it was the savior macbook it finally got rid of that terrible keyboard it was designed with pros like me and you in mind but it looked identical to previous macbook pros it was heavier bigger thicker more expensive was it worth it and more importantly should you buy the 16-inch macbook pro now that apple silicone-powered macs are on the way welcome back to marketless reviews thank you for tuning in and if you subscribed already thank you very much if you haven’t subscribed just hit subscribe and you’ll never miss an episode now i’ve spent just under a year with the 16-inch macbook pro before that i had the 13-inch escape key version the only one they did with an escape key and no touch bar i had that for about four years this was a big investment for me it was a lot of money i needed it because of my my work load was increasing and the type of work i was doing was getting much more complicated in terms of video and audio production in this video i’m going to give you my long term ish thoughts on the 16-inch macbook pro i’ll also reveal how the keyboard has faired because i’m sure you want to know about that let’s dig into it i think before we get into my thoughts on the macbook pro 16-inch um i should probably give you an idea of what i do with it because i think your mileage may vary and obviously there are lots of different uses for
macbooks as we all know um so the work i do i’m a content marketer i produce content and that content is written content it’s audio content it’s video and i need a machine that can do all that stuff and help me run my business day-to-day so for example i use final cut pro almost daily now and i use logic pro for audio i do a lot of writing i use an application called ulysses for that i do a lot of email marketing an awful lot of video calling with clients and the partners that i work with and yeah i need a laptop basically that can do all that stuff and not break a sweat previously i had the 13-inch escape key macbook pro base level specs eight gig of ram yeah it wasn’t anything special at all and i rinsed that machine i really put it to task for four years um but it got to the stage where like any growing business it just wasn’t doing the task it was taking longer to get things done than it was to get things done now i’ve also got a 27-inch imac which i think is a 2018 version i think um that is still a great workhorse great machine but this laptop this 16-inch macbook pro has pretty much all but replaced that machine really i use
this day in day out it’s the machine i go to so the specs now i will need to refer to these because i can remember if i’m honest uh so i went for the 2.3 gigahertz eight core i9 which is like the top level um cpu although not the not the fastest one it’s i think it’s probably the the base level eight core but it’s one of the fastest ones basically um 32 gigabytes of ram i upgraded the graphics card to the radeon pro 5500m love these names don’t you i also went for the one terabyte ssd hard drive um went for apple care as well because i think you should really if it’s a work machine you rely on it that much that all set me back the princely sum of 3648 pounds i’ve never spent that much money on a laptop in fact i’ve never spent much money on a computer before i think before that i’d spent about two and a half thousand on the imac and to me that was a big investment so this was a big big expense for me but i knew i’d get a lot of use out of it so let’s dig into what i think we’ll start with the keyboard now unless you’ve been sitting under a rock for the last few years you’ll be aware that the last generation macbook pro had a
dreadful keyboard now a little caveat here um i had my my previous macbook with that keyboard for like i say about four years i think in total and i knew it wasn’t a great keyboard but i didn’t know how bad it was until i got this laptop if you’ve never used the old generation and in fact you still get it on a lot of the current macbooks but you’ve never used it before it has a very very small key travel which means it doesn’t really feel like it’s going down when you press it the two problems with that but multiple problems but the key problems with that are it’s very noisy that bothered me more than the other issues really but yeah very noisy um it’s not particularly nice it doesn’t feel very nice and thirdly it’s prone to lots of problems um mine i had replaced once and i think to be honest by the time i’d finished with it it was probably do another replacement because things get lodged underneath the keys and because of that mechanism it just doesn’t deal with crumbs and everyday life very well apple fed terribly out of this i think it was widely regarded that it was an awful design decision it was all designed to make the laptop thinner it was just a stupid idea looking back however i stuck with it for four years i did shed loads of work on it um so in in some ways it did the job actually but it
