Review: Apple Macbook Pro notebook

Apple has been hyping the iPhone like crazy for the past few months.

Meanwhile, without much hype at all, its range of Macbook laptops has been quietly flying off the shelves and helping the company rack up record profits.

To keep the momentum going, it recently updated the Macbook Pro range – the high-end models aimed at professional users.

The new models aren’t a major step forward – the main improvement being the adoption of Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset, which bumps the front-side bus speed from 667MHz to 800MHz. However, there are a number of other small improvements that, taken together, make this a very worthwhile upgrade.

There are three models in the Macbook Pro range. Our review unit was the cheapest of the three, priced at £1,299. This model has a 15.4in widescreen display, 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB Ram (increased from 1GB in previous models) and 120GB hard disk.

Apple has also switched from an ATI graphics card to Nvidia’s Geforce 8600M GT with 128MB of dedicated memory. For £1,599 you can get a slightly more powerful model with 2.4GHz processor, 160GB hard disk and 256MB graphics memory. Bump the price up to £1,799 and you get a 17in screen as well.

The Santa Rosa chipset and new graphics card provide roughly 10 per cent better performance than the previous Macbook Pro model. That’s not a massive improvement, but the main purpose of this update is to keep the Macbook Pro in line with rival PC laptops that also use Santa Rosa.

There is one other significant change in this model, though. The 15.4in display (but not the 17in) uses LED backlights to illuminate the screen, rather than the fluorescent lamps used by conventional flatscreen displays. The old fluorescent lamps contain mercury – which is a big environmental no-no – so this new LED design is part of Apple’s attempt to produce more environmentally friendly products.

Apple claims the LED display also helps preserve battery life, although we found the notebook’s battery life to be similar to that of previous models – around two hours when used continuously for routine tasks, such as web surfing or running Microsoft Office applications.

The Macbook Pro also includes a built-in webcam, two USB2 and two Firewire ports, as well as Bluetooth and 802.11n (Draft-N) wireless networking. There’s also a single Express Card slot and a dual-layer DVD writer drive. But, as always with Apple products, the real appeal lies not in the machine’s tech specs, but in its design.

The Macbook Pro makes most PC laptops look like a bucket of spare parts. The elegant brushed metal design oozes class, and when folded shut it measures just one inch thick. Apple’s attention to detail extends to features such as the keyboard, which can be illuminated for use on planes or in dark rooms, and the Magsafe power cable falls away if it’s jerked suddenly.

In the past, there’s been a price to pay for Apple’s design values. However, one of the advantages of Apple’s switch to Intel processors is that – as well as keeping up with the performance of its PC rivals – it can also be more competitive on price.

We used the build-to-order option on Dell’s website to configure one of their Precision laptops with an almost identical specification, and it came out at much the same price. So, with up-to-date features at a competitive price, the Macbook Pro should continue to be one of Apple’s best-sellers.

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