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New MacBook Pro 14 Unboxing and First Look!

7:35 video

I have the new 14-inch MacBook Pro in my hands, with Apple’s second generation of Pro Mac chips: the M2 Pro and M2 Max. (Sorry about the audio in this one; the mic wasn’t attached.)

What I got

I ordered a 14-inch with the M2 Max (32 GB and 2 TB), but it won’t arrive until later this week, so I picked up the base M2 Pro from the Apple Store: a 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16 GB of memory and a 512 GB SSD. The M2 Pro can go to a 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU, and the Max to a 30- or 38-core GPU.

Unboxing

The box feels thicker than previous ones (the bottom doesn’t even line up with the top), and it opens with pull tabs. The packaging is largely recyclable and biodegradable. Inside: the MacBook Pro, with the laser-etched name on the bottom, the usual black “Pro” stickers, and a 67 W power adapter. If you get the 12-core CPU, you get a 96 W adapter instead. You also get a color-matched MagSafe cable this year on the 14- and 16-inch (mine is silver). I almost never use MagSafe, since I’m usually plugged into a dock.

Opening a brand-new Apple device just feels premium, and untouched. The design is unchanged from last year’s 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros: the same screen, keyboard, trackpad, speakers and ports. The difference is inside.

Inside

The M2 Pro and M2 Max are up to 20% faster than the M1 Pro and Max, from faster cores and two additional efficiency cores, which offloads work that doesn’t need high-powered CPUs.

Ports: on the left, MagSafe, two Thunderbolt 4 ports (which work with Thunderbolt 3 and USB4), and a headphone jack (on the Mac, the last product line to have one); on the right, HDMI, another Thunderbolt 4 and an SD card slot, which I absolutely love. There are vents below and one for the fan, which you basically never hear.

The keyboard got the full function row in the previous models, ditching the Touch Bar, which I love. The display is the same Liquid Retina XDR: up to 1,600 nits for HDR and 500 nits for regular content, which is more than enough for a very bright office. I think it’s the best display Apple makes (the 12.9-inch iPad Pro comes close), with mini-LED zones for really dark blacks and bright whites.

Setting up a new Mac can take a long time. If you’d like a video on migrating from an older Mac, let me know. (Sometimes the iCloud setup step just seems to take forever, and I don’t know why.)

First Geekbench

  • Single-core: 1,928, about 12% faster than the 8-core M1 Pro.
  • Multi-core: 12,284, essentially the same as the 10-core M1 Max.
  • Metal: 40,476, about 10% better than the 14-core GPU on the M1 Pro, again a small change from the 16-core M1 Pro.

So with the base model, I’m not seeing the 20–30% improvement Apple stated. But it’s the base model, and higher-end specs are available, so there’ll be questions about whether to upgrade from M1 Pro to M2 Pro or Max versions. Time and tests will tell, but in general, probably not. Still, it’s impressive that in this second generation, Apple achieves anywhere close to those improvements. I’m excited to test the higher-end models.

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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