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M2 Pro & M2 Max MacBook Pro Plus new Mac mini! Which one am I getting?

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Apple had a surprise announcement: the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, and a new Mac mini with the M2 and, for the first time, the M2 Pro. Here are the processors, the MacBook Pros and the Mac mini, and what I’m buying.

The chips

Like the M1 line, Apple took the basic M2 (from the redesigned MacBook Air and iPad Pro) and scaled it up.

  • M2 Pro: a 10- or 12-core CPU, up to 20% faster than the M1 Pro, and a 16- or 19-core GPU, up to 30% faster for graphics. Memory bandwidth is the same as before (200 GB/s), and I don’t know anyone complaining about that.
  • M2 Max: a 12-core CPU, about 20% faster than the M1 Max, with a 30- or 38-core GPU, up to 30% faster. Memory bandwidth is 400 GB/s, double the M2 Pro’s, which is double the M2’s 100 GB/s.
  • Both are 5 nm chips with billions more transistors, a media engine (two on the Max) and a new 16-core Neural Engine.

A 20–30% performance increase over versions that are less than two years old is hard to complain about.

The MacBook Pros

You’d be hard-pressed to find a physical difference from the previous generation, and that’s not a bad thing; they’re essentially perfect in my opinion. You still get the Liquid Retina XDR display (up to 1,600 nits), a keyboard with a full function row (which I have to state as a feature after that long period without them), a large trackpad, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, MagSafe, a headphone jack, an SD card slot and HDMI.

What changed:

  • Battery: up to 22 hours on the 16-inch and 18 hours on the 14-inch for video playback; more realistic numbers are about 15 and 12 hours of web browsing.
  • Wi-Fi 6E (you’ll need a 6E router, and per my YouTube poll, most people either don’t have one or don’t know what it is) and Bluetooth 5.3 (which I don’t know what it does).
  • 8K display support: it limits other displays. The M2 Pro supports up to two external displays, but with an 8K, only that one, or a 4K at 240 Hz. The M2 Max supports four as before, but with an 8K it drops to three (two 6K and one 8K), or 4K at up to 240 Hz. If you know of a Mac app or game that can use 240 Hz, let me know.

Prices stayed the same: the 14-inch starts at $1,999 (10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16 GB, 512 GB), and the 16-inch at $2,499 (12-core CPU, 19-core GPU, 16 GB, 512 GB). Configured like for like with the 12-core processor, memory and storage, they’re only $200 apart, for a bigger display, bigger speakers, a bigger battery and a bigger trackpad.

The Mac mini

The case is essentially unchanged. The new M2 Pro version has four Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back instead of two, and the Mac mini can run up to three displays, but with an 8K display, just that one. The baseline price dropped: $599 for the M2 with an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, up to an M2 Pro with up to 32 GB and 8 TB. The math gets fuzzy against the Mac Studio when you spec it up, so more on that to come.

What I’m buying

I’m taking it easy this round: no Mac mini for now (tell me if you want me to get one), but I’ll get a new 14-inch MacBook Pro. I’ve had a lot of M1 MacBook Pros: the 13-inch M1, the 14-inch, the 16-inch, M1 Pro and Max, 16, 32 and 64 GB, 1 and 2 TB, new and Apple refurbished. I settled on a refurbished 14-inch M1 Max “Baby Max” (24-core GPU, 32 GB, 1 TB). I don’t need all that power, I just like the headroom for video editing and my day job without bottlenecks.

So this time: the M2 Max with the 12-core CPU, 30-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine, 32 GB of memory and a 2 TB SSD (I need extra space for local projects), in silver, because silver is the better color. It comes to an eye-watering $3,499. I’ll lose at least 20% reselling my old laptop, but I’ll gain 20–30% in performance, so I think it evens out.

What did you think of Apple’s surprise announcement in January of all months? Tell me what you’d like tested.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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