People have been asking for a cheaper pro MacBook with the newer design since the release of the 14” M1 Pro and Max MacBook Pro. Apple stuck with the old school touch bar macbook pro for a couple of years and finally we have the 14” MacBook Pro with a plain ol’ M3 chip. I’ve spent a lot of time with this machine over the last couple of months and one thing is for certain…It sits between the MacBook Air and the real MacBook Pro…..So, is it worth it?
Form Factor and New Color
First off, the form factor. You know what these computers look like. These are flattened off pieces of aluminum with rounded corners and they look like most apple devices from the last few years. There's ports on the sides, a big trackpad inside along with a black keyboard and slim bezels. And I think they look great, I don't think there is anything I dislike about the design.
The 14” MacBook Pro is not the most compact laptop out there but it isn't bad. A 14” laptop fits into just about every bag out there and at 3.4 pounds, it is basically the same weight as the 15” MacBook Air.
The laptop fits perfectly for me on my desk in front of my studio display, or on my lap on the couch, and it’s just barely ok to use on an airplane tray table. Like I said, it’s not the most compact Apple laptop so if that is what you want, the 13” MacBook Air is a fine way to go…. M1 or M2…
I ended up buying the space gray version of this M3 MacBook Pro and I also purchased a space black M3 Pro macbook pro, and I just dont think I want either of those. I find silver to be the most sleek, classy, fingerprint free color of macbook. I used space gray for a long time but since switching back to silver in 2020, it just feels nicer. Especially next to my silver studio display.
When it comes to ports, you may be disappointed with the base model offerings, although it is still better than what you get on the MacBook air.
On the left you have magsafe, 2 thunderbolt 4 ports and an audio jack and on the left you have an hdmi 2.1 port along with the sd card slot.
This port selection will be fine for many of you, and it's fine for me since I usually use a dock with mine, but one dumb thing does bother me and that is the lack of the third thunderbolt port on the right side.
Now, I rarely need to plug in more than 3 thunderbolt or usb devices directly to the laptop, but it does happen. The issue I have is just not having a port on that side of the machine. There are times when I need to plug something in, whether that is power with usb-c or a device and it is just made slightly inconvenient by only having those ports on the left side.
I don’t like that this macbook pro is limited to 2 ports but if it must be, I think I would prefer to have one on each side.
The HDMI output on the side of the laptop works great with this 4k, 144hz display, but you can also get that same performance via the thunderbolt connections.
Input Needed
When it comes to the keyboard and trackpad on this M3 MacBook Pro, I think they are exactly what I like with the size and function. Most of the time, my MacBook Pro is sitting on my desk, in front of my Studio Display and I use the built in trackpad and keyboard rather than external devices with my MacBook off to the side.
I find this to be my most comfortable position when working and the keyboard is the right distance from the front of the macbook for me, allowing me to wrest my hands on the sides without getting poked by the edge or getting erroneous inputs on the trackpad. The keys have the right amount of travel and resistance to make typing comfortable.
I also find the trackpad to be just right in size compared to the larger and smaller macbooks. There is plenty of room for gestures, dragging things across the screen, scrolling, whatever.
AV Club
On the sides of the keyboard you get actual speaker grills rather than trying to force sound through the back of the keyboard out the vents, and the sound on the M3 MacBook Pro is really good.
The High fidelity sound comes from 2 tweeters and a pair of force canceling woofers that make watching movies, listening to music, podcasts, editing video, all just sound great. I find the MacBook speakers to be wide ranging and full, with enough volume for most situations. But where the MacBook Pro really excels over something like the MacBook Air, is the awesome display.
This 14.2” mini led display is just awesome. For regular use it can be super bright with 600 nits and use this thing just about anywhere but direct sunlight. The Pro Motion feature makes everything look smoother as you scroll around the web, or slide between spaces, but what really wows me everytime I use it is the HDR.
This thing will output up to 1600 nits for HDR content which just makes the right movie pop. I don’t spend a lot of time watching movies on a laptop, but the few times I have, like in hotel rooms, this thing just blows my mind.
