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Apple officially unveils the new 16-inch Macbook Pro

by on13 November 2019


Updated: Largest Retina screen, new keyboard, and new hardware

As expected and rumored earlier, Apple has now officially unveiled its new 16-inch Macbook Pro, coming with the largest Retina screen so far, new keyboard and Force Touch trackpad, Touch Bar, Touch ID, and all new hardware, including up to 8-core CPU, new Radeon Pro 5000M series GPUs, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 8TB of storage.

The new Macbook Pro is built around what Apple calls "the largest Retina display", or a 60Hz 16-inch IPS LED-backlit screen with 3072x1920 resolution, leaving it with 226 ppi of pixel density. It has 500 nits of maximum brightness, has True Tone technology, and support for P3 color gamut. Apple was keen to note that each screen is individually calibrated in the factory for accurate gamma, white point, and primary colors.

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The larger screen means that the 16-inch Macbook Pro is slightly larger, but not by much. It measures at 35.79x24.59x1.62cm (14.09x9.68x0.64-inch) and weighs 2.0kg (4.3 pounds), which is just slightly more than the 15-inch Macbook Pro. Apple slimmed down the bezels on the screen, by up to 25 percent at the top and 34 percent at sides, and it is pretty compact for a 16-inch laptop.

Plenty of hardware to choose from including new AMD Radeon Pro 5500M GPU

On the hardware side, you get Intel's 9th generation Coffee Lake CPUs, including a 6-core/12-thread Core i7 with 12MB of L3 cache, working at 2.6GHz base and 4.5GHz Turbo (most likely the Core i7-9750H), or an 8-core/16-thread Core i9 CPU with 16MB of L3 cache, clocking at 2.3GHz base and 4.8GHz Turbo (the Core i9-9880H), and another 8-core/16-thread Core i9 CPU but with higher 2.4GHz base and 5.0GHz Turbo clocks (the Core i9-9980HK).

The CPUs can be paired up with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of 2666MHz DDR4 memory, and 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB or 8TB SSD storage.

On the GPU side, things are a bit more interesting, as you get AMD's unannounced Radeon Pro 5000M series GPUs, including the Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory, or Radeon Pro 5500M, which comes in both 4GB or 8GB GDDR6 flavors. The Radeon Pro 5500M apparently has 24 CUs, or a total of 1536 Stream Processors, which makes it more powerful than the Radeon RX 5500M counterpart.

Update:

AMD has officially announced the new Radeon Pro 5000M GPUs, sharing a bit more details on these two GPUs that come with the new 16-inch Macbook Pro. 

According to AMD, these deliver up to 4.0 TFLOPs of compute performance, for Pro 5500M, and up to 3.2 TFLOPs for the Pro 5300M. The Pro 5500M comes with 20 CUs, or 1280 Stream Processors, and is limited to 4GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit memory interface. The Pro 5500M comes with up to 8GB of 128-bit GDDR6 memory which leaves it with up to 192 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

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According to Apple, the new Radeon Pro 5500M is up to 2.1x faster than the Radeon Pro 560X, which is not a big surprise considering that was Polaris 21-based GPU with 1024 Stream Processors and GDDR5 memory. The Pro 5500M offers up to 189GB/s of memory bandwidth and has "up to 24 CUs".

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All new Apple Magic Keyboard for 16-inch Macbook Pro

The biggest update to the 16-inch Macbook Pro is the new keyboard, something that has plagued Macbook Pro users for some time. This time around, Apple calls it the "Magic Keyboard" and it has switched back from butterfly to standard scissor switch. It has a 1mm key travel and should provide "a comfortable, satisfying and quiet typing experience", according to Apple.

In addition to the Magic Keyboard, the 16-inch Macbook Pro also comes with the Touch Bar and Touch ID, as well as a big Force Touch trackpad.

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Bigger laptop gets more room for speakers

Due to the size of the 16-inch Macbook Pro, Apple had room to squeeze in a six-speaker system, with "dual force-canceling woofers" and also included the "studio-quality three-mic array". It is left to be seen on how well does these sound and pick up sound, but the six-speaker system should be good.

New Macbook Pro also gets a bigger battery, T2 security chip

Apple was keen to note that Macbook Pro comes with Apple T2 Security chip, four Thunderbolt 3 ports (up to 40Gb/s), usual connectivity options.

Most importantly, Apple squeezed in a big 100Whr LiPo battery, and it comes with a 96W USB-C charger. According to Apple, the battery should be enough for up to 30 days of standby time, if you like it looking pretty, or up to 11 hours of web surfing on wireless, and up to 11 hours of movie playback on Apple TV.

Same starting price as the previous Macbook Pro, shipping in 1-3 days

The new 16-inch Macbook Pro launches at the same price as the 15-inch one, staring at $2,399 for the base and $2,799 for the "upgraded" model.

The base $2,399 model gets you that 6-core Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, and Radeon Pro 5300M GPU. The $2,799 one beefs it up to first Core i9-9980 CPU, same 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage and that Radeon Pro 5500M 4GB GPU with 24 CUs.

Of course, if you go for the Core i9-9980HK CPU, 64GB of DDR4 RAM, 8TB of storage, and Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB, expect to pay $6,099, without additional software options, like Final Cut Pro X or Logic Pro X.

All options appear to be available and shipping within 1-3 days. 

 

Last modified on 13 November 2019
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