user but Safari is making slow but steady inroads into my Chrome usage. Jumping between tabs on the Touch Bar is useful, though I wouldn't go so far as to say essential. Touch ID: I use the Touch ID on the MBP, just like I do on my iPhone and iPad. You can also use it to make Apple Pay purchases. Touch ID is a great addition/convenience for any Apple device and it's a big reason I use the Touch Bar -- and another reason the Touch Bar is not a gimmick.

*Battery life update: I covered this before but at that time I stated "undecided." I can say now that the battery life does not "suck" and if I manage it (e.g., keep the LCD brightness below 70 percent, don't watch a lot of video, don't play games etc.) it can last Apple's stated "up to 10 hours wireless web." For example, I used it on a coast-to-coast 6 hour flight and there was plenty of battery life left at the end of the flight. I don't remember exactly how much but it never went into the red zone.

This was originally published on Feb 4, 2017 @ 13:52.