Gadgetory

hey how's it going guys this is Dave 2d and this is my review of the 12-inch MacBook now when it first came out I used it for about a week and I started to do my review but then I realized that that wasn't enough time to give this thing a proper review just because it was a new kind of device so I use it for longer I use it for about a month and here's my review one month with one hole by 12-inch MacBook Review just a quick unboxing here $1300 space gray base model eight gigs of ram and 256 gigs of storage underneath the notebook is a pack of pamphlets AC adapter in a USB see male-to-male cable inside the pamphlet pack are some great Apple logo stickers they're not white they're not black they are great the size of the machine is something you notice right away it's really thin and light and seriously makes the 13 inch MacBook Air feel kind of clunky and heavy this thing is so small it comfortably fits in the slot of my backpack that was originally designed for our tablets when using the new macbook in the car I immediately notice that I could type on it without adjusting my seat back but making everything small does kind of cramp some things up the keyboard itself isn't cramped but because it has a smaller footprint you kinda have to put your legs closer together to hold it in your lap and I also found that I was always hunched over a little bit more when I was using this notebook compared to even a 13-inch MacBook Air even though Apple's marketing hyped-up the new butterfly mechanism in the keyboard I don't love it the keystrokes feel spongy err and the travel feels shorter than I'm used to and also prefer my up arrow to be placed above the left and right keys I'm not sure why they decided to suddenly change this the function keys and these skate keys are also positioned a little bit different from the way they were basically on every other Mac keyboard here's a 13-inch MacBook Air keyboard notice the arrow keys and the function keys I like it this way here's a 15-inch MacBook Pro keyword again notice the directional keys and the function keys same thing and this is Apple's wireless keyboard directional keys function keys and it's not just the layout these three keyboards feel almost identical when you're typing on them in fact every single keyboard made by Apple since the 2008 unibody z' has been almost identical in layout and mechanics until this 12-inch Mac now I understand they had to change the mechanism to make it thinner and lighter but they changed the layout as well and the truth is I got used to it and the individually backlit keys are cool but even after a month of using this thing I definitely prefer the older style more tactile keyboards the trackpad is a different story I really like the force touch trackpad the more I use it the more I like it and it doesn't really change the user experience much but the tech is cool and I like how it picks up clicks when I'm just clicking anywhere on the trackpad and yep just like the 13-inch MacBook Pro you can click super fast I actually think that this trackpad is the most distinguishing feature of this notebook so the closest competitor to this macbook is probably the quad HD version of the asus ux305 which starts at around a thousand bucks it has very similar specs to the macbook but if you've watched my review of the base model ux305 that thing has a pretty average trackpad and to me the four-star trackpad really separates the MacBook from competitors it's just a trackpad but an excellent trackpad makes a big difference for user experience now whether or not this trackpad is worth the $300 price difference that's up for debate I'm pretty sure you know by now this thing has the legendary single port having only one port makes the exterior design of this notebook super clean on one side you have two little mics and a headphone jack and that's it there's nothing else on this notebook other than that solitary use B 3.1 port charging and every kind of wired data connection has to be done through that port the 29 watt charger is pretty small and it takes about two and a half hours to charge it from empty to full and on a random note the male-to-male USB C charging cable that comes with it smells awful I mean it's the first Apple product I've ever owned that smelled like really cheap rubber and it's gross I also tried using a standard battery pack to charge the place and if you keep the lid closed it will charge the macbook ever so slowly it took almost five hours but it's kind of cool to be able to use a portable battery pack to juice up a notebook using the port for work or school is a little annoying if you use SD cards frequently like if you're a photographer or if you have SD card audio recordings from lectures I really wouldn't recommend getting this MacBook the hassle you need to go through with adapters and dongles will really annoy you over time the same thing goes for USB drives even though you'll get good at connecting and disconnecting these things it's annoying and if you forget your dongle at home or even worse if you lose an $80.00 dongle like I did you're boned and you can't connect your devices up at all but in the end of the day if you force yourself to only use this one port for work or school you'll get used to it and you'll get by so I force myself to use this notebook exclusively at work for the month it's comfortable in the lot because it's so light but like I mentioned earlier you can't sit with your legs super wide apart when using it on your lab I don't love the keyboard but it's good enough that I can comfortably type on it all day long and battery life is about eight hours for regular web use if you need a mouse for work or playing games at work ports are pretty rare here so you want to get a Bluetooth one the 480p webcam up top is terrible but I never used it other than to just laugh at how bad it was the screen is wonderful super high-res for a 12-inch at 2304 by 1440 colors pop viewing angles are great and if you care a spider pegs it at 75% of Adobe RGB color space but all in all it's a really great screen drive speeds are pretty fast around 450 right and a little bit over 750 for Reed so having drive speeds like this I thought maybe that five watt core and processor could struggle through 4k video edits but it can't playback is choppy and adding lots makes it basically unusable rendering a 10-minute 4k video took two hours I mean I shouldn't have even tried but I just really wanted to know how slow it really would be now 1080p video editing is a different story it's still a little sluggish but it's usable scrubbing around and playback isn't bad but a 10-minute clip with no Luntz took 52 minutes to render and just for reference a 15 inch base model retina MacBook Pro takes about 25 minutes it's not ideal but it is very usable if you need to edit 1080p videos I also took some thermals while I was doing the renders the 12-inch MacBook is on the right 13-inch MacBook Air on the left and remember this 12-inch MacBook is fanless so it's dead silent and it runs about 5 to 6 degrees cooler than the MacBook Air I stumbled upon a movie called free to play which is a documentary about pro dota players who are competing for that million dollar prize last year I started watching it just a test battery life but I totally got sucked in but in any case I got about seven and a half hours of battery life watching videos off the drive and this is with screen at max brightness and volume at about a quarter and similar to the asus ux305 games don't run that well on Core M processors I got about 35 to 40 frames per second in csgo with everything turned down and in dota 2 in Heroes and everything on low you get around 30 frames per second when you're laning and it drops down to about 20 frames per second in teamfights it's kind of playable but your team is gonna hate you so I just wouldn't recommend it battery life while playing games is about three and a half hours and this is the screen at max brightness volume at a quarter again the last thing I want to talk about are the speakers these speakers are one of the best notebook speakers I've ever heard better than 15 inch retina and from what I remember even better than the 17-inch MacBook from 2011 so here's what they sound like so after that first week of using this device I was still really in love with the idea of it I mean it's got a great screen great speakers really cool form factor and it comes in space great right lots of things to love about it and it's easy to fall in love with that new Apple product but after using for a month the little quirks kind of rise to the surface so individually they're not that big of a deal so like the forty P webcam and you can live with it the single port like I showed it's something you get used to you adapt to it and it's you can you can live with that the combo braking keyboard I mean I don't love that they shift it away from their old stuff but it's something you kind of get used to and you live with it and the price tag thirteen hundred bucks it's not the best deal in the world but this is the price you have to pay for top-tier Apple products so individually all these things are you can stomach them but when you combine them together you kind of think I should be in love with the product that I paid $1,300 for you should love it you shouldn't feel like you had to make sacrifices to enjoy and I don't love it so I think the next iteration of this device like the one that comes out next year it'll be faster it'll probably be cheaper there might even be another port or two and they're gonna be more USB C devices around at that time so that's probably where the money is so if you're on the fence I'd wait for that one that's the end of the review hope you guys liked it if you did give me some of these if you didn't give me some of these and if you loved it give me some subs it's nice I'll see you guys next time and here it is my one month with one whole 12 inch macbook review oh my god