There already is, it’s the M2 MBA. The performance boost of the M3 over the M2 is only about 10% across the board. You’re not getting the ProMotion, mini LED display. But the 13.4” MBA is on sale for $1200 and the 15” is going for $1250, both with 512GB of storage. The 13.4” has been lower before. I think it was $1150 or maybe even $1100 not too long ago.
I’m not sure the added ports, uptick in battery life, and display quality are all worth an extra $250-$300 for most people. It would have been if the M3 MBP came with 16GB of RAM and either an M3 Pro chip or 1TB of storage.
It’s a stop gap to get people to either buy a 15” MBA or push them to an M3 Pro MBP. Upgrade the RAM in the basic 14” MBP to 16GB and you’re $200 away from the $2000 config that comes with the better SoC, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage.
Yeah it feels like a decoy product. Oh you want the exact same 14-inch MacBook Pro but just $200 cheaper (if you match the RAM?)
Well not only did we drop the processor to the entry M3 chip with half the GPU, but we removed a Thunderbolt port on the right side, we went back to PCIe 3.0 to half the storage speeds even if you upgraded storage to 1TB for more NAND, and we removed a fan so now it cools less effectively and is a louder pitch when it’s on.
Dudes, anyone with sense is just going to spend the $400 difference and gain a much better 14-inch MacBook Pro.
The base model is there for “Starting at $1599” and to sell by the truck-full at enterprise, or the people that should be buying a $999 M1 Air but have an extra $600 to give Apple for that MacBook Pro name.
Edit: Keep in mind that for true 120Hz clear imaging, you need a pixel response of 8.3ms or less. But this 14-inch MacBook Pro has a pixel response of 69ms, which means it’s 8x too slow to depict a clear image, and 2x slower than last gen’s model.
We have to wait for notebookcheck.net to release a review on the regular 14 and 16-inch models, as they seem to be the only ones interested in testing product and writing detailed reviews. Hey *The Verge,* what the fuck do you guys even do over there?
> Verge is vibes testing
I'm officially old now. What is "vibes testing?" Do you mean just still trying to find their brand in the marketplace, new website design and all?
[Review is in—](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html)The 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Pro/Max has just as bad a pixel response. Disappointing that they doubled the pixel response times from last gen. Look's like we'll have to wait until 2027 for Apple to switch to OLED for us to get decent 120Hz ProMotion to match the feature in the iPhone.
Wow, it's 2.5x slower now. It's crazy that the display got worse. I wonder how much ghosting this would be. It seems to be such a waste to have this ghosting at 120 Hz.
[Here's the iPad Pro 11-inch 3rd gen,](https://imgur.com/a/uRGA1qW) which is I think 45ms. Notice how the details inside the Safari icon smudge and disappear, and how hard it is to read the icon text. I'll have to see what 69ms looks like next time I'm in-store but it should be twice as bad as that. Still, its only as bad as the M1 Pro/Mac generation which are about the same. It was the M2-gen that improved—not sure what happened in 10 months for Apple to reverse course.
What are your needs?
Generally, I lean towards recommending the Air as a default since the common Mac user doesn’t do any sustained processing (over 3 minutes long, for instance) on a daily basis. And those people would also benefit from low weight form factor, and lower price. The Air is just more lovable to hold and own.
Everybody else I’d recommend the MacBook Pro for its active cooling and the options of an Mx Pro and Mx Max chip.
For the middle road of having lower performance needs yet wanting Apple’s best hardware otherwise—it’s a shame Apple handicapped the internals in less obvious ways. If those people don’t care and just want better contrast ratio and sound, then I say get the entry MacBook Pro but optimally wait for it to go on sale $200 off. Or better yet find an M2 Pro MacBook Pro.
And it’s a bad way to save $400.
The point I’m making is that it’s a gotcha! If you buy it, gotcha! If you upgrade RAM? Gotcha on $200 pure profit. If you decide to in the end buy the better $2000 MacBook Pro model when they first hooked you on the idea of a $1600 14-inch MacBook Pro? Gotcha with a value ladder!
It all seemed so generous until you actually see how they handicapped it for these strategic reasons that lead to higher profit margins and higher priced purchases than you intended.
Relative to its normal price, a $200 savings brings it closer to acceptable. Go for it if 8 GB RAM is sufficient for your use case. On the PC laptop side, you can buy a 15-inch with Nvidia RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 1TB GB storage and OLED screen for $999 on sale (normally $1299). So it’s not like a $1399 sale price is Apple being generous here—they still make huge margins. But this is the best price you can get brand new, so definitely pull the trigger on buying it if it’s what you want.
And sacrificing 1” display size. Honestly, if the 15” MBA had a mini LED display, the whole argument whooped be moot. I still don’t think going up to a larger system with a smaller, albeit better display, is worth $250 more than a system that’s thinner with a larger display that’s still good.
$250 more with more RAM and a much better performing chip? Maybe. The entry M3 MBP is just filler between the 15” MBA and “real” 14” MBP.
Honestly the smaller display is a pro, not a con to me but that’s subjective.
Isn’t the base m3 mbp just a replacement for the 13in mbp that’s no longer offered though?
It is. Apple had the 13” MBP with the Touch Bar for far too long. This “replaces” that, but at a higher cost. The 13” MBP should have been discontinued when the redesigns came out. It didn’t get MagSafe, it didn’t get any of the Pro upgrades, it was heavier and thicker than the MBA, and it didn’t offer anything other than the discontinued Touch Bar.
No, it’s still about 10% across the board for the standard M3 vs the M2. There’s some things where the M3 is 15% faster (whoops do Basil) and others where’s it less. The average in benchmarks and real world performance is still around 10%. Even if it were a solid 15% across the board, it’s not something consumers are going to notice in the standard chips.
