Apple Announces 14″ and 16″ MacBook Pros with M2 Pro and M2 Max Socks
Apple will equip the larger MacBook Pros with new M2 sockets. The 14″ and 16″ laptops are now for sale with M2 Pro or M2 Max SoC and up to 96GB of RAM. They have a battery life of up to 22 hours. The 14″ version costs at least 2449 euros, the 16″ laptop at least 3049 euros.
The M2 Pro in the MacBook Pro ten to twelve CPU cores, with up to eight fast cores and four efficient cores. With these laptops you can choose a maximum of 32GB of RAM, with a bandwidth of 200GB/s. The GPU has nineteen cores. The GPU of the M2 Max has twice as many cores. This SoC also allows up to 96GB of RAM with a bandwidth of 400GB/s. This SoC always has twelve CPU cores and a faster media engine than the M2 Pro.
Apple says that the new M2 SoCs have a 40 percent faster Neural Engine with 16 cores, compared to previous Apple SoCs. The M2 Pro has 40 billion transistors, 20 percent more than the M1 Pro and twice as many as in the M2. Photoshop and Motion are said to be up to 80 percent faster with the M2 Pro than with the fastest Intel MacBook Pro. The GPUs of the M2 Pro and Max also have larger L2 memory than previous Apple Socs.
The M2 Max has 67 billion transistors and more L2 memory than the Pro. Both SoCs have hardware acceleration for, for example, H.264, HEVC and ProRes. The Max has two video encode engines and two ProRes engines, twice as many as the Pro.
In addition to the faster SoC, Apple is improving other aspects of the laptops. For example, they now support Wi-Fi 6E and the HDMI connection now supports 8k/60Hz screens, as well as 4k/240Hz screens. There are also three Thunderbolt 4 connections, an SDXC card slot and a MagSafe 3 charging port.
The laptops are equipped with a 1080p webcam, six speakers and macOS Ventura. The 14″ MacBook Pro with M2 Pro costs at least 2,449 euros, for the M2 Max consumers will pay at least 3,519 euros. The 16″ model with M2 Pro costs 3,049 euros and the larger laptop with M2 Max is available from 4,199 euros. The laptops are now for sale; deliveries start from Tuesday 24 January.