MacBook Pro 15in (2019) review

Note: Apple has discontinued the 15in MacBook Pro and replaced it with an improved 16in MacBook Pro. You can read about the 16in MacBook Pro here. We also have this comparison between the 15in and 16in models. 

It’s likely that you can pick up a great deal on the 15in MacBook Pro from a third-party reseller now that Apple no longer sells it, so read on to find out whether you should.

• Introduced: 15in MacBook Pro: June 2019. 
• Discontinued: 13 November, 2019.

In this review we are looking at the 15in MacBook Pro introduced in June 2019, and we have the ultimate 15in MacBook Pro spec here to test. But is this more than a processor refresh? Find out in our full review.

We’ll begin by quickly mentioning that Apple’s 13in MacBook Pro models were also updated in June 2019. However, the pair of 2.4GHz quad-core models only saw a minor processor tweak from 2.3GHz, so they are almost identical to the 2018 13in MacBook Pro (reviewed here). Unlike the 15in models that we are looking at in this review, these 13in MacBook Pros are still using 8th generation Coffee Lake chips. Nothing else has changed, even the graphics processors are the same.

Then in July 2019, bigger changes came to the entry-level MacBook Pro pair, which hadn’t been updated since 2017. Those machines gained a 1.4GHz quad-core processor (also 8th generation). You can read our review of those 13in models here.

At the same time as it introduced the entry-level MacBook Pro pair Apple also increased prices in the UK in line with inflation. So now the 15in MacBook Pro models reviewed here cost £50 and £100 more than they did when we originally published this review, so we have ammended it accordingly.

Our main reason for referring to the smaller MacBook Pro siblings is to emphasis that the upgrade to the 15in models was far more significant.

Here we have a move from 8th generation Coffee Lake to 9th generation Coffee Lake Refresh chips, to the uninitiated that might sound like less of an impressive jump than the usual move from processors of one ‘lake’ to another, but these Coffee Lake chips represent a move from 6- to 8-cores.

These chips are primarily designed for creative professionals and gamers, hence them being more suited to the 15in MacBook Pro. However, they do have some benefits for those performing general office tasks and other more consumer-focused applications, in as much as they could save battery life because they can run in low-power mode. We’ll take a closer look at the processors and other updated components below.

Before we do, a quick word about what hasn’t changed.

Design & Build

The MacBook Pro design hasn’t really changed since 2016 when Apple introduced theh Touch Bar and a Touch ID sensor, a larger trackpad, and replaced all ports with USB-C (which double up as Thunderbolt 3). That 2016 model was the first MacBook Pro to be available in Space Grey in addition to the standard Silver finish.

The dimensions also changed very slightly back in 2016 and nothing has changed in that respect since. The 15in model measures 34.92cm x 24.07cm x 1.55cm (13.75in x 9.48in x 0.61in) and weighs 1.83kg (4.02lb). Prior to 2016 it measured 35.89cm x 24.71cm x 1.8cm (14.12in x 9.73in x 0.71in) and weighed 2.02kg (4.46lb).

The other change in 2016 was the return of the name “MacBook Pro” to the bezel below the screen.

Speaking of the screen, the MacBook Pro has featured a Retina display since 2012. The Retina display was improved in 2016 when it gained an improved colour gamut, more brightness and better contrast. Further changes came in 2018 when Apple added the True Tone display technology that first appeared on the iPad Pro and essentially makes sure that the colours displayed are accurate regardless of the lighting.

If you are considering updating from an older, pre-2016 MacBook Pro you may find yourself missing Magsafe, the magnetic power cable that would disconnect rather than pull your laptop to the floor if you tripped over it. We don’t suppose that many people will find themselves in this somewhat unlikely scenario, but it’s likely that a fair few will be frustrated if they have to unplug something from a USB-C port in order to charge their laptop.

Keyboard

The other big change that came in 2016 and has somewhat plagued MacBooks ever since relates to the keyboard. A new ‘butterfly’ mechanism beneath the keys meant that the laptop could be a fraction slimmer. In terms of how this changes the typing ‘feel’ we find that the lack of travel can be a little disconcerting, like the key isn’t really moving beneath our fingers, and we also feel that the keys are a little close together, but it does have its benefits: the butterfly mechanism means that it matters less where on the key you press.

