As we have reported previously, Apple has just announced its “all-new” 16-inch MacBook Pro, which is designed to satisfy the Pro-Market (editors, filmmakers, and professional content creators). Read more below about the “World’s best pro notebook.”

All-new design to meet professionals’ demands

Back in February, there was a rumor about Apple developing a new species of Macbook Pro that will be armed with a completely “all-new” design in order to satisfy the Pro-Market. The goal was (and still is) to renovate the MBP lineup with more powerful machines and to prove that Apple is still relevant to the professional market. The upcoming Mac Pro is defiantly a solid marker for Apple not abandoning its high-end consumers. However, Apple’s laptops needed their renovation as well.

The rise of the RTX Studio laptops stimulated the born of a new MBP lineup

We have written numerous articles regarding the RTX Studio elite group of laptops that are loaded with state of the art NVIDIA GPUs to dramatically boosting the performance regarding ultra-resolution proxy-free editing capabilities. I know a couple of professionals editors that have switched from their beloved Apple’s computer to Windows RTX Studio laptops for that purpose. They did that since they need that extra boost in performance when high GPU tasks are being made. That made them to abundant FCPX and chose alternatives like DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro. That statement means that there was significant demand for a new mobile beast by Apple. However, here it is, announced today, the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Our pro customers tell us they want their next MacBook Pro to have a larger display, blazing-fast performance, the biggest battery possible, the best notebook keyboard ever, awesome speakers and massive amounts of storage, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro delivers all of that.

Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac and iPad Product Marketing

“Most powerful MacBook Pro ever.”

Yes. That is how Apple defines its new beast. Apple says that the 16-inch MacBook Pro is “the world’s best pro notebook — designed for developers, photographers, filmmakers, scientists, music producers, and more.” This MacBook Pro features a 16-inch Retina Display, 8-core processors, up to 64GB of memory, next-generation graphics with up to 8GB of VRAM, and a new advanced thermal design. “Our pro customers tell us they want their next MacBook Pro to have a larger display, blazing-fast performance, the biggest battery possible, the best notebook keyboard ever, awesome speakers and massive amounts of storage, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro delivers all of that and more,” said Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac and iPad Product Marketing.

16 inches, 500 nits, 3072×1920 resolution

The color graders would appreciate that specs. The new MBP features a resolution of 3072×1920 and a higher pixel density of 226 ppi, the 16-inch Retina display delivers nearly 6 million pixels and an even more immersive front-of-screen experience. Each display is individually calibrated in the factory for accurate gamma, white point, and primary colors.

Advanced Thermal Design

According to Apple, the 16-inch MacBook Pro uses the most advanced thermal architecture ever in a Mac notebook to enable the system to run at higher power for sustained periods. These advancements in cooling capacity allow the 16-inch MacBook Pro to sustain up to 12 more watts during intensive workloads than the previous design.

Up to 2.1 times faster than the 15-inch MBP

Apple says that the new MBP features the latest 6- and 8-core 9th-generation processors with Turbo Boost speeds up to 5.0 GHz, which deliver up to 2.1 times faster performance than the quad-core 15-inch MacBook Pro.

AMD Radeon Pro 5000M GPU

The 16-inch MacBook Pro features AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series graphics — the first 7nm mobile discrete GPUs for pro users. Paired with GDDR6 video memory and with an 8GB VRAM option. For instance, Apple claims that video editors using DaVinci Resolve will see up to 1.8 times faster effects rendering when color grading. As stated by Apple:” Pro users will be able to tackle GPU-intensive tasks faster than ever. Customers who choose the standard configuration will see 2.1 times faster graphics performance than the previous standard configuration. Those who opt for the highest-end graphics options will see up to 80 percent faster performance than the last high-end configuration”.

Video editors using DaVinci Resolve will see up to 1.8 times faster effects rendering when color grading

Apple

Pricing and Availability

Starting at $2,399, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is available today through apple.com and the Apple Store app. It will be in Apple Stores, and Apple Authorized Resellers in the US later this week and coming soon to stores around the world.

Wrapping up

So Apple has announced a bigger and faster machine yet again. More screen real estate is truly welcomed in video editing and grading application. However, it’s not that much of a difference between this and old models. Benchmark testing shows better performance. No argue about that. Yet, will it hold 8K proxy-free RAW editing? That’s a big question. Apple can answer that this is the role of the upcoming Mac-Pro. If so, what’s the purpose of this new MBP line-up? Professionals don’t care about speakers’ quality, design, and many of the new MBP gadgets (the touch bar, for instance). Professionals care about SPEED (!). Would the new 16-inch MacBook Pro deliver that necessary boost in FCPX performances? Although Apple claims that this machine holds feature film editing demands, we’ll need to test it in a real editing project. Furthermore, it’ll be interesting to compare this new MBP to one of NVIDIA RTX Studio laptops. Who will win? Comment below!