M3 Pro MacBook Pro Review
Table of Contents
I know there are a lot of reviews out there that will be much more polished than this one but I bought a new MacBook Pro because I needed it to run my company and do my job, not to do a review. What that translates to is that I bought what I needed and I want to review it from that perspective. If you want to know more about how I settled on this particular machine, check out this article.
What I Bought
I'm all in on the Apple ecosystem and while I would have liked to wait on this purchase I couldn't. I also would have preferred to go with an iPad Pro but I couldn't those reasons are also in the article linked above.
After some debate on the g4f podcast and within myself, I purchased the base model 14" MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro chip. No upgrades. That means it's the 11 core CPU with 18gb of memory and the 512gb SSD.
Why I Bought What I Bought
The short version of why is because I did my research and selected the machine that I felt was right for what I would be using it for. I considered several upgrades and there have been moments since I purchased it that I wondered if I would regret not choosing several upgrades but so far, no regrets. Check out the Journey to a New MacBook article for more.
Look & Feel
Since I came from a mid-2020 Intel MacBook Pro, this things is all new to me. The new chassis design with the more rounded/square (I know that is a contradiction) and I also bought the new space black.
The feel of this machine is great. When I pick it up to take it to the couch or wherever, it feels solid and I feel like I'm carrying a professional level machine. I know everyone seems to think thinner is better but I like how solid this one feels and the change from everything being tapered and rounded is just great.
I do love the color. Most people are calling it a darker version of space grey. Now I've had a space grey and a silver macbook pro. This is definitely darker than any of them. It's not as black as the keys on the keyboard, but I'm not completely convinced that I would want it that dark. Maybe I'd have to see it to know for sure.
With the new color also comes the change that Apple made to prevent more fingerprints. I agree with most of the reviews that it has reduced them a ton but not completely. Where I see the smudges is in the area where I rest my palms and then on the keys themselves. Now, they didn't claim that the keys would have less fingerprints so I didn't expect that. It would be nice for them to work on it. I prefer to work directly off the laptop keyboard vs. an external one so anything to keep that nicer for longer is appreciated.
They keyboard is great. I had been using an external keyboard for the last several months because I had a nice 4k monitor that I liked right in front of me vs. the old screen. I'm back in my happy place now that I can use the built in keyboard.
Speaking of the screen. That is the one thing I hadn't thought about how much of an upgrade it would be. It's amazing how much better this screen is with promotion and the xdr display. This is one area where I have definitely missed out. Watching a movie on it is really cool. I don't think I'll do that often but even just using to for day to day stuff is great.
The speakers on it are good. They will be fine for any incidental usage. Microphone and webcam should all be great upgrades from my last machine and I'll probably use them for video calls and be fine.
Battery Life & Performance
So let's talk about the two biggest reasons I got this. Battery life and performance.
My Intel machine was just struggling to do much when not plugged in. For my normal work, I could get a couple of hours and maybe 3 or four if I closed everything and was just writing or something.
This new machine is amazing. While I'm writing this, I have been on battery for 3 1/2 hours. During that time I have edited a podcast in garage band and published it. I also edited the video version in iMovie as well as four shorts and a trailer. I've also did some administrative stuff, wrote most of the article on my buying process and everything so far in this article. I'm sitting at 79% charge remaining and per activity monitor, I still have over 13 hours remaining. On my other machine I would have been back at my desk plugged in.
Is this the 18 hours Apple stated - no. That's because I'm doing real tasks instead of just looping playback of a video which it appears is what they do to measure their battery life. But you add those two together and I'm getting 16. I would have been happy with 8-10.
From a performance standpoint, this machine feels overall smoother. That's not very scientific but that's the kind of thing that really contributes to satisfaction. On top of that, I have done some tests. I took our last episode of g4f, the full video version, and timed how long the old machine took to export it from iMovie and then did the same on this machine. The old machine took just under 30 minutes. This one was 11 minutes. On many of the smaller videos, I don't wait more than a few minutes for them to export.
The last week or so on the old machine I was constantly watching to see how much memory I would be using and what the pressure was on the CPU. For the CPU, I would check it every time I heard the fans spin up.
I have yet to hear the fans on this machine. Most of the time when I check, I have 7-9gb of memory free and the CPU is stilling under 20% utilization. That is dramatically different from the old machine.
So when Apple stated that anyone upgrading from a new machine would see such an improvement, they weren't kidding. I've been experiencing that since day one.
Just one last thing I want to mention and that is how the setup went. I elected to start fresh on this machine. I was having some weird things happen on the old one, I also knew I had a bunch of old files and stuff I didn't need and all the research I did said that it was recommended to start fresh going from intel to Apple silicon. This was just not a big deal. Based on this I would probably start fresh anytime I upgrade.
Now, that may not work for you if you keep a lot of stuff local and not anywhere else. I just don't do that. Everything I had except for things I wouldn't need were also available in the cloud. And for those things, I have a time machine backup if I need to go back and grab them. The only thing that took time to get on the machine was my photo library. That's over 100gb of native resolution stuff. I just let that download overnight and it was fine. I also use very few non-Apple apps. I do use Microsoft Office but those apps and onedrive and then a couple of small utilities. But beyond that, it's pretty straightforward.
I only had a couple of issues with my cloud services. First, for some reason my initial sign into icloud on the machine didn't fully take. I know that sounds funny but that's what happened. After an update to Sonoma, I had to resign into icloud and redo a few of the settings. That wasn't a big deal but something to be aware of.
The second things was that I had to do my onedrive set up twice. I've had this problem before. I don't actually keep all of my onedrive files local. Some I do but most of the older podcast episodes and their supporting files are only in the cloud. Onedrive by default downloads nothing until you need it. You have the option of downloading everything but I go through and move the files I want onto my machine. I ended up having to go through that process twice.
Other than that there have been a few application settings I have had to look at on the old machine and setup but I have not transferred anything from the old machine. Another few days and I'll wipe it and send it to Apple to get my trade in credit.
Summary
My overall take after a week of real use on the new machine is that I couldn't be happier. It's performing better than expected, the battery life is unreal and is going to allow me to be much more flexible in where I work and the machine is just fun to use.
My recommendation is that this is a keeper. If you are on an intel version, it's time to upgrade. If you are on Apple Silicon already, it's not as straight forward.
As far as not having any upgrades, I don't need them so far. And if I do in the future, I'll deal with it then as it will be a good problem to have.
If you are considering a machine, my advice for you is to start at the base and justify your way up based on how you really do or will use the machine. For most people, the MacBook Air is probably still your best bet. If you can wait for the M3 version to drop it might be a good idea to do so. But if you are on an intel air or even entry macbook pro and need a machine, buy that air and don't look back.
For those of you that need more power, ports, etc. Start with the base 14 or 16" MacBook pro. If you don't need to support two monitors and SSD speed is not a concern, then start with the M3 chip.
For those of you that need as much computer as you can get and can afford it. Go right to the M3 Max. You will know if it if you need that machine.
For those of you that are in the middle like me, start with the base M3 Pro and think about the logic I used as you consider upgrading.
And if you want to run some ideas by Jason or I, we are here. You can use our feedback form or email us at g4f@mtneboconsulting.com.
For now, I'm right where I want to be in my computing life and I hope you will find that sweet spot as well.