However, there have been cases of these new keyboards suffering from an issue where dust trapped beneath a key can render that key unusable. The problem is that the issue can’t be fixed easily, it’s not possible to just remove a key and clean it like you might have in the past. Thanks to the new design the whole keyboard needs to be removed.

The good news is that Apple does have a repair program for this very issue. So if you do encounter it within four years of purchasing your MacBook Pro, Apple will repair it for you for free. So if it’s something you are concerned about that should offer you some peace of mind.

The fact that the repair program was extended to include the 2019 MacBook Pro doesn’t indicate that the issue has been rectified, but we do know that Apple has made changes to the keyboard material in 2019 that could go some way to stop the issue occurring. Mind you, the company did add a membrane beneath the keys of the 2018 model and that didn’t rectify the problem.

If, like us, you tend to use an external keyboard with your MacBook when sat at your desk (we prefer to use an Apple Magic Keyboard) the keyboard issues really shouldn’t stop you from buying the newest MacBook Pro. On the other hand, if you can wait a year before updating then we suspect that Apple will be endeavouring to completely rectify this problem before the next MacBook Pro launches – and when that model arrives we expect much more than a new keyboard. Read about the 2020 MacBook Pro here.

What you get for your money

Unfortunately for UK consumers Apple increased the price of the MacBook Pro by as much as £100 in July 2019. This price change has bought the UK pounds prices ‘into line’ with Apple’s US doller prices: as with many other Apple products: £1,799 is considered the same as $1,799.

This isn’t a direct pound to dollar exchange: US prices don’t include taxes as they are added by the state at point of sale, and the price also include some of the costs of doing business in the UK. So if you are thinking that $1,799 should translate to £1,376 then you need to bear those factors in mind.

So, with that out of the way here’s how much the two 15in MacBook Pro models for 2019 cost:

• 2.6GHz 6-core MacBook Pro: (WAS £2,349/$2,399) NOW £2,399/$2,399 Available on Apple’s website
• 2.3GHz 8-core MacBook Pro: (WAS £2,699/$2,799) NOW £2,799/$2,799 Available on Apple’s website

There is one good piece of news. Post the July price changes some of the build-to-order options have actually come down in price!

• SSD: 1TB (WAS +£360/$400) NOW +£180/$200
• 2TB (WAS +£900/$1,000) NOW +£540/$600
• 4TB (WAS +£2,520/$2,800) NOW +£1,260/$1,400

As for what you get for your money, while little has changed on the outside of the MacBook Pro in the past few years, there is a significant change to the inside.

As we mentioned above, the 2019 MacBook Pro marks a move from 8th-generation Coffee Lake to 9th-generation Coffee Lake Refresh chips. This might not sound very exciting, but it means that the top-or-the-range model now has 8-cores, rather than maxing out at 6-cores. It also means that the processor inside the entry-level 15in MacBook Pro is now even better than the processor that was in the 2018 top-of-the-range model.

However, aside from the processor nothing else has changed since 2018. The graphics options remain the same, with the same processors as standard, and the build-to-order choice of a Radeon Pro Vega 16 or Radeon Pro Vega 20 – options that were added in October 2018. If you need a powerful graphics card these could be a great option for you, and we have tested the Radeon Pro Vega 20 so we can compare that to the Radeon Pro 560X that was in the MacBook Pro we tested in 2018.

Here’s how the new versus old specs compare:

15in MacBook Pro for 2019

• MacBook Pro 2.6GHz 6-core 9th gen i7, TB 4.5GHz, 256GB, Radeon Pro 555X, 16GB RAM: £2,399/$2,399. Available on Apple’s website
• MacBook Pro 2.3GHz 8-core 9th gen i9, TB 4.8GHz, 512GB, Radeon Pro 560X, 16GB RAM: £2,799/$2,799. Available on Apple’s website

There are also the following build-to-order options:

• 2.4GHz 8-core 9th gen i9 (+£180/$200)
• RAM: 32GB (+£360/$400)
• Graphics: Radeon Pro Vega 16 (+£225/$250) or Radeon Pro Vega 20 (+£315/$350)
• SSD: 1TB (+£180/$200) 2TB (+£540/$600) 4TB (+£1,260/$1,400)
• All these options are available on Apple’s website

15in MacBook Pro for 2018

• MacBook Pro 2.2GHz 6-core 8th gen i7, TB 4.1GHz, 256GB, Radeon Pro 555X, 16GB RAM: £2,349/$2,399.
• MacBook Pro 2.6GHz 6-core 8th gen i7, TB 4.3GHz, 512GB, Radeon Pro 560X, 16GB RAM: £2,699/$2,799.