wasn’t a pleasurable typing experience testing them side by side is night and day the macbook pro 16 inch keyboard is fantastic it’s got lots of keep well it’s got an acceptable level of key travel it sounds quite nice as nice as a keyboard can sound um and touch wood nearly 12 months in i’ve not had a single issue with it it’s been fine um you can probably see in the b-roll of this video that the keys are shiny that’s already and that’s how much i use this i do an awful lot of typing on it so um keyboard thumbs up so far apple let’s see how it goes i mean we’ll give another two or three years and see where we think then but they’ve i think they’ve fixed the keyboard issue so if you’re still worried about that don’t it’s a fantastic keyboard now performance i’m not the sort of guy who’s going to sit here and do benchmarks um basically because i don’t care i find them dull as dishwater um if you want to see benchmarks there’s loads and loads of videos and reviews out there that will give you the information you need and if that stuff’s important to you i appreciate it is for some people for me i just know when a computer is quick enough um
and my old 13-inch was like i say it was struggling towards the end i was putting it through a lot it would regularly crash and i’d have to wait for things to render it would just take forever now the specs i went with like i said they’re pretty pretty hefty eight core 32 gig of ram top-end graphics card um this thing is effortless and i don’t use it lightly you know i do a lot of video editing uh often in 4k this isn’t in 4k oddly enough but um yeah more often than not it’s in 4k also i do a lot of music production on it as well i use some really heavy plugins it just doesn’t break a sweat it’s just it’s never crashed apart from odd little crashes you get as part of mac os um it’s just blisteringly fast i only have this model i’ve only ever used this model so i can’t compare it against the bass spec although from what i hear what i read in reviews they’re all very capable machines i think if you’re going to buy a 16-inch macbook pro you’re probably someone like me who needs a bit of power and also wants to know that power is going to last for a few years so it’s worth specking up as much as you can as much as you can afford get enough around get that top end eight core processor i think i think it’s worth doing that and if you do a lot of video work get the most expensive graphics card partly because it’s not a huge cost increase i can’t remember the exact amount i think it
was about an extra 100 pounds or something it wasn’t much but it is just effortless and i know this is gonna work for me for the next three or four years there’s no question about that the only thing i have noticed is that it’s quite fan happy and by that i mean um the fans will come on quite regularly and i’ve experienced this i normally experience it in final cut when it’s doing rendering no matter how complicated or uncomplicated the rendering is but it also fans will run pretty consistently in logic pro if i’m using multiple plugins and in fact i’m not often doing that much if i open for example massive which is a software synth um it’s quite a complex one admittedly but um pretty much straight away the fans kick in now the performance doesn’t degrade at all it just runs you don’t notice it but if you take your headphones off it sounds like an aircraft craft taking off um and it gets incredibly hot as well now whether or not that is an issue with my macbook i don’t know i don’t think it is because although they have redesigned the chassis to better dissipate dissipate heat um that was another problem with the previous generation um i do wonder in fact i’m suspicious about the fact that it is probably using those fans just to keep things as cool as possible i don’t know um just
something to bear in mind particularly if you like a not red-hot laptop and one that isn’t constantly fanning all the time um it’s not a big deal and it doesn’t do it in general day-to-day use but it’s just when you’re pushing it a bit the fans do go if that might bother you so yeah in summary performance wise spec it up if you’re going to go with one i would say if you’re a hobbyist content creator or perhaps you don’t do quite as much of that kind of stuff for your work the 16-inch map will pros overkill you’ll never use its performance um i to be fair i barely touch it you know i think unless you’re editing 8k video multiple streams and doing you know running an orchestra through it 128 tracks of audio and soft synths you’re not going to push it much so again yeah i’d bear that in mind if you’re going to go for this now the design it basically this macbook looks like every other macbook that’s been out for the last five or six years um it’s the unibody design uh it looks at first glance it just looks like the 15-inch macbook pro and there’s very little to distinguish the two really the screen looks slightly different screen is slightly bigger
