Gadgetory

So when the 12 inch MacBook (2016) dropped last year on paper, it didn't seem to make much sense. It was under-speced, under-powered, but it quickly became a favorite of mine and something I use on a daily. Fast forward to 2016, the new models are here, but before you pick one up, here are five things you should know. So, what's up guys? Jonathan here, and first up, the new MacBook now comes in everyone's favorite color to argue about, rose gold. Initially we saw rose gold debut with the iPhone 6s and the Apple Watch, but it's since made it's way over to the iPad Pro, iPhone SE, and now the 12 inch MacBook has the fourth color option, in addition to silver, gold, and my favorite, space gray. Personally, the only thing this does is gets me excited for the possibility for different color options coming to the iMac or the MacBook Pro, because the things I would do for a space gray iMac. But at the very least, if rose gold is your thing, you and the new MacBook just became best friends. Second up on the list of things to know is aside from the new color options, the design is exactly the same. The new MacBook isn't any thinner, it's not any lighter, and what Ralph Wiggum-ed my heart just a little bit, is there aren't any additional ports, just a single USB-C on the left and a headphone jack on the right. So for me, as much as I love the initial MacBook, if I could change simply adding a second USB-C port would be amazing, especially with USB-C becoming more widely adopted. Samsung's new T3S, these are what I use to edit my videos and those actually connect via a USB-C, so it would be awesome to have that plugged in the first port and power going to the second. It's definitely not a deal breaker. It didn't stop me from using the initial MacBook almost every day, but it would've been a killer change. Now the third thing that you need to know is the new MacBook is unassumingly powerful. Earlier this year when I mentioned the MacBook it handled 4K editing, no one believed me, sure and behold that not only did it handle it, it passed that test with flying colors and exported a 4 minute 4K video in just about 6 minutes which is bonkers. So while the 2016 MacBook looks the same on the outside, there's actually some changes on the inside starting with Intel 6th Generation Skylake Processors. You now have the option of a 1.1 gigahertz m3 processor, a 1.2 gigahertz m5 processor, or you can bump it all the way up to a 1.3 gigahertz m7 processor. Now that might not sound like a huge jump, but where the difference happens is the turbo boost. The m3 will jump up to a 22.2, the m5 will go up to 2.7 gigahertz, and then finally the m7 will turbo boost all the way up to 3.1 gigahertz. Now numbers and fancy tech terms aside, I personally would not waste the money and jump up to the m7. It makes sense if you're going up to the mid-tier model because you're getting more storage, but at the end of the day if you want more power, the money you're spending towards that top-tier, that should go towards a 13 inch MacBook Pro. As far as performance goes, though, in Geekbench 3, the new 2016 MacBook dished out a Single-Core Score of 2530, and a Multi-Core Score of 5023. For comparison with the 2015 baseline model on the Single-Core side of things, that was 2329, and then on the Multi-Core, that was 4490. So not a huge deal on Single-Core performance, but a pretty solid jump Multi-Core wise. On top of that, you're getting better graphics performance and also really noticeable differences on the flash storage speed. With the 2015 baseline MacBook, those speeds were on 468 megabytes per second on the write side, and 770 on the read side. But with the 2016 baseline MacBook, that jumped up to over 610 megabytes per second write, and over 920 megabytes per second read. Now the jump in performance is nice, but the fourth thing that you need to know is that the 2016 MacBook still has a potato camera. One thing that shocked me last year when they announced 12 inch MacBook was when I found out it had a 480p webcam. I naturally assumed that that would be upgraded in 2016, but for some reason, it is still 480p. Austin, wake up, look at this quality. Look at this quality. To be fair, I can probably count the number of times I've used that camera on one hand, but regardless, it is 2016, and the fact that it's not at least 720p is crazy. Lastly, the fifth thing that you need to know is that even though there's a jump in performance, we're gonna see better battery life on these MacBooks. What's interesting is they manage to squeeze a higher capacity battery and presumably what is the same real estate. So with the 2015 MacBook, that housed a 39.7 watt battery, whereas the 2016 MacBook jumps up to 41.4. So that, in combination with more efficient processors should lead to an extra hour of battery life across the board. And in the that light, there is a positive with Apple not making this any thinner in sacrificing battery life, because for me more performance and longer battery is a win. Now if you wanna see something crazy, potentially what's inside this new MacBook, we had a chance to hang out with legends Dan and Lincoln over on the What's Inside? Channel. We tore this baby apart, it was tragically beautiful. So if you wanna see that and also have a chance to win a brand new 12 inch rose gold MacBook, those details are down below. Appreciate it man. - Show the back of it, look at the back of it. - Oh, man! - Come look at that. - [Lincoln] What? - Whoa! - [Dan] Come on, Lincoln. Let's get you in this.