Build-to-order options in 2018 included:

• 2.9GHz 6-core 8th gen i9, TB 4.8GHz
• RAM: 32GB
• Graphics: Radeon Pro Vega 16 or Radeon Pro Vega 20 (these options arrived in October 2018)
• SSD: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB

What’s of interest here is that the processor in the 2019 entry-level looks comparable to the one in the top-of-the-range 2018 model. Which is great news if you didn’t purchase that 2018 model, as now you could save yourself £350 and, we expect, see similar performance (although you’d also be taking a hit in terms of graphics card and storage).

Apple no longer sells these 2018 models (other than in the refurbished store) but you might be able to get one from an Apple reseller. Check out these MacBook deals, in which case it’s worth bearing in mind the similarities between those two machines when considering if it really is a bargain.

Another interesting comparison in terms of specs is to look to the 2019 iMac, which was updated in March 2019 (and hasn’t yet seen a price adjustment in the UK). For many looking for a powerful computer that doesn’t cost over £5,000 it will be a choice between the MacBook Pro and the iMac. Read our iMac vs MacBook Pro review.

iMac for 2019

• 21.5in, 3.0GHz 6-core 8th gen i5, TB 4.1GHz, 1TB Fusion drive, Radeon Pro 560X, 8GB RAM: £1,449/$1,499. (Top-of the range 21.5in)
• 27in, 3.0GHz 6-core 8th gen i5, TB 4.1GHz, 1TB Fusion drive, Radeon Pro 570X, 8GB RAM: £1,749/$1,799.
• 27in, 3.1GHz 6-core 8th gen i5, TB 4.3GHz, 1TB Fusion drive, Radeon Pro 575X, 8GB RAM: £1,949/$1,999
• 27in, 3.7GHz 6-core 9th gen i5, TB 4.6GHz, 2TB Fusion drive, Radeon Pro 580X, 8GB RAM: £2,249/$2,299.

Build-to-order options for the top-of-the range iMac include:

• 3.6GHz 8-core 9th gen i9, TB 5GHz (£360/$400)

So, essentially, you can get an 3.6GHz 8-core 9th-generation i9 processor with a Turbo Boost of 5GHz in the top of the range iMac, and it will cost you £2,609/$2,699, which is £270 less than the similar 2.4GHz 8-core 9th generation i9 processor, with the same Turbo Boost of 5GHz, in the MacBook Pro (that model comes in at £2,879/$2,999).

That’s the premium you pay for a laptop, with the benefit of it being portable. But it goes to show that laptops are no longer hampered to such an extent that they can’t match the power of a desktop computer.

Specs can look great on paper, but what really matters is how the machine performs. We’ve run our set of benchmarks on the 2019 model that Apple provided, with the following specs:

• 2.4GHz 8-core 9th gen i9, TB 5GHz, 32GB RAM, Radeon Pro Vega 20 with 4GB VRAM, 4TB SSD.

If you were to buy this machine it would cost you £6,074. At that price you’d expect a very powerful Mac, so we expected to see some truly impressive specs.

To be fair though, we wouldn’t expect the 4TB SSD (£2,520/$2,800) to make much of a difference to our results (although in the past we’ve found bigger SSDs perform slightly better). So, with that in mind we’ll deduct that money from the price and set it at £3,914,/$3,749 for comparative purposes.

So, onto our benchmarks.

Performance

Here’s how our 2.4GHz 8-core 9th-gen i9 MacBook Pro with 32GB RAM, Radeon Pro Vega 20 graphics, and 4TB SSD got on in our testing labs. We can compare it 2018’s 2.9GHz six-core i9 MacBook Pro and the 2019 3.6GHz 8-core i9 iMac and a few other machines with comparable spec. We’ll start with those processors.