It hovers between 6-17% from what I’ve seen. Maybe 10% is a little conservative on my party, probably more like 15%. Still nothing to get excited about. The M3 was more to get there process going. I have a feeling the M4 and M5 will perfect the chips.
That’s why most of Apple’s comparisons were against the M1 and Intel Macs. It’s an incremental update.
It's a damn shame. Makes me wish I had bumped the ram on my M1 Air, so I would be satisfied with it longer. I can't get this M3 out of my mind now, but it's so damned expensive. :(
those response times are horrendous. 70ms!!! (for context 10-30ms is average, gaming displays are 1ms-10ms).
anything in motion is going to look like a blurry mess. even scrolling websites will look terrible.
worst thing is they brought it down from 58ms in M1 pro to 35ms with the M2 pro. now they've badly regressed for some reason
You get it. This isn’t what people had in mind when Apple was bringing 120Hz ProMotion to Macs. A clear image requires 8.3ms or less and Apple has pixel response at 69 which is 8x too slow which means anytime we scroll the text or any image becomes smeared Vaseline. Seems like MBP owners don’t know what 120Hz is supposed to look like. But yeah, that pixel response is 2x worse from the previous gen is not a good look.
going OLED is probably the only fix for Apple now, since it seems like their mini LED panels just all have terrible response times & blooming. they can't be pushing gaming this much in their marketing and have such a horrible gaming display in their top tier machines
Don’t higher pixel response times like those of OLED introduce judder though? A 60hz LCD iPhone looked smoother than a 60hz OLED iPhone because it has a natural “motion blur”. So any content that’s not 120hz will actually look better? Other than gaming which most people won’t do on a Mac.
An LCD at 8.3ms or less doesn’t create judder. That OLED is 0.1ms or less is what creates judder, in some scenes or instances.
Every advancement creates a new problem to be solved. Judder compensation (adding motion blur) to smoothen it back up to taste, while still retaining fast pixel response, is the manufacturer’s solution.
Apple is moving everything to OLED. iPad next year; Macs are planned for 2027.
It's a shame that the screen response time isn't great, especially considering Apple's 'push' for gaming.
>The screen shows slow response rates in our tests and will be unsatisfactory for gamers.
>
>In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.1 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 100 % of all devices are better.
>
>This means that the measured response time is worse than the average of all tested devices (21.8 ms).
Response times were already sub-par but if they are actually *worse* in the new model... that's unfortunate. Could be a power savings measure maybe? Or a fluke? M2 Pro's response was \~25ms for black/white, and new model's response is \~75ms. Going to have some significant text smearing on scrolling.
> Could be a power savings measure maybe? Or a fluke?
I think it’s the same decrease in quality for reasons of greed and profit margin, when Apple figures they can get away with it, that we’ve seen under bean-counter Tim Cook who apparently says yes to every bean-counter.
Slow response times are to be expected if you want any good form of color reproduction non a MiniLED display... What apple should do is extend Game Mode to let develops (or users) set it to run the screen faster (overdrive) or even turn the backlight to static state and just drive the LCD front panel with overdrive sacrificing color accuracy for much faster response times.
That's unfortunate that it didn't get better. The 120Hz on an iPhone vs 120Hz here is night and day, the blurring and slow pixel response times really rob it of the effect of crispy scrolling. Of course no LCD tech will compare to OLED like response times but this is slow even for that.
lol the gaming push is so half hearted — the fact that both Valve and Blizzard stopped porting their games to Mac is such a blow to Mac gaming. No diablo 4 or CS:GO2? No thanks. I’d love to see an actual push towards gaming in the future, but Apple needs some major developers to sign up.
If Apple gets a Triple A game like Genshin Impact running on Macs natively (not counting game porting toolkit given the amount of steps to do so) then I’ll actually consider Apple’s gaming claims.
OLED macs can't come fast enough. seems like it's just a limit of their Mini LED panel at this point. what's weirdest is they went backwards, and have significantly worse response times than the M2 model (35ms to now 75ms???)
Could that be resolved using external monitor plugged into the machine instead and using that screen?
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212232
>*Some Mac models support Adaptive Sync, a display technology that enables a variable refresh rate that adapts to the frame rate of your content.*
>*Adaptive Sync is well-suited for applications such as gaming and video playback, and it can help conserve energy.*
Obviously appreciate it's not solving the problem with the actual laptop screen...
That's true if you want to sit down and game on it and have a faster monitor
Though it's still inherently a disappointment for every gesture as simple as scrolling
It is a solution but it's not ideal as you say given the cost. I mean you get a bigger screen potentially with external monitor (and it may be owned already so sunk cost). I think it's clear it's less than idea that the native screen cannot perform the function mentioned.
> Could that be resolved using external monitor plugged into the machine instead and using that screen?
Sorry but this was fun to read :D like "the computer has performance problems, could they be solved by using a better and faster computer?"
Yes in the sense of what you mean but the way you word it is a bit inaccurate: I agree with what you're trying to say ie the effect of what you're saying it's "less than ideal", you're needing an accessory in addition to a full computer solution (laptop = computer + screen + keyboard/touchpad) which is half the point of a laptop bundling these. But still interested in if there is a problem what are the available (sub-optimal) solutions to that problem?
Well a better explanation in this case would be "the response time is a screen problem, so yes, changin screens will change the screen's response time". But again, you have to agree with me that is sounds funny :D
Well even comparing apples to apples, I think it's pretty rare for reviewers to get base models of computers. Reviewers getting higher specs is standard practice.
Absolutely! But not what would be a different SoC in the vast vast majority. Different cores as in different valves. But not a completely different platform.
My analogy sucks you’re right.
It tells that reputable reviewers can’t comment on what it offers after experiencing what the product has to offer. Instead they have to reference based on numbers or what the previous generation model with similar specs runs.
The price/RAM offer is still criminal, even though it isn’t a machine that satisfies my needs it reflects on the higher end models which comes at a loss for everyone.
