Apple MacBook Pro unibody 15-inch Retina (mid 2012) Pro Reviews

I understand that this review may seem overly effusive - but it's hard to deny that the MacBook Pro with Retina Display provides a superlative experience for that specific set of users who require what this machine provides. The screen is nothing short of groundbreaking. Like they did with tablets and ultraportables, Apple has made super high resolution displays work, and it makes me happy - because it means that we'll be seeing more and similar display from lower-priced competitors such as ASUS and Acer, and, eventually HP and Dell. Considering the technology packed inside, the rMBP is incredibly thin. It's reasonably light, too, at 4.46 pounds. Battery life is impressive, within the confines of this technology envelope and size range; otherwise there have been other machines that meet and exceed it. In order to help make the leap into the next great computing trend, Apple made a number of design concessions that don't sit well with a lot of users. Soldering the RAM to the computer, in such a professional machine, seems...wrong, somehow. Flash storage is really nice, but 256GB won't be enough for a lot of people; since upgrades must be purchased from Apple at the time of order, more than a few people will be stuck between not having enough space and not being able to afford more. Similarly, there are no FireWire or Gigabit Ethernet ports on this machine, and instead you'll be forced to buy an adapter at another thirty bucks or so. The Gig-E adapter has been well reviewed, but it stings, having to shell out still more money in order to recreate previous functionality.

The Macbook Pro 15 with Retina display is an excellent and expensive laptop, there’s no denying that. But it is also very unique and I’m very curious to see what the competition will come up with in the next few months, and at what price. Now the real question is: is it for you? If you’re in the camp of those who say that it is “overpriced” or “too expensive”, I would say that our benchmarks show that “overpriced” is the wrong word, but “expensive” is indeed true. That said, there are plenty of other options out there, including some from Apple and from various PC manufacturers like Asus, Dell or Samsung, so what’s the big deal if you find this one too expensive – just vote with your wallet. If you are still hesitating, it all comes down to the new display and new form factor: how much are you really willing to pay for the thinner design and super-dense display? If you’re in it for the weight, there are much lighter alternatives like the Samsung Series 9 15” which weighs close to 3 lbs (vs. 4.5lbs for the MBP Retina).

Is this the best Mac ever? You can't ignore the Air as an amazing piece of machinery, especially with the new, higher-powered Ivy Bridge processors and faster SSDs tucked inside its wedge profile. But, this new Pro is on another level of performance. With a quad-core processor and up to 16GB of RAM it's a proper beast -- a proper beast that you can throw in your messenger bag and carry around all day without spending all night complaining about an aching back. That said, this is not exactly a small machine, heavy enough that those happy Air users who've been feeling tempted might want to take a swing by their closest Apple Store and lift one themselves. It's expensive, too. If you want a machine with enough storage to keep up with all that processing and gaming power you'll be looking at a price of $2,800 -- and that assumes you can resist all the upgrades.

Apple has done an incredible job with the next-gen MacBook Pro. It brings a level of portability to the 15-inch chassis that we’ve never seen before from Apple, all while getting a good handle on some of the thermal and noise issues from last year’s model. If you’re like me and have to lug your 15-inch MBP around, the improvements in portability alone are worth the upgrade. But a lighter chassis is hardly all Apple is relying on to sell this system.

The hype surrounding the new Apple MacBook Pro 15 with Retina display immediately after the WWDC 2012 was immense. After several weeks of testing, we are able to draw our own conclusion and share our opinion. The now even slimmer aluminum unibody chassis still manages to impress and is the de-facto standard in this category. We appreciate the inclusion of HDMI and the USB 3.0 and two Thunderbolt ports. Compared to other notebooks, the port selection is still a bit meager. Additional ports require the use of an adapter - something else that needs to be packed.

Apple has once again set a high bar in the notebook industry. Simply put, this system is in a class of its own with regards to system-wide performance and display technology. Sure, there are other systems that have more powerful graphics cards but for the average user, the increased screen resolution and lightning-fast flash storage are good tradeoffs.