Processor

We ran Geekbench v4.3.3. Note that there could be some discrepancies in scores based on the version of Geekbench and the version of the operating system we are running on the Mac, but the results should still give a good indication of just how powerful the new chips are.

In the multi-core test the 2019 model scored 31,066. A nice leap from the 2018 MacBook Pro model’s 23,028. For a comparison with same generation chip, the iMac scored 33,484. It’s no surprise that the iMac got a higher score as the chip has a faster clock speed (3.6GHz), but it’s a really promising result from the MacBook Pro.

Graphics

We’d expect the graphics card in this particular 2019 MacBook Pro to perform better than last years model, because we are comparing a Radeon Pro Vega 20 with the Radeon Pro 560X that was in the 2018 model we tested (and is still the standard offering in 2019’s MacBook Pro). It’s a similar story with the iMac which features the 560X or 570X graphics as standard – but the model we’ve tested had a Radeon Pro Vega 48 GPU.

This is an interesting comparison because it shows just how much of a difference a super fast graphics card can make. And crucially, you can now plug in an external GPU, so even if you have a standard card there’s nothing to stop you plugging a faster one in later on.

As you’d expect, the graphics processor in the iMac gave it a score of 4,265 in Cinebench R20, above the MacBook Pro’s 3,222. We can’t compare the GPU in the 2018 MacBook Pro because we tested in the older version of Cinebench. However, we have test results for the same cards since they appear in the 2019 iMacs, the 560X scored 2,364 and the 570X scored 2,382.

We also run the Unigine Valley benchmark tests (which is handy because these haven’t recently been updated). They test performance and stability under high graphical workloads. We ran this at the top setting, Extreme HD.

Our high-speed 2019 machine scored 3,369 compared to the 2018 the machine we tested (with the 570X graphics) which scored 875. Average frames per second was an astonishing 81 in 2019, compared to 20.9fps in 2018. That iMac with what should be a superior graphics only scored 2,287 and an average of 54.7 FPS, suggesting that something else was slowing it down.

Read & Write speed

The next test we run is the AJA System Test Lite, which evaluates drive performance. We tested using pretty extreme settings: 5K RED, 4GB.

The 2019 MacBook Pro ‘read’ 3,013MB/s and ‘wrote’ 3,070MB/s. In comparison, the 2018 MacBook Pro recorded an average of 2,914MB/s write and 3,069MB/s read. The difference is small, but significant.

This is one place where the MacBook Pro will be superior to an iMac with a Fusion drive, which is the standard option for most iMacs. Some of the iMacs we have tested have a combined SSD and hard drive and they saw much lower scores, 1,458MB/s read and 685MB/s write.

Battery

The battery inside the 15in MacBook Pro has a capacity of 83.6Wh, which is unchanged from 2018. The 13in model has a 58Wh battery.

Apple hasn’t changed its claimed battery life for this model. As last year it should still manage up to 10 hours of wireless web browsing and 10 hours of iTunes movie playback. Of course if you are using the laptop to render a humongous file then the battery life will be less.

We run a similar test to Apple, running a looping film until shutdown, with the screen calibrated at 120cd/m2 (with auto brightness disabled, and energy saver settings set to that it doesn’t go to sleep, we also turn off the keyboard backlight and disable the keyboard backlight auto adjust setting). The 2018 MacBook Pro lasted a decent 9 hours and 40 minutes. We expect a similar result for the 2019 model, although changes in operating system have been known to have an effect in the past.

In less demanding battery tests, we used the 2019 MacBook Pro to write this review on, and a few other things and 24 hours after we started there was still 38% battery left.

Got a MacBook, Pro or Air? Check out the best accessories for MacBooks.

Verdict

It’s unfortunate that the MacBook Pro (and the MacBook and MacBook Air) continue to be plagued by the keyboard-related issues. It’s unlikely that you will be affected by this issue though, and should you be, Apple will fix the problem for free but you may not be willing to take that risk.

However, we do think that the risk is worth taking because this is a superb machine, and if you are looking for a Mac laptop designed for a power user then this is the only option available.

The fact is that this laptop hasn’t changed a great deal since 2018 though – and now there is a price increase to contend with that is even more frustrating. We’d recommend you watch out for a deal on one of the 2018 models and save a bit of money on a similarly speced machine – just make sure that it is as good deal.