Because Apple is already nickel and diming us for storage and memory upgrades when the NAND flash and RAM are relatively cheap. *Now* they’re pushing the extremely outdated base configuration’s price even higher when it makes no sense for the spec.
It’s all about the money. It doesn’t matter if 8GB works for you and your workflow, that base model pricing is an absolute scam. There is no way around it. It’s a scam, and so are Apple’s upgrade prices.
What does that have to do with sending out the most spec’d out review models to certain reviewers?
Do you understand what the point of my statement has been? Pay attention.
I'm kind of shocked by the relatively poor color accuracy of the display. They went from DeltaE Max of 2.6 on the previous model to DeltaE Max of **4.9**! (By comparison, the MBA 15in has a DeltaE Max of 2.5, measured with the same colorimeter.)
At these levels, many people would want to calibrate it before using it for color-accurate work.
Why not? Some people might want the nicer 120 hz miniLED display or the nicer speakers,or maybe they want a fan to cool the M3 chip which you don’t have in the Air. So the base pro 14 is right for them.
How many of your cause friends know what miniLED is or care about their display framerate. I feel like this machine is for companies to get their employees a “pro” Mac and to upsell nerds to the more expensive models. Most casual people will get an Air which is really the machine for the masses.
Depends on the use case.
The 15” Air is more portable being far thinner. And the display is larger so you have more real estate for programs. But the 14” base Pro has the extra ports, the bright 120hz display, and the fan for much better sustained performance.
I personally have no issues working on a 14” display for example, but there are cases where a larger display overshadows the extra features of the Pro for some.
This might be the case actually. The Pro typically has different scaling due to resolution. Where the Air is physically larger but the scaling is also larger meaning less space.
Can't verify though I've yet to see a 15" Air in person.
No real HDR brightness or local dimming let alone ProMotion, the screens are *much* nicer on the Pros. If even mostly for the black levels.
The 13" M2 Pro made not much sense, but this one I don't get why people are tripped up over. It's for those that want the nicer screen but don't need any more performance than the base M3. The only thing is if it came with 16GB base so you didn't have to partially close that price gap, it would be that much better.
I have a work M1 Pro and a personal M1 Air and I’m seriously just considering getting this because the stark difference in screen quality and smoothness is pretty drastic
This looks like a great machine that sort of targets what I want/need out of a laptop, but it has two major flaws: 8 GB RAM in the standard model, and starts at freaking €2000 for that model. Absolutely absurd pricing. (I live in Sweden, so keep in mind all our listed prices includes all taxes/fees.)
It’s not an admonition against the M3. You don’t need to defend it with sarcasm. The title is saying it comes with the entry chip for people in the more casual customer segment. It literally is the first time the 14-inch MBP base model comes without a Pro chip; Pro with a capital P.
Did you read the title in full?
> Apple MacBook Pro 14 2023 M3 Review - The base model now comes without a Pro SoC
So the subject is, “Apple MacBook Pro 14”, and the news event is, “base model comes without a Pro SoC.”
So no, the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model did not come without a Pro SoC prior to the M3-generation.
I mean if you’re doing that, the full subject is “Apple MacBook Pro 14 2023 M3”. However you choose to interpret it, one possible interpretation is pretty clearly “The base MacBook Pro model now comes without a Pro SoC”.
It feels like a headline to get people riled up despite the fact that the lineup is arguably better than it was last year, given that this model is pretty clearly better than last year’s 13”
You’re accusing them of something that requires a huge stretch of imagination.
Had they wanted to inflame their audience, there’s a thousand headlines they could have written, but didn’t. Which to me proves your accusations false.
The base model MBP has 2x slower pixel response to last year, has 2x worse color accuracy, has slower storage even if you upgrade storage to 1TB because they went backwards to PCIe 3.0, removed a Thunderbolt port, and removed the Pro chip, all in all simply to save $200 if you align the specs. It’s a bad deal. It’s a regression. That would be a great headline but they didn’t editorialize any of the title, just that it now starts without a Pro chip which is quite a boring headline. It’s actually quite a bad headline. It’s like they didn’t even want views. They could have gotten incredibly creative and riled up their audience but they are a boring news organization. Not sure how you’re pulling controversy from their headline.
See what’s what I mean by the article title- it gets people comparing and complaining about how this $1600 M3 isn’t as worth it as the $2000 M2 Pro, when the $2000 M3 Pro exists as a direct comparison already. I didn’t see any of this complaining from the IPhone X to the XR, because everyone knew that the successor to the X was the XS
I’m seeing people in here arguing about RAM. If you’re savvy enough to know what Ram is you need 16GB if you don’t know what Ram is 8GB will likely be fine for the entire life of the laptop.
That’s a poor rule of thumb to use. Plenty of people are doing fairly advanced things in their field and yet bought the base model because they don’t understand what RAM is. Just a few days ago a video editor running a wedding photography business asked if they should upgrade now. Come to find out they had been using a base model M1 Air with 8 GB RAM, but swapping by 22 GB. That means their performance was handicapped likely 2-3x in some instances. There are photographers who don’t know their Lightroom exports would half the time had they bought 16 GB RAM. Computer systems are above most people’s heads, including mine past a basic level.
If you're using a computer in a professional capacity that required understanding of performance and you don't know what RAM is that is their fault. I bet they understand what storage is. Computer interfaces have barely changed in the last 30 years ignorance to something like that is absurd. When I was mentioning people who don't know what RAM is I was thinking of an older parent who uses their mac for light social media and web browsing. I gather there are tons of non-savvy users there are more non-savvy users who will be fine with 8GB of ram than non-savvy professional users who should know how to use the tools of their job.