Is the MacBook Pro with Retina display the future of Apple laptops? Quite possibly. With solid state storage getting cheaper, the decline of optical drives' significance and the outstanding speed and versatility of Thunderbolt ports, it seems clear that Apple's notebooks will ultimately use the thin and ultra-portable format pioneered by the MacBook Air and now followed by this high-end MacBook Pro. But the high-cost Retina screen could take a long time to trickle down throughout the range. The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is a truly an object of desire. It packs incredible power, and its screen puts other notebook displays to shame. It might be a notebook like no other, but its price may well limit it to high-needs professionals.

Perfection improved, and still one of the few options if you want an 11in ultra-portable laptop

Quite simply, there’s nothing else that can compete with the new MacBook Pro’s gorgeous screen. It’s the highest resolution laptop display ever, with a level of detail that needs to be seen to be believed. It’s almost overkill for most people, as very few applications currently take advantage of the extra pixels. For most people, a regular MacBook Pro is still more than capable of doing everything you would want a laptop to do. However, if you edit photos or video for a living, or are a very serious amateur, the new MacBook Pro is the best laptop you can possibly buy. It's the very definition of an Ultimate laptop.

The MacBook Pro gains a staggeringly crisp Retina display and quad-core Ivy Bridge CPU. The result is stunning, and expensive

Regardless of your feelings towards Apple generally or the new generation MacBook Pro with Retina display specifically, it’s more or less a certainty that laptops all over are about to make a strong push for high-resolution displays. And that’s good for everyone involved — not only does it drive a hardware industry forward, but hopefully it pushes software developers, too. The more high-resolution screens on the market, the more websites and applications that will be optimized for it. But back to this particular machine: should you buy the new MacBook Pro with Retina display over the standard Pro? Like we said above, it really comes down to whether or not you value solid-state storage over traditional HDD or the value of a higher-resolution display. For us, it’s the Retina display for sure — the only way we'd recommend a standard 15-inch Pro right now is if you have a strict sub-$1,800 budget or really value the extra HDD storage space or DVDs.

It’s hard not to admire the all-round quality of Apple’s latest release. The Retina display leaves every other laptop display we’ve ever seen trailing in its wake. But just as important is the fact that Apple has managed to significantly reduce the size and weight of this Pro model without compromising performance. It’s expensive, of course, and there are small niggles such as the lack of audio input. However, the MacBook Pro With Retina Display is a quality piece of kit that will have every Mac-loving pro semi-pro user on the planet drooling to get their hands on one.

Not just nice and light, not just good and thin – Apple's first retina-class Mac is a triumph in portable computing. We'll update this review with benchmarks on battery life and system performance soon; but in just over 24 hours of steady use, we're even inclined to forgive the reflective screen. Make no mistake, the Apple MacBook Pro (Retina) is an even greater breakthrough than we'd hoped – and our hopes were already pegged very very high. It's just such a comfortable laptop to use, an engineering breakthrough that can excite the heart as much as the mind.

Replacing a conventional hard drive with a 256GB solid-state drive (strictly speaking, just 256GB worth of flash modules taken out of an SSD's case and mounted on the motherboard) helps give the Retina MacBook Pro extra-snappy response. The system booted from cold in 17 seconds and woke from sleep in less than 2 seconds, by our stopwatch. Unfortunately, we don't yet have many of our other usual benchmark results, because at this writing Apple hadn't yet released the Boot Camp drivers that would let the Retina MacBook Pro fully run Windows. (We installed Windows 7 all right, but the result was a generic setup with, for instance, a VGA graphics driver rather than one for the GeForce GT 650M.) The results we do have, collected under OS X, are impressive, though.

With a higher-resolution display, thin chassis, and up-to-date components, the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch with Retina Display is the new king of high-end desktop replacement laptops.

The newly redesigned MacBook Pro with Retina Display combines an amazing screen with just enough of the MacBook Air design to feel like a new animal, and to take its place as the best of the current MacBook breed.