Review of the 14‑inch MacBook Pro in Space Gray

 

My new MacBook Pro 14 inch

Here is an HONEST review of the MacBook Pro from a dotNet developer and long time Windows user. When I say honest, I mean it.  I bought this with my own money for my personal laptop. This wasn't for work or sponsored in any way.  I buy new laptops every 3 or 4 years now.  My last one was a Dell XPS 13 inch 2-in-1. The laptop before that my laptop was a Dell 15 inch XPS. Before that I had a Dell 13 inch developer edition.

It might seem like I just chose the MacBook because I was tired of Dell. I have use of a IBM Thinkpad from work and have used HP laptops and desktops in the past. This is the second MacBook Pro that I have used.  I've been a developer for over 20 years, so I've used a lot of hardware.

Speed

This is by far the fastest laptop I have ever used.  The M2 Pro chip builds and runs my dotNet Core and JavaScript applications 10 times as fast as the IBM Thinkpad from work. That laptop is only 2 years old.

The speed just makes this experience wonderful. It makes the $2000 worth it. Its so fast, I think it might last me 5 or 6 years instead of 3.  That makes it really a $1000 laptop if it can hold up.  I'm going to use it a lot so I hope it holds up.

Battery Life

I've coded for hours and have yet to get to less than 50% charge. My Dell 2-in-1 can barely get thru a few hours at the coffee shop without getting plugged in.  It's also cool to the touch most of the time, even when charging.  My Dell gets warm and the fan turns on sometimes while coding or downloading things. The Thinkpad doesn't get as hot but the fan turns on from time to time. That's got to mean that the energy efficiency of this MacBook is better than the Dell or IBM.

I have notices the fan has spun up a few times when using Parallels. In this case it's Windows or something running inside Windows.

Screen

The screen is good. I like the aspect ratio and brightness. The notch is sometimes annoying but I don't notice it when working. When you maximize apps, is that what its called in macOS? When you maximize apps, the notch practically disappears because the top menu disappears for added focus and I like dark mode.

Apps

I like the Mac versions of Microsoft Office and most of my apps like VS Code, Azure Data Studio, Postman, Figma, etc. work great. They all work better in fact. They also don't drain the battery like while using my Dell. I might be missing some games but everything I need professionally is here.

Windows applications worked well in Parallels Desktop well but were only slightly faster. Parallels was also found to be using significant energy if you trust MacOS's battery indicator. Running apps in a VM isn't going to be quite the same but it's good.

Coding

So far I like the keyboard and trackpad. I like them before in the older MacBook. The older MacBook had the touch bar and that thing was stupid.  Function keys are 1000 times better for me than that touch bar ever was. This keyboard feels a little bit sturdier. It does take some getting used to when I go from the ThinkPad to the MacBook but the MacBook keyboard and Dell keys are of the same family.

Builds are quite fast. Running apps in watch mode responded well and refreshed quickly. Using VS Code or Visual Studio for Mac is best.  Visual Studio running under Parallels 


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