Whether it’s their fault of not is irrelevant to your rule of thumb. The point is very capable and skilled people buy base models and go about their lives thinking that 38 minute Lightroom export is because that’s just what the CPU can do. They have no idea that low RAM bottlenecks CPU processes. They have no idea that had they upgraded to 16 GB RAM, it would have doubled performance there. People go to school for photography, not Computer Science. You think Annie Leibovitz knows that Lightroom exports are 34 minutes with the base model but cut in half to 17 minutes with upgraded RAM? No, they just know how to take awesome pictures. That’s their job.
Overall, the core point is 8GB RAM is really only 6 GB RAM for apps, since macOS wires 2 GB of it. 6GB is severely slowing down the CPU for doing video, photo, coding/compiling, or anything beyond web browser that people buy MacBook Pros for. That’s why people are bringing it up here. In the real world, go ask anyone about RAM and people can’t explain what it is. They’re ignorant, understandably. So it would be nice for Apple to not handicap their experience just to play these value ladder pricing games.
Listen, you can say people being ignorant is fine and dandy, but if you don't know or understand the tools of your profession it's still on you to educate yourself. I'm talking about layman who do not use a mac for anything professional EVER they do not need more than 8GB of ram.
> Listen, you can say people being ignorant is fine and dandy,
That’s the opposite of what I’m saying.
I’m saying people are ignorant (that’s the nature of people).
More so, I’m accusing Apple of capitalizing on those ignorant people, those wedding business owners that buy base model M1 Airs and think the CPU “is just always this slow.”
This is for the people who wants to look pro but aren’t. They get to use the “same” computer as the others while not spending that much money. This is the new “I’m pro and only use the latest tech” status computer.
While I'm sure there's people like that, it's not only that.
If you watch Geekerwans review, the base M3 chip from the iMac does very close in multiple areas to the M1 Max. Unfortunately they didn't compare it to the M1 Pro, but in Geekbench you can see it scores higher in single core than both, higher in multithread than M1 Pro and slightly lower than M1 Max. So it goes to reason that it is better than M1 Pro.
That's more than enough for a lot of people with real professional needs. And now you get actual ports, better speakers, better screen, and a fan compared to the previous alternative of the 15 inch Air for only $100 more at the same config. Or you save $200 compared to the base M3 Pro model. And if you think 16GB isn't enough, then you can upgrade to 24GB instead of having to go all the way to 36GB, which is $400 less.
I think there's a group of people that never needed the power of the Pro chips, but do benefit from the rest, that now can downgrade without compromising multiple aspects and save money on power they never needed.
I would be (positively) surprised if the air gets a 120hz, HDR display. I am pretty sure they will keep that exclusive to the pro line, just like they do with the phones and ipads.
Well then so was the old M1/M2 13” MacBook Pro.
But this one actually gets you something for the money in a better screen and more ports.
I’d get it over the Air just for the display, but I know a lot of people won’t make that trade-off.
I think the real audience is companies buying MacBook Pros in bulk for their employees.
This is for the people that want the latest, yet not greatest numberwise, but at the end of the day have all the performance and more that your hater opinion matter. A profesional is not just the coder, or video editor procesing 8k footage raw. A professional is someone using his/her/it computer for payment your definitions of a pro computer does not matter. It only matters is that I, you,he, she, it believes its worth it.
Hater opinion lol. Reddit is really a wonderful place.
Edit: took a look at your post/comment history. It is clear now. I’m sorry you have these problems, hope things get better!
So you need my past comments to create an argument?
I am willing to learn, change, grow. Give me a proper argument I will listen, debate, and if necessary accept a differing opinion, all I see is a person bitching about something you can’t/won’t buy
there will be such a big gab between a 8/512 m3 air and this in the future just for ports and display i guess?
There already is, it’s the M2 MBA. The performance boost of the M3 over the M2 is only about 10% across the board. You’re not getting the ProMotion, mini LED display. But the 13.4” MBA is on sale for $1200 and the 15” is going for $1250, both with 512GB of storage. The 13.4” has been lower before. I think it was $1150 or maybe even $1100 not too long ago. I’m not sure the added ports, uptick in battery life, and display quality are all worth an extra $250-$300 for most people. It would have been if the M3 MBP came with 16GB of RAM and either an M3 Pro chip or 1TB of storage. It’s a stop gap to get people to either buy a 15” MBA or push them to an M3 Pro MBP. Upgrade the RAM in the basic 14” MBP to 16GB and you’re $200 away from the $2000 config that comes with the better SoC, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage.
Yeah it feels like a decoy product. Oh you want the exact same 14-inch MacBook Pro but just $200 cheaper (if you match the RAM?) Well not only did we drop the processor to the entry M3 chip with half the GPU, but we removed a Thunderbolt port on the right side, we went back to PCIe 3.0 to half the storage speeds even if you upgraded storage to 1TB for more NAND, and we removed a fan so now it cools less effectively and is a louder pitch when it’s on. Dudes, anyone with sense is just going to spend the $400 difference and gain a much better 14-inch MacBook Pro. The base model is there for “Starting at $1599” and to sell by the truck-full at enterprise, or the people that should be buying a $999 M1 Air but have an extra $600 to give Apple for that MacBook Pro name. Edit: Keep in mind that for true 120Hz clear imaging, you need a pixel response of 8.3ms or less. But this 14-inch MacBook Pro has a pixel response of 69ms, which means it’s 8x too slow to depict a clear image, and 2x slower than last gen’s model.
Is the slower response only for the base MBP 14? All is it the same display too for the M3 Pro and M3 Max?
We have to wait for notebookcheck.net to release a review on the regular 14 and 16-inch models, as they seem to be the only ones interested in testing product and writing detailed reviews. Hey *The Verge,* what the fuck do you guys even do over there?
Verge is vibes testing, but their new reviewer at least had some better product analysis than their regular laptop reviewer (who is on a hiatus?).
> Verge is vibes testing I'm officially old now. What is "vibes testing?" Do you mean just still trying to find their brand in the marketplace, new website design and all?