obviously by an inch but it feels having used a 15-inch um this just feels like a 15 inch if i’m honest um yeah but having said that i’ve always been a fan of this design i think regardless of the the old keyboard problems um i think it’s an incredibly durable laptop um in the year nothing really i mean it gets chucked around a bit in terms of chips in the bag i’m very careful but i’ve noticed a little little chunk taken out there tiny little bit but apart from that this unibody design really does hold up well to day-to-day use that said it’s not a big redesign i think when i was wait i waited for this to come out before i bought it i i there’s all the rumors about the 16-inch macbook pro and there’s some wild rumors as well about it having you know um face id and lots of other stuff that we could get excited about you know new new design all sorts of things and it isn’t it’s typical apple really they’ve just released pretty much the same hardware specked it up and redesigned some of the internals when you compare it against some of the new windows laptops and even some of the chromebooks the design start is getting towards the end of its life i think um the bezels around the screen are pretty big still i do think it should have face id now personally um i’m not bothered about the
thickness of the thinness whichever way you look at it i mean it’s it’s slightly thicker than the 15-inch um but not to any great extent but yeah this design feels like it’s getting towards the end of its life i think probably within the next 12 18 months we’re going to see a redesign um but i’m a big fan of it regardless it’s very robust i think for spending over three and a half thousand pounds on a laptop you want something that feels substantial and it really does um it does feel like a tank um however caveat it’s big it’s really big i’m used to it now um but it’s almost as big as the frame there as you can see um it’s it’s a big laptop and again the 15-inch was a big laptop absolutely but i didn’t have that personally i used one occasionally but um i didn’t have to carry it around and you do notice the weight of this thing um i do a lot of cycling so i cycle into the gym and more often than not i won’t take it i’ll take my ipad pro instead that’s a shame because i love doing video editing on the go um i just know that if i need to do that i need to take a bigger bag and it’s going to be heavier so it’s not it’s portable obviously it’s a great portable studio i mean don’t get me wrong being able to take that much power in a
backpack is fantastic but it’s a big laptop and if you’re not a big fan of big laptops it might be too big for you i’d perhaps wait until we see some bigger improvements to the 13-inch range but um aside from that yeah design is great i wanted to just quickly note the speakers and the mic in this laptop because it was a big thing when it first came out um two of the big improvements apple made was in the performance of the the speakers and also the performance of the on-board built-in mic now don’t get me wrong these are very very impressive for laptop speakers they’re pretty good um i think what if you haven’t haven’t heard them and if you read and listen and watch the other reviews when it first came out you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re like they could replace your high fives and the way people were talking about them was that like it was some kind of you know concert system pa system it ain’t um they’re still laptop speakers and they’re not gonna replace anything they’re handy to just blast away occasionally if you just it’s the only thing you’ve got to play music on um but i never use it for example to properly edit audio or produce music or if i’m honest to kind of um proof and check the end result with videos because i just don’t trust those speakers as much and they sound good but they’re not they do not be a pair of studio monitors or a really good pair of headphones so um speakers are good but don’t expect to be absolutely wowed by them same thing with the mic now i’ve used the mic a lot for video calling but i’ve also tested it for just recording certain things into logic pro and it’s not bad but it’s there’s a
lot of talk about it being studio quality and that’s such a an odd thing to say because studio quality mics if you know that kind of stuff are expensive and they are built for that task and you just can’t fit that kind of technology into a little laptop like that so again i wouldn’t expect to be able to do lots of studio-like things with it but it is good for getting ideas down i’ll give it that um you know i’ve done some voice over work on the macbook pro but the crucial thing is i’ve not used it in the end edit i’ve always replaced it with a proper recording so yeah i wouldn’t get too excited about the mics and speakers they’re great the mic sorry and speakers they are good but they’re not they’re not going to sell this laptop for you you know that’s not the main reason you should buy this the screen i can be pretty quick with this i think if you’ve ever used a macbook screen you’ll know they are wonderful great contrast um really really impressed with it it’s great for video editing for photo editing it also doesn’t have any or too many backlighting issues i’ve always had a
