By adding a high-res Retina Display to a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple has taken the odd man out of its MacBook line -- the previous 13-inch Pro -- and turned it into a sleek, modern laptop sitting at the midway point between slim ultrabook and mainstream powerhouse.
Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display (13-inch)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Prior to this, the $1,199 13-inch MacBook Air had become Apple's go-to for everyday consumers, while the recent 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Displaywas the $2,199 reach system for power users. Even though the standard 13-inch Pro (starting at $1,199) remains a strong seller for Apple, it has also become the most archaic-feeling Apple laptop, saddled with a low native screen resolution and a chunky (by contemporary ultrabook standards) body.
At a starting price of $1,699, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is a big step up in price from Apple's other 13-inch laptops, but it also offers features they cannot. Like the 15-inch Retina Pro, this new model includes a high-resolution display -- at 2,560x1,600 pixels, it's the highest resolution you can get in a 13-inch laptop -- plus two Thunderbolt/DisplayPort outputs, and even HDMI.
This update is not as revolutionary as the 15-inch version, which really was something we had never seen before. But, it leapfrogs some recent Windows 8 ultrabook-style laptops that were giving the MacBook Air serious competition as the go-to premium laptop in that price range, such as the Acer Aspire S7 and the Dell XPS 12.
Is $1,699 too much to ask for a 13-inch laptop? I've recently seen some flagship Windows 8 laptop with similar prices. The aforementioned Acer Aspire S7 is $1,649, but that includes a low-voltage Core i7 and a 256GB SSD. The convertible Dell XPS 12, with a slightly smaller 12.5-inch screen, starts at $1,199, but our review unit of that system also traded up to a Core i7/256GB SSD combo for $1,699. Both of those laptops have 1,920x1,080-pixel displays, which is as high as you can get on a consumer Windows laptop, and both are touch-screen laptops, an area Apple has yet to get into.
Compared with those, the base model Retina 13-inch Pro has a Core i5 and 128GB SSD. The unit we're testing is actually the step-up model, which upgrades the storage space to 256GB, for a total of $1,999. Add a Core i7 processor to that, and it's $2,199 -- the same price as the 15-inch Retina Pro, with a Core i7, 256GB SSD, and discrete Nvidia graphics.
The takeaway? None of these superpremium laptops is inexpensive, and at $1,199, $1,699, or $2,199, you have several options depending on your need for storage space, screen size, CPU power, or graphics.
The main selling point of this system, the Retina Display, is something that presents itself much better in person than online. Like the 15-inch version, this won't actually look like you're seeing full 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution (or 2,880x,1800 pixels, in the case of the 15-inch), if you still think about screen resolution in the same way Windows laptops do.
Instead, Apple uses a different dot pitch for the screen, which makes the desktop appear to be operating at 1,280x800 pixels, just with a much finer grain to the image. You can pop into the System Preferences menu and change that to "look like" 1,440x900 pixels or 1,680x1,050 pixels. The end result is a screen that's higher-res than a 1,920x1,080-pixel laptop, but appears to operate at a lower screen resolution, all while appearing crisper and sharper.
If all that sounds confusing, just know that you're unlikely to notice the difference between a Retina and non-Retina screen until you see them side by side. Then, it's definitely noticeable, but I've found it primarily of use in reading onscreen text more than anything else (the same was true for the Retina iPad versus previous non-Retina iPads).
Interestingly, the non-Retina 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops continue to exist, although it's hard to imagine anyone not needing an internal optical drive or huge HDD going to those as a first choice (a budget-driven choice, perhaps).
While we continue to test the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, my initial impression is of a laptop following an inevitable evolutionary pathway, shedding size and weight, along with arguably legacy hardware, from optical drives, to platter hard drives, to Ethernet jacks (a point sure to be hotly disputed by those who still use those features every day).
I'd still call the 15-inch Retina Pro the best all-around MacBook in Apple's current roster, and the 13-inch Air the most practical for on-the-go lifestyles. That puts this model just behind those in the complex calculation of value, practicality, and features, but still miles ahead of most other 13-inch laptops.