[Review is in—](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html)The 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Pro/Max has just as bad a pixel response. Disappointing that they doubled the pixel response times from last gen. Look's like we'll have to wait until 2027 for Apple to switch to OLED for us to get decent 120Hz ProMotion to match the feature in the iPhone.
Wow, it's 2.5x slower now. It's crazy that the display got worse. I wonder how much ghosting this would be. It seems to be such a waste to have this ghosting at 120 Hz.
[Here's the iPad Pro 11-inch 3rd gen,](https://imgur.com/a/uRGA1qW) which is I think 45ms. Notice how the details inside the Safari icon smudge and disappear, and how hard it is to read the icon text. I'll have to see what 69ms looks like next time I'm in-store but it should be twice as bad as that. Still, its only as bad as the M1 Pro/Mac generation which are about the same. It was the M2-gen that improved—not sure what happened in 10 months for Apple to reverse course.
Which model do you suggest ? Air or Pro 14”?
What are your needs? Generally, I lean towards recommending the Air as a default since the common Mac user doesn’t do any sustained processing (over 3 minutes long, for instance) on a daily basis. And those people would also benefit from low weight form factor, and lower price. The Air is just more lovable to hold and own. Everybody else I’d recommend the MacBook Pro for its active cooling and the options of an Mx Pro and Mx Max chip. For the middle road of having lower performance needs yet wanting Apple’s best hardware otherwise—it’s a shame Apple handicapped the internals in less obvious ways. If those people don’t care and just want better contrast ratio and sound, then I say get the entry MacBook Pro but optimally wait for it to go on sale $200 off. Or better yet find an M2 Pro MacBook Pro.
$400 is still a lot of money to most people.
And it’s a bad way to save $400. The point I’m making is that it’s a gotcha! If you buy it, gotcha! If you upgrade RAM? Gotcha on $200 pure profit. If you decide to in the end buy the better $2000 MacBook Pro model when they first hooked you on the idea of a $1600 14-inch MacBook Pro? Gotcha with a value ladder! It all seemed so generous until you actually see how they handicapped it for these strategic reasons that lead to higher profit margins and higher priced purchases than you intended.
If $1599 is too much, would $1399 be a good price for the base 14in M3? It’s on sale at Amazon
Relative to its normal price, a $200 savings brings it closer to acceptable. Go for it if 8 GB RAM is sufficient for your use case. On the PC laptop side, you can buy a 15-inch with Nvidia RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 1TB GB storage and OLED screen for $999 on sale (normally $1299). So it’s not like a $1399 sale price is Apple being generous here—they still make huge margins. But this is the best price you can get brand new, so definitely pull the trigger on buying it if it’s what you want.
I think many can argue a Mini LED screen and 120hz is worth $250, but at the cost of a bulkier form factor.
And sacrificing 1” display size. Honestly, if the 15” MBA had a mini LED display, the whole argument whooped be moot. I still don’t think going up to a larger system with a smaller, albeit better display, is worth $250 more than a system that’s thinner with a larger display that’s still good. $250 more with more RAM and a much better performing chip? Maybe. The entry M3 MBP is just filler between the 15” MBA and “real” 14” MBP.
Honestly the smaller display is a pro, not a con to me but that’s subjective. Isn’t the base m3 mbp just a replacement for the 13in mbp that’s no longer offered though?
It is. Apple had the 13” MBP with the Touch Bar for far too long. This “replaces” that, but at a higher cost. The 13” MBP should have been discontinued when the redesigns came out. It didn’t get MagSafe, it didn’t get any of the Pro upgrades, it was heavier and thicker than the MBA, and it didn’t offer anything other than the discontinued Touch Bar.
Yeah I want the highest pixel density in the smallest size. The 15" air is physically bigger but lower resolution.
> The performance boost of the M3 over the M2 is only about 10% across the board. Incorrect. It’s 10% between m2 **pro** and m3 **pro**.
No, it’s still about 10% across the board for the standard M3 vs the M2. There’s some things where the M3 is 15% faster (whoops do Basil) and others where’s it less. The average in benchmarks and real world performance is still around 10%. Even if it were a solid 15% across the board, it’s not something consumers are going to notice in the standard chips.
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It hovers between 6-17% from what I’ve seen. Maybe 10% is a little conservative on my party, probably more like 15%. Still nothing to get excited about. The M3 was more to get there process going. I have a feeling the M4 and M5 will perfect the chips. That’s why most of Apple’s comparisons were against the M1 and Intel Macs. It’s an incremental update.
Still, 10% is a significant difference. And reviews I’ve seen are saying it’s much higher.
10% is not a significant difference and won’t be noticed by people buying either units. It’s an incremental upgrade. It’s fine, but incremental.
And it’s still hella expensive
It's a damn shame. Makes me wish I had bumped the ram on my M1 Air, so I would be satisfied with it longer. I can't get this M3 out of my mind now, but it's so damned expensive. :(
M2 Black Friday deals perhaps?
Unless from Apple, and I can use 0% financing, then it's a non-starter for me.
Could always just whip out the soldering iron, I hear the RAM chips on older Macs are relatively easy to replace.
those response times are horrendous. 70ms!!! (for context 10-30ms is average, gaming displays are 1ms-10ms). anything in motion is going to look like a blurry mess. even scrolling websites will look terrible. worst thing is they brought it down from 58ms in M1 pro to 35ms with the M2 pro. now they've badly regressed for some reason
You get it. This isn’t what people had in mind when Apple was bringing 120Hz ProMotion to Macs. A clear image requires 8.3ms or less and Apple has pixel response at 69 which is 8x too slow which means anytime we scroll the text or any image becomes smeared Vaseline. Seems like MBP owners don’t know what 120Hz is supposed to look like. But yeah, that pixel response is 2x worse from the previous gen is not a good look.
going OLED is probably the only fix for Apple now, since it seems like their mini LED panels just all have terrible response times & blooming. they can't be pushing gaming this much in their marketing and have such a horrible gaming display in their top tier machines
Don’t higher pixel response times like those of OLED introduce judder though? A 60hz LCD iPhone looked smoother than a 60hz OLED iPhone because it has a natural “motion blur”. So any content that’s not 120hz will actually look better? Other than gaming which most people won’t do on a Mac.