bit of an issue with apple with imax and other macbooks where the back lighting on the lcd has been quite quite inconsistent that’s just part of that that’s just a trade-off of that technology it’s a bit of a lottery how good yours will be um but this is probably the best screen i’ve had in terms of backlight consistency as i say the contrast is great um it’s nice and bright you can use it in pretty bright environments with no trouble at all uh yeah expect apple screen greatness now i thought for the rest of this review i’ll just kind of summarize my key learnings with it so for starters i think this laptop has a very defined audience it’s pros like me and professional is a very subjective term if you consider yourself to be professional you are that’s entirely your definition however this laptop delivers acres of power and i i mean i’m not kind of over exaggerating that it’s an incredibly powerful machine as i say i’m not going to do benchmarks you can go and check them out but it’s just very very quick um that and i also it’s very expensive that performance comes a cost and also you do pay the apple tax let’s be honest you know i’m sure again i’m not a windows man i’m sure there’s people watching this video who could spec up a pc um sorry a windows based laptop for half or a third of the price and it’d be more powerful i’m sure that’s the case um but for
some people like me i’m not an apple fanboy at all i just like using mac os i’m in that world i think any um as any professional will tell you once you get into a mindset and into a routine with a piece of technology you stick with it because going to something else takes an awful lot of time so for me i’m with mac os i do some fairly heavy duty work i want a machine that lasts a long time this was a solid investment but i’m a very specific audience i think most people will get away with 13-inch it’s also a great writing device as most laptops are the only thing i’d say with that is that i do as i mentioned earlier i do turn to my ipad pro more simply because it’s portable it’s a much tighter much smaller device if i’m honest the keyboard’s great on that i almost prefer that as a writing device the macbook pro 16 inch just feels like a bit of a cumbersome writing device regardless of how great that keyboard is because it is a really good keyboard this is also my first experience of the touch bar at first it was a bit of a novelty but i’ll be honest i hardly use it i was trying to think when i was writing the notes for this review what i use it for and i think i only use it for one or two functions mainly in ulysses which is the writing app that i use um [Music] that’s it if it wasn’t there i wouldn’t miss it and more often that i’ll hit it by mistake i’ll trigger siri by mistake multiple times throughout the day um occasionally it will do things and you think oh that’s quite handy but then i think well if i didn’t know it was that i wouldn’t miss it and it just feels like a shoehorned piece of technology
which i will not be surprised if we don’t see the touch bar in future max again you don’t have to buy this device to get the touch bar a lot of people have argued they’d rather have it without the touch bar i kind of get that however it does have an escape key which is great it also has the inverted arrow keys whichever everyone wanted apparently again that didn’t bother me on the on the previous model but yeah the touch bar i don’t i had to use it battery performance is pretty good now i’ve not done any tests with this at all i’m the sort of person as you will learn if you subscribe to this channel who would much rather talk about real world usage i think stats and tests and all this sort of stuff are interesting and certainly i understand what i understand that people find those interesting i just don’t personally what i find interesting is how i feel about the device in terms of battery life and the best way to describe it is that normally it’s plugged in i keep it locked in for most of the day if i’m working in the office however if i know that i’ve got to go out for most of the day perhaps half a day or something like that i’ll take it out without the charger as long as it’s got 100 battery in there i’ll take it out without worrying too much given its performance and obviously battery life on a macbook like this depends very very much so on what you’re doing on that device but in terms of general use maybe a tiny little bit video
