Digital Trends

Apple MacBook Pro 15.4-inch 2.16GHz May 24th, 2006 | by Jason Tomczak

Better Battery

On a week-long business trip, I was able to work on my MacBook Pro during the course of several cross-country flights.  With the screen brightness turned down half way and power settings changed to "Better Energy Savings", the MacBook Pro lasted over 4 hours and still had a little battery life to spare.  This is an improvement over the battery life of my last-rev 15" PowerBook.

Screen Test

The screen on the MacBook Pro is very bright and clean.  In fact, at it's brightest setting, it is nearly as bright as the screen on my 20" G5 iMac.  For any laptop, that's a very impressive feat.  The 1400x900 screen resolution powered by a 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 video card is great for movies, iPhoto, webs browsing, games and plenty of other types of visual entertainment.

Additionally, DVD playback on the MacBook Pro is stunning.  I found the darkest, most contrasted high-action movie I could - Underworld.  Even in the fastest action sequences displayed full-screen, blacks were true black, flesh tones were very real and colors were vibrant.  There were no visible artifacts during the most intense scenes.  I wish I could report more, but it was flat-out excellent.

Conclusion

My impressions of the MacBook Pro are quite positive overall, even considering the troubles I encountered.  The MacBook Pro is one of the most gorgeous laptops in the world.  The design is unparalleled.  Its brushed aluminum body and accents provide a sensual computing experience unlike PC alternatives.  The screen is awesome - bright, crisp, clean, almost life-like.  The keyboard feels smooth, yet solid.  The OS and universal applications run very quickly thanks to a lengthy menu of cutting edge hardware and memory management improvements. 

While the MacBook Pro has a long list of positive attributes, all of which make it a very worthy and highly recommended purchase, it has not been perfected by Apple yet.  The troubles I experienced were frustrating but minor, and could rightly be blamed on the 10.4.6 update instead of the MacBook Pro hardware itself, but it is the overall computing experience that counts.  Had the wireless issues and mysterious volume errors not occurred, I would have given the MacBook Pro a perfect score.  (On a positive note, Apple is already aware of the 10.4.6 complaints and will likely take steps to ensure it never happens again.)

The Intel-based MacBook Pro met or surpassed my expectations.  In many ways, it increased my level of expectation for future Apple products. 

Pros

• Sexy design
• Light weight
• Silent operation
• Super-bright screen
• iSight camera built-in
• Ability to run OSX and Windows XP

Cons

• Aggravating wireless connection issues experienced
• Bleeding-edge technologies make little glitches possible