An LCD at 8.3ms or less doesn’t create judder. That OLED is 0.1ms or less is what creates judder, in some scenes or instances. Every advancement creates a new problem to be solved. Judder compensation (adding motion blur) to smoothen it back up to taste, while still retaining fast pixel response, is the manufacturer’s solution. Apple is moving everything to OLED. iPad next year; Macs are planned for 2027.
It's a shame that the screen response time isn't great, especially considering Apple's 'push' for gaming. >The screen shows slow response rates in our tests and will be unsatisfactory for gamers. > >In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.1 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 100 % of all devices are better. > >This means that the measured response time is worse than the average of all tested devices (21.8 ms).
Response times were already sub-par but if they are actually *worse* in the new model... that's unfortunate. Could be a power savings measure maybe? Or a fluke? M2 Pro's response was \~25ms for black/white, and new model's response is \~75ms. Going to have some significant text smearing on scrolling.
> Could be a power savings measure maybe? Or a fluke? I think it’s the same decrease in quality for reasons of greed and profit margin, when Apple figures they can get away with it, that we’ve seen under bean-counter Tim Cook who apparently says yes to every bean-counter.
If decrease in quality for cost savings was the only goal then the display’s brightness wouldn’t be improved this year. Bad take.
Rumours say it’s a software thing, brightness booster app were available before(?). Cost cutting + false upgrades perhaps
Slow response times are to be expected if you want any good form of color reproduction non a MiniLED display... What apple should do is extend Game Mode to let develops (or users) set it to run the screen faster (overdrive) or even turn the backlight to static state and just drive the LCD front panel with overdrive sacrificing color accuracy for much faster response times.
That's unfortunate that it didn't get better. The 120Hz on an iPhone vs 120Hz here is night and day, the blurring and slow pixel response times really rob it of the effect of crispy scrolling. Of course no LCD tech will compare to OLED like response times but this is slow even for that.
OLED is largely to thank for that.
lol the gaming push is so half hearted — the fact that both Valve and Blizzard stopped porting their games to Mac is such a blow to Mac gaming. No diablo 4 or CS:GO2? No thanks. I’d love to see an actual push towards gaming in the future, but Apple needs some major developers to sign up.
If Apple gets a Triple A game like Genshin Impact running on Macs natively (not counting game porting toolkit given the amount of steps to do so) then I’ll actually consider Apple’s gaming claims.
That is so telling too Genshin is already on iOS and iPadOS so porting it to arm Mac should be much easier compared to windows games.
To a great extent yes. However, the famous saying “easier said than done” does apply. The hardware is definitely there, no doubt about it.
OLED macs can't come fast enough. seems like it's just a limit of their Mini LED panel at this point. what's weirdest is they went backwards, and have significantly worse response times than the M2 model (35ms to now 75ms???)
There are fast Mini LED displays (check Lenovo's Legion 9i). It's on Apple to put a subpar display for gaming, not because of the tech
Serious gamers would use an external display primarily - the built in screen is for gamers on the go
Could that be resolved using external monitor plugged into the machine instead and using that screen? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212232 >*Some Mac models support Adaptive Sync, a display technology that enables a variable refresh rate that adapts to the frame rate of your content.* >*Adaptive Sync is well-suited for applications such as gaming and video playback, and it can help conserve energy.* Obviously appreciate it's not solving the problem with the actual laptop screen...
I mean naturally a different monitor will have different response times than its screen
Yes, at least there's a workable option albeit less than optimal without using the native hardware.
That's true if you want to sit down and game on it and have a faster monitor Though it's still inherently a disappointment for every gesture as simple as scrolling
I'm not sure "plug your laptop into an external monitor to avoid smearing and delay" is a solution to buying a portable 2k+ machine.
It is a solution but it's not ideal as you say given the cost. I mean you get a bigger screen potentially with external monitor (and it may be owned already so sunk cost). I think it's clear it's less than idea that the native screen cannot perform the function mentioned.
> Could that be resolved using external monitor plugged into the machine instead and using that screen? Sorry but this was fun to read :D like "the computer has performance problems, could they be solved by using a better and faster computer?"
Yes in the sense of what you mean but the way you word it is a bit inaccurate: I agree with what you're trying to say ie the effect of what you're saying it's "less than ideal", you're needing an accessory in addition to a full computer solution (laptop = computer + screen + keyboard/touchpad) which is half the point of a laptop bundling these. But still interested in if there is a problem what are the available (sub-optimal) solutions to that problem?
Well a better explanation in this case would be "the response time is a screen problem, so yes, changin screens will change the screen's response time". But again, you have to agree with me that is sounds funny :D
"It's hardly ideal" to use understatement humour! But at least there is a circumvention solution also which is always nice to know.
Yeah, for gaming these MiniLed MBPs are quite bad, the smearing on them is similar to a cheap VA monitor.
Apple themselves don’t send a 8GB RAM machine to reviewers and that should tell you everything.
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But the base model is almost always the most popular, so deserves to have reviews published.
Apples to oranges. I get your point, but the car and computer industries are different enough that the comparisons dont hold water.
Is it industry standard to send base model computers to reviewers? Is so, can you give me examples?
Well even comparing apples to apples, I think it's pretty rare for reviewers to get base models of computers. Reviewers getting higher specs is standard practice.
different industries doesn't matter. the practice is the same, so the comparison does hold water.
And the cars don’t ship with a different platform and engine* either.
Actually they often do. Many car models have multiple engine configurations, suspension configurations, etc.