editing email you know web browsing writing it gets me through i guess at half a day probably constant use um maybe a bit longer actually in fairness but my point being a real world test and opinion on this is i don’t really worry about the battery life it’s acceptable to me given the power that it has is acceptable it’s never left me stranded because i treat it in that way i know i can’t expect miracles from it it’s a big laptop and the batteries are in it are fairly big but i’m appreciative of what it does and how powerful it is so i kind of managed my usage and my expectation with that so i wouldn’t worry about the battery it’s good it performs really well now i came from the 13 inch that only had two usbc ports this obviously has four or thunderbolt whatever they are these days um honestly if you only have two at the moment on one side of the laptop the ability to just plug your power or anything into either side is more of a godsend than you might than you might think so um yeah that that’s always impressed me since i’ve had it it’s just been a nice little thing and not to worry and there’s no worry about running out of ports either so that’s that’s really comforting i went for the one terabyte option if you’re a video editor or you work with large files i’d recommend that as a base really i think in future i’ll probably go for the two terabyte just to give myself a bit more headroom but what it’s meant is that i can just edit on
the device which is a bit quicker anyway rather midline on the external storage i never really worry about running out space it’s um it’s nice you know in my old macbook i had 256 gig which is pointless really um you have to rely on external storage all the time so one terabyte if you’re kind of knowing which what to go for i’d start there if you can afford more go for it one terabyte is actually a really nice base level i think so the verdict should you buy a 16-inch macbook pro now now the reason that is such a big question on a lot of people’s minds is because there are apple silicon powered macs on the way so apple is now in the process of eventually ditching intel whether or not they’ll do that completely is open for debate um but they are going to move away from intel and put their own chips into these which makes total sense i’ve got no problem with that as long as it’s all done properly and all my stuff works i couldn’t care less what’s powering it if i’m totally honest now it does put a question mark over whether it’s worth buying a 16-inch macbook pro now this is by far the most powerful macbook you can buy at the moment so if you’re after a lot of power my advice is pretty simple i would buy one i would not wait around for apple silicon i waited and waited for this i very nearly bought the 15-inch macbook pro before this and then it came out at the right time and i went for it basically if i had just carried on waiting around for this thing i would have just got the 15 inch because it would have
done the job so i really would not let apple silicon cloud your decision about buying this um i’m going to keep this as i’ve said several times for three or four years if i keep it for four years that represents an investment of 900 pounds every year and the productivity gains i get back from this thing because of how quick it is and how capable it is eclipse that 900 pounds well a huge amount trust me it’s a massive return on investment for my business so i’m not gonna buy an apple silicon mac i’ll try one out i’ll i will certainly review one for this channel but it wouldn’t influence me buying this now if i had to buy one of these now i’d still buy it i’m shooting this in september 2020 and the rumors are there’s going to be some kind of apple silicon powered mac at the end of this year if that’s the case that might be great for you i would just hold on unless you need this power if you need this power go for it you don’t need this power hold on i just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who has either watched subscribed commented liked even disliked anyone who’s engaged in my channel over the last five or six weeks i started this channel a couple of months ago with zero subscribers i now at current count i think i’ve got about 92.
it means the world the fact that you’ve all kind of bothered to give me your time means a lot um and yeah thank you so much um there’s so much on the way to this channel i cannot wait all this stuff is just the start it’s an awful lot coming as you can see my studio is starting to take shape now as well but i am genuinely appreciative if you have engaged with this channel in any way and remember just subscribe you won’t miss an episode in the future it doesn’t cost you anything which is even better if you’re interested in how youtube works i thought you might be interested to see the video that kicked off the growth really um i did a review of the sony xm4 over the year noise cancelling headphones and i just did it at the right time basically they were just released at that point i did a comparison video between their the old version and it just went for it i mean it blew up in my terms it blew up big time not in mk bhd terms or jonathan morrison terms it but for me it really blew up and it’s what sparked the growth i’ve seen in the last few weeks so yeah just keep watching for a link to that video again thank you so much for i will see you next time you
Read More: M1 Apple MacBook Air – 2 weeks later | Should you buy? | Reviews
