Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by Squarespace whether it's a domain website or online retail store you need to make your next move with Squarespace be sure to start your free trial today at squarespace.com and throw in a forward slash science to do linked in this video description for 10% off your first purchase every once in a while I have to review something controversial on this channel there's one way to get the comments exploding down below it's an Apple product Apple has a stigma for charging more than its competitors for an equally SPECT product this example here is no exception I've been using the Dell XPS 13 this is the fully loaded model right here costing about fifteen hundred dollars for about six months now and I'm very satisfied with it but something told me that I needed to go out and purchase a MacBook Pro now this is the base model here I still ended up paying about twelve hundred and fifty dollars after-tax so not too far off from this laptop here this one is SPECT much higher than this one although i5 and i7 ultra-low power processors really don't differ much in terms of performance so in this video while stepping on many of your toes I imagine I'll be giving you my honest impressions of the MacBook Pro 13-inch 2017 model here we go so my impressions out of the box this is without a doubt the best built ultra book on the market period cannot take that away from Apple the solid aluminum body is pristine and the edges are very fine part of the reason why people are willing to pay the Apple tax because these products are built so well I can attest to it only in this case but also in the $2,000 Apple experiment case where I purchased two grand worth of Apple products at one MacBook 12 inch and iPhone se which was later upgraded to an iPhone 7 and an Apple sport watch I had never gone full Apple before not only was the ecosystem great but the build quality and all the products that I purchased was top-notch ok ok Greg we get it Apple products are built well so what there are two huge drawbacks when choosing a macbook pro over a Dell XPS 13 for example the first is the limited i/o so two USB type-c ports on the far left you can charge an either one of those but that's all you got so yeah be prepared to bring some dongles the other huge drawback at least for some people is the operating system Mac OS is well Mac OS look I'll be honest I didn't purchase the macbook pro for mac OS what I really purchased it for was on the go video editing I talked about this to an extent in this video right here but MacBooks and MacBook Pros even MacBook Airs are actually when it comes to video editing thanks to a certain program and that is final cut chances are anyone who's professionally edited on a MacBook laptop has used Final Cut Pro and there's a good reason it is extremely well optimized I can edit 4k footage on here usually around five minutes or so and it will literally render and around that same time that is incredible because FCP allows for background rendering so while you're editing and doing other things on your timeline the program is actually rendering the video for you look it takes around 10 to 15 minutes from my Rison 7 1700 X dual GT X 1080 sli setup to render an equivalent 4k file that mind you is an Adobe Premiere Pro which has many advantages over FCP but one of them is not rendering and that's really the meat of this video why I purchased this MacBook Pro for on-the-go video editing I don't need any fancy edits I don't need Adobe premieres special effects to a render travel vlogs you know but I don't do sophisticated edits when I'm not in the studio so this is just fine for that and it renders so quick I don't have to sit around and let this thing heat up in my lap I really missed the 12-inch MacBook actually gave it to my sister for Christmas last year so I decided to up the ante a bit and go for the MacBook Pro 13 inch again didn't spend much more than a MacBook last year like guess this is the base model pro but there are several improvements over the 12-inch MacBook that do want to hint at in this video the first improvement I noticed immediately was the keyboard so the MacBook 12-inch model had these weird butterfly switches that I never used before almost felt like I was typing on a desk there was really no actuation point and the key travel was extremely minimal now the key travel really hasn't been opted all on the MacBook Pro models but the butterfly series two switches are a bit more tactile you can feel the click of it better even though key travel is still reduced typing is a breeze and I have to be honest here it feels a bit better than my ex gets their teens keyboards 13 keyboard is a bit mushy kind of like typing on some membrane keyboard from 2004 the MacBook Pro though feels very modern now another huge improvement of this MacBook Pro over its previous generations the speaker setup so 13-inch MacBook Pros really haven't had the best speakers they've usually been down firing and toward the front sound a bit tinny the bass wasn't really there just wasn't clear overall the 15-inch MacBook though had really good speakers these MacBook Pros here have insanely good speakers even better than a 12-inch MacBook which already had better speakers than my XPS 13 did here have a listen so you can think of tessellation as the literal division of polygons that comprise objects that we see in games and other special effects here's the same max volume config on the XPS 13 so you can think of tessellation as the literal division of polygons that comprise objects that we see in games and other special effects to touch on poor selection per second this tends to be one of the most polarizing topics regarding MacBook Pros nowadays having two USB type-c ports gets limiting especially for some like myself who content creates a lot so I need preferably a nasty I would take I don't know I would swap one of these USB type-c doubt for an SD card slot I think I would be okay having a single