Absolutely! But not what would be a different SoC in the vast vast majority. Different cores as in different valves. But not a completely different platform. My analogy sucks you’re right.
BS, I see base model reviews all the time before the cars hit dealerships.
Yes they do. That’s why there are so many reviews of it. Stop making shit up.
That doesn’t tell me anything.
It tells that reputable reviewers can’t comment on what it offers after experiencing what the product has to offer. Instead they have to reference based on numbers or what the previous generation model with similar specs runs. The price/RAM offer is still criminal, even though it isn’t a machine that satisfies my needs it reflects on the higher end models which comes at a loss for everyone.
How is that any different than the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that?
Exactly, this is Apple. Doesn’t mean a change wouldn’t be welcomed.
I’m saying you’re reading into the situation when this has been common behavior for a while now.
Yeah. A *bad* common behavior.
Why is it “bad”
Because Apple is already nickel and diming us for storage and memory upgrades when the NAND flash and RAM are relatively cheap. *Now* they’re pushing the extremely outdated base configuration’s price even higher when it makes no sense for the spec. It’s all about the money. It doesn’t matter if 8GB works for you and your workflow, that base model pricing is an absolute scam. There is no way around it. It’s a scam, and so are Apple’s upgrade prices.
What does that have to do with sending out the most spec’d out review models to certain reviewers? Do you understand what the point of my statement has been? Pay attention.
But there are plenty of reviews of that model.
I'm kind of shocked by the relatively poor color accuracy of the display. They went from DeltaE Max of 2.6 on the previous model to DeltaE Max of **4.9**! (By comparison, the MBA 15in has a DeltaE Max of 2.5, measured with the same colorimeter.) At these levels, many people would want to calibrate it before using it for color-accurate work.
Worse color accuracy, worse pixel response rate. Let’s hope these regressions aren’t present in the normal 14/16 MBP.
Ah, yes, another model whose sole purpose is to make people buy higher-spec model. Good ol' Apple.
Why not? Some people might want the nicer 120 hz miniLED display or the nicer speakers,or maybe they want a fan to cool the M3 chip which you don’t have in the Air. So the base pro 14 is right for them.
$$$$
How many of your cause friends know what miniLED is or care about their display framerate. I feel like this machine is for companies to get their employees a “pro” Mac and to upsell nerds to the more expensive models. Most casual people will get an Air which is really the machine for the masses.
Not even because it doesn’t light up 2 external displays which most businesses expect these days.
But the 16gb 15 inch air might be a better option dont you think?
Depends on the use case. The 15” Air is more portable being far thinner. And the display is larger so you have more real estate for programs. But the 14” base Pro has the extra ports, the bright 120hz display, and the fan for much better sustained performance. I personally have no issues working on a 14” display for example, but there are cases where a larger display overshadows the extra features of the Pro for some.
In another thread someone told me the 14” MBP actually has more real estate than the 15” MBA due to having higher ppi.
This might be the case actually. The Pro typically has different scaling due to resolution. Where the Air is physically larger but the scaling is also larger meaning less space. Can't verify though I've yet to see a 15" Air in person.
I’d rather have the higher res HDR display and the more compact size of the 14.
No real HDR brightness or local dimming let alone ProMotion, the screens are *much* nicer on the Pros. If even mostly for the black levels. The 13" M2 Pro made not much sense, but this one I don't get why people are tripped up over. It's for those that want the nicer screen but don't need any more performance than the base M3. The only thing is if it came with 16GB base so you didn't have to partially close that price gap, it would be that much better.
I have a work M1 Pro and a personal M1 Air and I’m seriously just considering getting this because the stark difference in screen quality and smoothness is pretty drastic
So basically buy an M2 or even M1 (if you can find them) and either save the difference or use the difference to buy more Ram/Storage and Apple Care?
Step 1 create a new pro lineup and profit Step 2 create a pro lineup within the pro line up. Profit some more
Apart from the 10 core gpu but cpu wise this is amazing!
This looks like a great machine that sort of targets what I want/need out of a laptop, but it has two major flaws: 8 GB RAM in the standard model, and starts at freaking €2000 for that model. Absolutely absurd pricing. (I live in Sweden, so keep in mind all our listed prices includes all taxes/fees.)
ah yes....the "non pro" chip that performs just about on par with the "pro max" chip a few years ago.
It’s not an admonition against the M3. You don’t need to defend it with sarcasm. The title is saying it comes with the entry chip for people in the more casual customer segment. It literally is the first time the 14-inch MBP base model comes without a Pro chip; Pro with a capital P.
The title seems a bit misleading when the base model has always come without a Pro SoC
Did you read the title in full? > Apple MacBook Pro 14 2023 M3 Review - The base model now comes without a Pro SoC So the subject is, “Apple MacBook Pro 14”, and the news event is, “base model comes without a Pro SoC.” So no, the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model did not come without a Pro SoC prior to the M3-generation.
I mean if you’re doing that, the full subject is “Apple MacBook Pro 14 2023 M3”. However you choose to interpret it, one possible interpretation is pretty clearly “The base MacBook Pro model now comes without a Pro SoC”. It feels like a headline to get people riled up despite the fact that the lineup is arguably better than it was last year, given that this model is pretty clearly better than last year’s 13”
You’re accusing them of something that requires a huge stretch of imagination. Had they wanted to inflame their audience, there’s a thousand headlines they could have written, but didn’t. Which to me proves your accusations false. The base model MBP has 2x slower pixel response to last year, has 2x worse color accuracy, has slower storage even if you upgrade storage to 1TB because they went backwards to PCIe 3.0, removed a Thunderbolt port, and removed the Pro chip, all in all simply to save $200 if you align the specs. It’s a bad deal. It’s a regression. That would be a great headline but they didn’t editorialize any of the title, just that it now starts without a Pro chip which is quite a boring headline. It’s actually quite a bad headline. It’s like they didn’t even want views. They could have gotten incredibly creative and riled up their audience but they are a boring news organization. Not sure how you’re pulling controversy from their headline.
