Over the last decade, the use of apple laptops has increased tremendously, giving stiff completion to other tech giants such as Dell, HP, Samsung, etc. Apple has increasingly produced high-end machines in the lines of MacBook Pro and Air to remain relevant to its consumers.
Apple’s MacBook Pro and Air models have stayed steadfastly firm in their look and feel for numerous generations with just a few updates and tweaks annually, especially to their internal components. This is specifically to improve on hard drives, Wi-Fi connections, and processors for better user experience.
Apple went so far ahead of the curve when they first introduced the Pro and Air versions of MacBook to make them stand the test of time even as other competitors still struggle to reach this pinnacle.
From 2015 onwards, all MacBook versions have received some sort of update to make them unbeatable since they can best be described as “blink and you will miss it.” For both MacBook 13” Pro and MacBook Air, Apple upgraded to Intel’s 5th Gen Core i series processors, aka Broadwell. They also added the new force touch trackpad to the 13” Pro just to top it all off. The click-less trackpad uses some haptic feedback instead of the traditional hinge and has four sensors, which can be seen as apple’s only new design for laptop in years.
In comparison with the changes as mentioned above, the 15 inch MacBook Pro feels like it has been slighted in the updates department. The laptop version gets the Force Touch touchpad, and a relatively fast Solid State Drive coupled up with restructured graphics in the form of AMD Radeon R9 M370X GPU. Aside from these, the most critical improvement is missing since the Core i7 Processor used is similar to the 2014 model.
Despite the notable drawback mentioned, the 15” MacBook Pro has remained one of the biggest and most powerful laptops in the Apple family. It is a powerful all day everyday machine that will boost your productivity as a creative. This is if you are looking to get the extra GPU power for your video or photo work, and the substantial real estate of screen that is provided by the 15-inch Retina panel.
In the USA, the price of the 15-inch Retina MacBook remains at $1,499, which is a lot cheaper compared to Kenya's $1600. The laptop is considered a significant investment compared to the 13 inch Pro version because it is a universally all-rounded MacBook.
The Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro Features
Design and components
Apple is known for always making just some slight changes when it comes to upgrading MacBook versions. Over the years, they have not done much in terms of upgrades, and the 15- inch version is no different, aside from being a year younger than the predecessor. In fact, most of the components and impressions in terms of designs of the numerous previous iterations of this laptop have remained the same.
The 15” MacBook Pro, though slim, it feels a tad denser in comparison to newer laptops in the market as of 2020. This is because it comes with a wide desktop footprint that makes it heavier than it looks. One commendable upside of the laptop is its sense of indestructibility guaranteed by the flex-free aluminum body.
The laptop’s keyboard is still the same compared to the previous iterations of MacBook. Although other manufacturers have tried incorporating the backlit keyboard in this MacBook, they still cannot measure up to its capabilities. Companies such as Dell are known to invest a lot of resources in their keyboard development and designs, but they still have not been able to surpass the MacBook 15 inch Pro.
What’s totally new for this laptop is the Apple Force Touch Trackpad. This kind of trackpad eradicates the use of the top hinge that formerly required a user to depress physically on the lower half of the glass top of the touchpad in order to register a command as needed. In its place, the new force touchpad has four sensors underneath it (on each corner) to do away with the infamous diving board and come up with a neatly set up flat surface.
These four sensors make it so you can tap any part of the trackpad’s surface to end up with similar results, and a force click that combines all the sensors with a haptic effect, as mentioned earlier. This allows users to have different levels of perceived clicking within a task or an app. The resulting feeling is quite unique to the fingers if you are used to the usual glass top trackpads.
It is as clear as day that the MacBook 15 Inch Pro is a brilliant piece of engineering that has helped lots of futuristic laptops be thinner with not so many moving parts. Another significant bit is that these kinds of upgrades are so seamlessly done that it might not be easy to notice the differences.
The MacBook 15 inch Retina display was so futuristic at the time this laptop was introduced. It still remains a selling point because of its clarity, but as it is evident now, more and more laptops use better quality HD screens across many prices and sizes. The Retina display features a 2.880 by 1.800-pixel resolution, which is best seen when viewing professional high-resolution photography or when displaying text. By 2015, every MacBook had a better than 1080p display, apart from the two Air Versions, and the sole classic MacBook Pro.
Connections and Ports
Connections, performance, and battery
With the MacBook 15 inch Pro you get two thunderbolt2 ports that double as Mini display ports outputs, two USB 3.0 ports, a memory card slot, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth among other forms of connection. The laptop does not come with an Ethernet port and an optical drive, which are quite rare nowadays in the slim 15’ MacBooks.
The MacBook 15 inch Pro is a premium laptop; hence one can expect premium performance scores from this beast. With that said, the annual gain for this laptop is minimal. This is because the fifth-generation model's CPU is not upgraded in comparison to the fourth generation's Intel Core i-series chips. Although the 2015 MacBook 15 inch Pro has a distinct AMD graphics card, the Radeon R9 M370X, it is quite hard to tell the difference when you compare the 2015 and 2014 configurations.
The Radeon R9 M370X graphics card configuration is quite significant for high-end video and photo editing. But for gaming enthusiasts, the graphics card is not much different from Intel’s Iris card. Playing games on OS X is still feeble at best, especially for high-end games such as Last Night, Infinite and Metro, and BioShock that are available for MacBooks in handicapped forms that lack detail settings and high-end resolution. This becomes a downside considering that inferior laptop models such as the Dell XPS 15 that are better tuned for mainstream gaming.
Apple has always claimed that the tweaks and upgrades that they do to the Oss and battery chemistry should add to your battery life by about an hour. This, they say, is relevant to the 2015 MacBook 15 inch Pro compared to the previous model. Again, maybe because of an improved graphics card, this laptop’s battery life could be longer because it does not lag and performs functions quite faster than the 2014 model. In the most recent test of battery life, it ran for 9 hours 35 minutes in the video playback test, which is quite a commendable improvement.
The Good
The MacBook 15 inch Pro features a powerful processor, new options for graphics cards, a superb Retina Display, a new force touch trackpad, and quicker flash storage.
The Bad
The laptop gives only the most minimal improvements compared to the 2014 one despite being quite more expensive. The new Radeon R9 M370X also does not do much for gaming enthusiasts.
The 15-inch Macbook Pro is quite a powerful laptop, and even though it is portable, it is quite heavy; hence it will do well in your home docking stations than your laptop bags. It is one of the biggest and most powerful laptops in the MacBook family, which can explain the reason why Apple charges it as a premium.
If battery life and Radeon graphics card tickle your fancy, then this is the laptop worth investing your money on. Otherwise, there are better alternatives that perform better for this price range. From this review, it is clear that the positives outweigh the negatives. Purchasing the MacBook from within Kenya can be quite expensive considering the dealers pass forward all incurred expenses to you as a buyer, which is why Kentex cargo has come for your rescue by offering a cheaper alternative to you. We will help you ship your laptop and other products from the US at an affordable price of just $15/kg. Place an order and let Kentex cargo deliver to your doorstep as soon as possible.
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