type-c port and an SD card slot full size that would be alright of course I do miss having USB type a but I'm willing to accept the fact that people are ready to move on that's fine Apple is going to be one of the first companies innovate if you want to call it innovation the single headphone jack on the right-hand side of the laptop is nice to have although I do find it's funny that MacBook Pros include headphone jacks but iPhone 7s do not that's a little weird to me there are plenty of strategies we could argue about regarding Apple but they're they're a controversial company but it's one of the reasons why they're so popular and why they're so successful take the trackpad for example Apple has refined this to the point where going back to any previous generation MacBook Pro or any other laptop in existence for that matter feels primitive this is without a doubt the best trackpad in existence it's smooth and responsive through and through and the haptic engine makes things feel mechanical despite this literally being a piece of glass atop a motor battery life is also excellent i've streamed netflix for 12 hours uninterrupted at around 50 percent brightness should last you a full day without a doubt unless you're doing some serious video editing in which case expect around five to six hours of battery life lease with the base model if you opt for the model with the touch bar expect battery light to decrease by around an hour or two there are a few other physical constraints worth mentioning if you want to upgrade the SSD especially the model like this 128 gigs it's not going to be enough for most people going for a 256 gigs going to cost you an arm and a leg not only because well drives are pretty expensive nowadays but also because the drive in here is proprietary well not Apple proprietary but you'll be hard-pressed to find an SSD that will fit inside a laptop like this Ram is also soldered on so a good game Apple performance of the MacBook Pro overall though fairly solid this is only the i5 based model with 8 gigabytes of RAM but it does perform admirably against the higher priced XPS 13 sporting 16 gigs of ram and a core i7 frequency will throttle on demand pretty standard for most ultra-low power processors and this one here doesn't get too hot the fan really only turns on for me when of course I'm video editing or if I'm on a Skype call and doing something in the background maybe opening a few chrome tabs now to touch on the touch bar option for laptop like this I talked to many people who are differing views regarding the touch bar I played around with one that had it at Best Buy and I have to say I really wasn't all that impressed okay it's an OLED screen that's really cool so you don't have to see any weird backlight coming from a black background but is it really all that viable I mean to even see the touch bar you have to be looking at your keyboard from above so if you like using this thing on your lap while you're laying down good game and to be frank and a few demos I had seen the touch bar really didn't look all that versatile I mean sure it had a few shortcuts for some native Apple apps but I don't know it just it really didn't ring a bell for me and it didn't justify an extra two to three hundred dollar price tag the last thing I have to complain about here the camera this is a test of the MacBook Pros video quality I will say audio is on point pretty good for a 13-inch MacBook but the picture quality is subpar and that's kind of been the trend with apples a smaller laptops recently even the 12-inch MacBook stuff are the same issue is this mediocre video call you expect better from Apple especially when you're paying this much for laptop so to sum this one of the things that I really like about the new MacBook Pro 13-inch the speakers definitely the beautiful Retina display that gets extremely bright and it's also fairly accurate in color reproduction and to be honest the keyboard I would also include battery life but most ultrabooks can get around 8 to 10 hours so this is really nothing special for the MacBook Pro at this point the things that I don't like poor selection the camera and the price I have to say though despite paying around $1,300 for this device I think the pros outweigh the cons this is a beautiful laptop it really is and it's so reliable functional yeah the operating system is limiting for some but you know you're getting into that when you purchase an Apple product in the first place I know it sounds super strange for a Windows guy who builds pcs for living and runs Windows on all of them to recommend a MacBook Pro but I'm telling you if you do a lot of traveling and you traveling at all for that matter and you're concerned about video editing on the go spend around 300 bucks on Final Cut Pro it's worth it for a MacBook of this caliber and buy a MacBook I know that's going to earn me some dislikes I get it but I have to be completely honest here look it's not for everybody I would say most people who go to school who just type out documents and email thing you can buy a really cheap laptop and do that this isn't like the perfect college laptop because it's so dang expensive but for people on the go like myself who want to edit outside of the studio this is an excellent setup as always you can find a link to the macbook pro in this video's description check out the different models kind of pricings out see what you think about the system overall if you're really in doubt about whether or not a system like this is worth it especially considering the drawbacks as I mentioned then not go into your local store and test one out just get a feel for a build quality and the operating system I think those are the two biggest shocks for anybody entering the Apple ecosystem also be sure to check out the other link down below squarespace.com /sy in studio for that ten percent off any purchase within Squarespace if you want to own your own 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