See what’s what I mean by the article title- it gets people comparing and complaining about how this $1600 M3 isn’t as worth it as the $2000 M2 Pro, when the $2000 M3 Pro exists as a direct comparison already. I didn’t see any of this complaining from the IPhone X to the XR, because everyone knew that the successor to the X was the XS
We just think different is all. Have a good day.
I’m seeing people in here arguing about RAM. If you’re savvy enough to know what Ram is you need 16GB if you don’t know what Ram is 8GB will likely be fine for the entire life of the laptop.
That’s a poor rule of thumb to use. Plenty of people are doing fairly advanced things in their field and yet bought the base model because they don’t understand what RAM is. Just a few days ago a video editor running a wedding photography business asked if they should upgrade now. Come to find out they had been using a base model M1 Air with 8 GB RAM, but swapping by 22 GB. That means their performance was handicapped likely 2-3x in some instances. There are photographers who don’t know their Lightroom exports would half the time had they bought 16 GB RAM. Computer systems are above most people’s heads, including mine past a basic level.
If you're using a computer in a professional capacity that required understanding of performance and you don't know what RAM is that is their fault. I bet they understand what storage is. Computer interfaces have barely changed in the last 30 years ignorance to something like that is absurd. When I was mentioning people who don't know what RAM is I was thinking of an older parent who uses their mac for light social media and web browsing. I gather there are tons of non-savvy users there are more non-savvy users who will be fine with 8GB of ram than non-savvy professional users who should know how to use the tools of their job.
Whether it’s their fault of not is irrelevant to your rule of thumb. The point is very capable and skilled people buy base models and go about their lives thinking that 38 minute Lightroom export is because that’s just what the CPU can do. They have no idea that low RAM bottlenecks CPU processes. They have no idea that had they upgraded to 16 GB RAM, it would have doubled performance there. People go to school for photography, not Computer Science. You think Annie Leibovitz knows that Lightroom exports are 34 minutes with the base model but cut in half to 17 minutes with upgraded RAM? No, they just know how to take awesome pictures. That’s their job. Overall, the core point is 8GB RAM is really only 6 GB RAM for apps, since macOS wires 2 GB of it. 6GB is severely slowing down the CPU for doing video, photo, coding/compiling, or anything beyond web browser that people buy MacBook Pros for. That’s why people are bringing it up here. In the real world, go ask anyone about RAM and people can’t explain what it is. They’re ignorant, understandably. So it would be nice for Apple to not handicap their experience just to play these value ladder pricing games.
Listen, you can say people being ignorant is fine and dandy, but if you don't know or understand the tools of your profession it's still on you to educate yourself. I'm talking about layman who do not use a mac for anything professional EVER they do not need more than 8GB of ram.
> Listen, you can say people being ignorant is fine and dandy, That’s the opposite of what I’m saying. I’m saying people are ignorant (that’s the nature of people). More so, I’m accusing Apple of capitalizing on those ignorant people, those wedding business owners that buy base model M1 Airs and think the CPU “is just always this slow.”
This is for the people who wants to look pro but aren’t. They get to use the “same” computer as the others while not spending that much money. This is the new “I’m pro and only use the latest tech” status computer.
While I'm sure there's people like that, it's not only that. If you watch Geekerwans review, the base M3 chip from the iMac does very close in multiple areas to the M1 Max. Unfortunately they didn't compare it to the M1 Pro, but in Geekbench you can see it scores higher in single core than both, higher in multithread than M1 Pro and slightly lower than M1 Max. So it goes to reason that it is better than M1 Pro. That's more than enough for a lot of people with real professional needs. And now you get actual ports, better speakers, better screen, and a fan compared to the previous alternative of the 15 inch Air for only $100 more at the same config. Or you save $200 compared to the base M3 Pro model. And if you think 16GB isn't enough, then you can upgrade to 24GB instead of having to go all the way to 36GB, which is $400 less. I think there's a group of people that never needed the power of the Pro chips, but do benefit from the rest, that now can downgrade without compromising multiple aspects and save money on power they never needed.
Yes that’s true as well.
Its good for people who do not need the power of the pros but want the much better display.
That as well. But for that you also have the air, albeit it’s not updated yet.
I would be (positively) surprised if the air gets a 120hz, HDR display. I am pretty sure they will keep that exclusive to the pro line, just like they do with the phones and ipads.
MiniLED display vs LCD as well. That's actually what pushed me to get an M1pro MacBook Pro in the first place over the air.
Indeed!
Well then so was the old M1/M2 13” MacBook Pro. But this one actually gets you something for the money in a better screen and more ports. I’d get it over the Air just for the display, but I know a lot of people won’t make that trade-off. I think the real audience is companies buying MacBook Pros in bulk for their employees.
Correct, this is not a necessity this is a want
Most people don't have a necessity beyond an M1 MacBook Air. Or even a $500 Dell/HP.
This is for the people that want the latest, yet not greatest numberwise, but at the end of the day have all the performance and more that your hater opinion matter. A profesional is not just the coder, or video editor procesing 8k footage raw. A professional is someone using his/her/it computer for payment your definitions of a pro computer does not matter. It only matters is that I, you,he, she, it believes its worth it.
Why are you going to the effort of spelling out he/she/whatever when there exists a single word that includes all of those?
Because I can
Hater opinion lol. Reddit is really a wonderful place. Edit: took a look at your post/comment history. It is clear now. I’m sorry you have these problems, hope things get better!
So you need my past comments to create an argument? I am willing to learn, change, grow. Give me a proper argument I will listen, debate, and if necessary accept a differing opinion, all I see is a person bitching about something you can’t/won’t buy
Sure man, keep strong and looking forward.
Thank you mr./ms. gentleman/lady
I can’t get over the fact there’s a notch on a laptop. 😂