Apple MacBook: faster with longer battery life
Apple has given its lightest laptop, the MacBook, a processor upgrade that not only provides more speed, but also a significantly better battery life of ten and a half hours. Although you won’t notice it soon, the SSD has also become faster. A number of disadvantages in the design of the laptop have remained; the keyboard is not pleasant to type on and the single USB-C connection is impractical. You also pay a lot for the thin dimensions, because a faster MacBook Pro with even longer battery life costs the same.
Pros
- Excellent battery life
- Excellent screen
- Particularly low weight
Cons
- Bad keyboard
- USB-C impractical
- Casing springs along
- Duration
In the spring of 2015, Apple announced a truly redesigned laptop for the first time in several years: the MacBook. The MacBook was equipped with a 12″ screen and is only 13.1 millimeters thick, bringing the weight to just over 900 grams. Some sacrifices had to be made to get the laptop so small, because there was only one USB-C connection was present, the economical Core M processor was not the fastest and the keyboard had virtually no travel.
The 2016 version of the MacBook will not change that much, because the new model only has a new processor. A little extra speed is of course never lost and the switch from Broadwell to Skylake can of course also affect the battery life. That is why we pay attention to the second generation of the 12″ MacBook in this short review.
Appearance
The upgrades in the second-generation MacBook are tucked away on the inside, meaning the look hasn’t changed since the first generation. The MacBook is still very thin and weighs less than a kilogram. That thin housing offers space for only two connections: a jack connection on the right, and a USB-C connection on the left. We found that USB-C connection to be a disadvantage more than a year ago when reviewing the first 12″ MacBook, and we still find it a disadvantage. Although we are increasingly encountering new connection on peripherals, but not nearly as much The single connection also has the disadvantage that you cannot connect the charger and peripherals at the same time.A hub is therefore badly needed and it would have been nice if Apple had included it, but unfortunately that is not the case.
Another disadvantage of the thin laptop is the keyboard, for which there is little space in the housing, so that the switches are made extra thin. This results in keys that can hardly be pressed, which feels a bit like the buttons on kitchen appliances, such as a microwave. They are therefore not the most suitable buttons for typing and although the MacBook keyboard takes some getting used to, it is always a relief to type on a normal keyboard.
As bad as the keyboard is, the touchpad is just as good. It does not differ much from that of the MacBook Pro and is therefore of excellent quality. The surface is large, smooth and made of glass, making it easy for your finger to glide over it. Multitouch movements run smoothly and Force Touch is of course present for enthusiasts, which gives the touchpad additional functionality if you press harder than usual. The housing unfortunately wants to flex under that pressure, just like the 2015 model.
We found the screen to be a positive part of the 2015 MacBook and that has remained unchanged on the 2016 model. The screen has a 16:10 ratio, a high resolution of 2304×1440 pixels and is excellently calibrated, as we have come to expect from Apple’s Retina screens.
Benchmarking
As mentioned, the most important innovation in the 2016 model is the processor. It still has a TDP of 4.5 watts, but is now based on the Skylake architecture, instead of its predecessor Broadwell. Skylake has been available for quite some time now and we’ve already tested the new Core m3 processor in the Zenbook UX305CA . In that laptop, the new CPU turned out to make a few percent gains compared to its predecessor, while the GPU turned out to be about one and a half times as fast.
In the first 12-inch MacBook, Apple put the Core M 5Y31, which was clocked 400MHz higher than the entry-level Core M processor, the 5Y10. The 2016 version simply opted for the simplest m3 processor, but that still delivers another ten percent increase in speed.The most gain, sixteen percent, is made in Cinebench Multi, where both processor cores are fully loaded.
The SSD has also been updated; the new one is still 256GB in size, but has been given a new type number. We tested the SSD in Windows 10 to also make a comparison with Windows laptops and found that the MacBook has improved considerably in both sequential and random read and write tests.
Battery life
In addition to the new processor and SSD, the 2016 MacBook has a marginally larger battery. Apple gives a capacity of 41.4 Wh, while the 2015 version had to do with 39.7 Wh. We suspect that the new processor has more influence on the battery life than the 1.7Wh larger battery, but measuring is knowing and with our battery tests we have seen how much difference that makes.
In the browsing test, the difference is an hour and a half in favor of the new MacBook. That is a striking score, because with the Zenbook UX305, which is also equipped with Core M, the switch from Broadwell to Skylake led to a shorter battery life. Apple has probably managed to optimize its software for Skylake, which is why the battery life is so high. We also installed the second beta of macOS Sierra to see if the new version of the operating system and browser could improve battery life, but that actually resulted in half an hour less working time. The new MacBook also has a longer battery life than its predecessor when playing a 1080p video.
Conclusion
At first glance, the upgrade from Broadwell to Skylake in the MacBook might hardly seem worth reviewing, but it turns out that more has changed. The capacity of the battery has grown marginally and while that in itself can’t provide much extra battery life, the new MacBook lasts a lot longer on a battery charge than the old one. In addition, the SSD appears to have become faster and the little extra speed that the new processor entails is also a nice bonus. At 1400 euros, the price is the same as the 2015 model, so you get ‘free’ more speed and better battery life.
However, that does not mean that the MacBook is cheap and the small form factor also has its limitations. The keyboard is not pleasant to type on and the single USB-C connection remains impractical without the supplied hub. For the same money you get a 13.3″ MacBook Pro with a faster processor, a nicer keyboard and a slightly longer battery life. However, that MacBook Pro weighs almost 1.6 kilograms and that is why the 12″ MacBook is mainly for people who want to have the lightest and thinnest Apple laptop of the moment and are willing to sacrifice quite a bit for it.