APPLE MACBOOK PRO

MacBooks are clearly not inexpensive. And this hurts Nepalese consumers even more because the price difference between the foreign and domestic markets is so great. Leaving that aside, it is encouraging to learn that a slew of distributors and resellers are bringing MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and other Apple products to Nepal at affordable prices.

Options are often beneficial, but they can also be perplexing for others.

So, in this post, we’ve compiled a list of all the Apple MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models that are currently available in Nepal, as well as their prices.

SPECIFICATION

DESIGN

Because of its latest M1 silicon brains, the MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020) is one of Apple’s most exciting launches in a long time, but you wouldn’t know it when you first get it out of the box.

That’s because it’s almost identical to the previous iteration, measuring 0.61 x 11.97 x 8.36 inches (1.56 x 30.41 x 21.24cm) and weighing 3.0 pounds (1.4kg). Anyone expecting a futuristic new look to fit the radical new hardware inside would be disappointed. It looks and sounds just like previous MacBook Pro 13-inch versions.

We believe Apple has squandered an opportunity here. We’d like to see Apple be just as bold with the look of the MacBook Pro 13-inch as it has been with the M1 chip and macOS Big Sur – this is a big enough improvement to merit the name “macOS 11” rather than “macOS 10.17,” so we’d like to see Apple be just as bold with the look of the MacBook Pro 13-inch.

In some ways, that’s fair – the MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020) is still a good-looking laptop, and it’s still impressively thin and light; but, when Apple’s competitors, such as Dell and HP, are doing revolutionary things with their designs, such as super-slim bezels or 2-in-1 designs that let you use the laptop as a tablet, the MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020)’s look starts to feel a little dated.

KEYBOARD AND SCREEN

The keyboard is the same Magic Keyboard that came with the 13-inch MacBook Pro earlier this year. This was a welcome improvement at the time, as it replaced the infamous Butterfly switch keyboard, which was notorious for its lack of reliability. It’s nice to see it back in the latest MacBook Pro 13-inch, and it’s a joy to type on once more.

The screen, which has a Retina resolution of 2560 x 1600, is also unchanged. This produces a sharp picture, but rivals such as HP and Dell, who are placing higher-resolution screens on their 13-inch laptops, outperform Apple here.

The Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020) screen, however, remains bright and clear.

It also supports the P3 wide color gamut, which provides excellent color reproduction – this i    s perfect for photographers and video editors who need accurate color reproduction, but it’s worth noting that the latest MacBook Air (M1, 2020) also supports P3 wide color. This makes the MacBook Air a more affordable option for budget-conscious creatives, while depriving the MacBook Pro of a key feature.

PORTS

The Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020) has just two Thunderbolt 3 ports (both on the left) and an audio jack on the right.

Though we’re relieved that Apple’s step away from Intel hasn’t resulted in the loss of Thunderbolt 3 (it is, after all, an Intel product), the lack of ports continues to be an issue for professionals.

You’ll need to buy a dongle if you want to copy images from a memory card or use peripherals that use the older USB-A ports. Apple, unlike Dell, does not have one in many of its USB-C only laptops.

PERFORMANCE

You’ll need to buy a dongle if you want to copy images from a memory card or use peripherals that use the older USB-A ports. Apple, unlike Dell, does not have one in many of its USB-C only laptops.

We can dig deeper into the efficiency of the MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020) now that we’ve had it for a while. We tested native M1 apps as well as older legacy Intel Mac apps, and both performed admirably. We used macOS Big Sur to open and switch between multiple challenging apps at the same time, and it didn’t miss a beat. They easily opened, and flipping between them was almost instantaneous.

The benchmarking results were also outstanding. We’d seen leaked Cinebench scores indicating that the M1 chip could beat Intel’s 11th-generation processors, and it turned out to be right. The MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020) scored 7, 768 points in the multi-core test of the demanding Cinebench R23 benchmark.

BATTERY

The MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020) boasts the “longest battery life ever in a Mac,” with Apple promising 17 hours of wireless web browsing and up to 20 hours of video playback – a whopping 10 hours more than the previous edition.