I also experimented with creating a couple of HDR videos recently and of course, I wouldn't have been able to do that without an HDR display, so that was pretty cool.
Battery life on the base model m3 macbook pro has been pretty good for me. Apple says you can get up to 22 hours of use but if I unplug in the morning and avoid editing video, I can get between 15-18 hours of use. That’s with my day job apps, email, safari, and a few others that come and go through the day. The battery life is good, it's hard to complain about anything over 12 hours.
Yes, Memory Makes a Difference
What I can complain about is the performance. The Performance of the base model M3 MacBook Pro has been a bit of a mixed back for me. On paper and in generic benchmarks, the M3 chips are a solid upgrade over the base model M2 chips.
When comparing against the M2, when both chips have an 8 core cpu, 10 core gpu and 8gb of unified memory, the M3 scored 3075 for single core and 1188 for multicore in geek bench 6, which is about an 18% and 21% difference, respectively.
With graphics I found the M3 had a 10% increase over the M2 when comparing it with GFX bench 4k Aztec ruins.
The new M3 GPUs also have hardware ray tracing which should make some games look better but you just aren't going to find many games at all, outside of the Mac App store and I really just want to play modern Call of duty on a Mac, dangit!
When testing out the M2 based macbook airs, I had a pretty smooth experience for all my regular, non-editing computing, but something has felt a little off with this M3 MacBook Pro and I guarantee that part of the issue is the limited amount of memory.
I'm just going to say it…. Applications and operating systems like memory. They don't want to fake it or swap, they just want real physical ram so that they can run smoothly.
I don’t care how fast the unified memory is, or how fast the computer can swap to a relatively fast SSD, those are bottlenecks.
Just sitting here and typing on the M3 MacBook Pro with a dozen tabs and notes and email, I am getting over a gb of swap and you can see the pressure building.
When I am researching for this channel or working remotely and managing servers and services for my day job, I can feel the computer slightly hesitate now and then. It doesn't usually last long but I can point directly to the memory pressure when this occurs.
And I don’t think that a dozen tabs in safari, email, and messaging is an abnormal or Pro use case, but just adding more memory ensures that your computer will run smoother now, and for the next 3-6 years that you might own it.
I actually covered this in my video about the 15” macbook air where I tested the 8 and 16gb model. The same issues apply here.
15" MacBook Air: A great couch computer!
Actually, it may be worse here because I have had another issue that has not been resolved yet and that is I can't reliably export my videos in final cut pro. 90% plus of my video export tests simply fail, all at different times. But what happens is the memory usage spikes and then the failure happens.
Someone from Apple reached out to me and I have provided them with all the information and even my projects, but there is still no fix. This is an M3 specific issue with 8GB of ram because I can export just fine with the M1 and M2 airs with 8gb of memory, just fine. There is something just off with the base model M3 MacBook Pro performance that is solved with more memory.
My M3 MacBook Pro problem with Final Cut Pro!
How Can I Spend Your Money?
For a retail price of $1600, this MacBook Pro does not feel like it is a computer I can recommend, based on the price and performance and it just falls into the couch laptop territory, like the base model MacBook Air. To make this thing feel good to use you need to upgrade the memory to 16GB, at least which puts you just $200 away from a higher performing M3 Pro MacBook Pro with 18GB of unified memory, which I can recommend.
You can save a lot of money when you find the base model 13” macbook air on sale at $900, or the 15” air at $1050, and get roughly the same performance.
Even better, you can also find some sales on upgraded models of the Airs, if you are lucky, like this 15” M2 air with upgraded memory and storage for $150 less than the base model M3 MacBook Pro. Although, you do miss out on a number of features on the Pro like the hdmi and sd card slot, better speakers, and a much better display, but if HDR content isn't important to you, then I’ll leave links below so you can check them out.
Other than that, I am curious what you guys think of the base model M3 MacBook Pro. Do you think it’s a good deal?
