MacBook Pro with Retina display review

We can't wait to get our hands on the new MacBook Pro with Retina display announced at WWDC on Monday. As soon as we get to try one out we'll publish our findings here, so check back periodically. 

UPDATE: We’ve had a first look at the new, Retina-display-bearing MacBook Pro. While we'll start lab testing it and getting our review going, Macworld’s Jason Snell got a chance to poke and prod it for a few hours. You'll find some of his initial impressions below:

We expect to be impressed by the brand new high-density display. Apple's told us that the new MacBook Pro has a screen that is 15.4 inches across, but its pixel density is 2,880 by 1,800. That works out at 220 pixels-per-inch or 5,184,000 pixels in total. That's four times the number of pixels as the previous model and it sounds pretty extreme, we are looking forward to editing photographs on that screen. 

Just how high res is the Retina display? 

JASON SNELL: The display is a mindblowing 2880-by-1800-pixel screen that looks like a 1440-by-900 model--except for the fact that there are four pixels for every one on the older display. Just as on the iPad and iPhone, a retina display offers incredibly smooth, clear text and images with startling detail. It's quite funny to view a Final Cut Pro interface with roughly a quarter of the screen taken up with a video preview, only to realize that the video is playing back at full, native 1080p resolution with plenty of room to spare. Pictures are similarly sharp. Web pages display with crisp text but, as on the third-generation iPad, most images on those pages are noticeably jaggy.

The Displays preference pane on this system (running OS X version 10.7.4, build 11E2617) isn't like those seen on previous Macs. Instead of displaying a list of different screen resolutions, it defaults to a "Best for Retina display" resolution. If you choose the Scaled option instead, you can choose from five presets ranging from Larger Text (which makes all the interface elements on the screen larger) to More Space (which makes everything smaller, feeling more like a high-resolution display on previous MacBook Pro models).

We wonder how good the screen will be for viewing movies and also for office work - will it reflect the florescent lighting above our heads to the point of distraction? Apple claims that despite its glossy screen, it has a 178-degree wide viewing angle, 75 percent less reflection, and 29 percent higher contrast than the previous generation, so we're keen to try it out.

So is the MacBook Pro screen too glossy?

JASON SNELL: Apple says that the process used to attach the Retina display to the monitor allows less glass to be used, creating less glare. It's hard to tell without more use, but it seems that the new MacBook Pro is more like the MacBook Air (which I don't find particularly glare-prone) than the older MacBook Pros (which seemed quite glarey).

Needless to say, with a 2.3GHz quad-core i7 processor with 8GB of RAM, a GeForce Gt 650M with 1GB of VRAM, 256GB of flash storage, and up to 16GB of 1600MHz RAM we expect this new slimline MacBook Pro to be super fast, but we'd expect it to be at that price.

Once we get out hands on one, we'll be able to tell if it is worth forgoing the MacBook Pro with optical drive (and cheaper price point) for the lightweight 4.46 pound MacBook Pro. It's light, but it's still heavier than an Air, and not that much lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Pros. Is the trade off worth it? If you want slim and light why not go for the MacBook Air? If you need the power, why not opt for the standard MacBook Pro. (And how confusing is this new naming convention!) 

So is the new MacBook Pro noticably slimmer/thinner? 

JASON SNELL: First off, this disclaimer: I've been using an 11-inch MacBook Air for so long now, it's very hard for me to judge a 15-inch laptop. It feels enormous to me. But fans of the current 15-inch MacBook Pro will notice that this new laptop is actually quite a bit thinner than the current model, a bit lighter, and slightly narrower.

That all said, this is in many ways the 15-inch answer to the MacBook Air. Gone is the optical drive, spinning hard drive, FireWire port, and Gigabit Ethernet jack of past models; instead, it's all solid-state storage, Thunderbolt and USB 3 ports, and HDMI.

What ports does the new MacBook Pro have?

JASON SNELL: On the right side of the case, there's an SD card reader, an HDMI port, and a single USB 3 port. Compare this to the previous MacBook Pro, which offered nothing but the slot-loading optical drive.

The left side, meanwhile, features a small assortment of ports. There's the new MagSafe 2 connector (about which more in a bit), two Thunderbolt ports, a USB 3 port, and a headphone jack.

Is there really a new MagSafe connector?

JASON SNELL: Yes. And it's a change that will make any IT manager groan: yet another port switch that renders a whole generation of Apple computers incompatible with a whole other generation of Apple computers. In this case, it's the MagSafe power plug, which has evolved into a thinner, wider connector that's completely incompatible with previous models. (Apple is selling a £9 MagSafe to MagSafe 2 converter to address this.) Simply put, the new MacBook Pro is too thin to fit the old MagSafe adapter. So it needed to change. But if you're a family or workplace that's already got a MacBook and wants to add another, freely sharing adapters is off the table.

The other bonus with the new slimmer MacBook Pro is it has up to seven hours of battery life and 30 days of standby. 

It's also built around flash storage that can be configured ip to  768GB of internal flash storage. 

And if that's not enough speed, it also features the fastest graphics on a Mac laptop - Nvidia GeForce GT 650M.

Of course, more power means that the machine will have to work hard, and as a result you might be thinking that the fans will be whirring away noisily in the background. Apple's solution here is to space the fan blades asymmetrically so that the fan noise is not a uniform sound, but more dispersed. We're find out how it sounds as soon as we get to try out a new thinner MacBook Pro with Retina display.  

Is this the MacBook Pro of the future? 

JASON SNELL: If it weren't for the Retina display, this MacBook Pro would seem to be just about what I expected from the infusion of some MacBook Air sensibility into the MacBook Pro line. It seems like there will be a day, in the not too distant future, when there's just a single line of MacBooks from a tiny 11-incher to this larger 15-incher. That day's not here yet—this model is too expensive right now to wipe out the lower-cost MacBook Pro models—but it's coming. (Keep in mind, the original MacBook Air was another $2000-plus product that arrived a bit early, but within a few years the Air had become the lowest-cost, most mainstream Apple laptop. This is the path this new MacBook Pro is now on.)

That evolution is natural. But then there's the X factor, the introduction of a high-DPI display to the Mac for the first time. Developers will need to update their Mac apps to take advantage of Retina mode. And it'll be interesting to see how users—especially those in creative jobs such as working with photos and video—take advantage of all that screen resolution. Apple's been promising a high-resolution Mac interface for years now, but with the new MacBook Pro the future is finally here.

The big question is do you spend £1,799 on a 15in 2.6GGHz standard MacBook Pro model, or the same money on a 15in 2.3GHz Retina display MacBook Pro. The main difference, as far as specs are concerned is the 750GB hard drive compared to the 256GB flash storage, but you can guarantee that there will be speed differences made possible by the flash storage that just can't be achieved on the standard hard drive. We'll find out. 

Stay tuned to Macworld for much more on the new MacBook Pro, including lab tests and a full review.

Verdict

We can't wait to get our hands on the new MacBook Pro with Retina display announced at WWDC on Monday. As soon as we get to try one out we'll publish our findings here, so check back periodically.