Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, summer 2009) review

Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, summer 2009) Review

Reviewed by: Dan Ackerman

Reviewed on: 15 June 2009

Radically overhauled last year, Apple's MacBook line of laptops moved to aluminium construction, edge-to-edge glass over LED displays, and over-sized multitouch trackpads (with the exception of the lone £750 white plastic MacBook). The latest round of updates is more of a refinement than another revolution, but it adds some sought-after features, while lowering prices on many configurations.

Most notably, the 13-inch aluminium unibody MacBook has been promoted to join the MacBook Pro family. It's a move that makes sense, as the differences between the two lines were becoming increasingly blurred. To complete the transformation, the 13-inch Pro, available for around £900, regains its missing FireWire port, making it even more useful for creative professionals on the go.

Design
New to the Pro line is something we never thought we'd see on a MacBook: an SD card slot. Standard on the 13- and 15-inch Pro laptops, this corrects one of our main MacBook niggles. We're also pleased to see the inclusion of a backlit keyboard on the 13-inch Pro.

Some have strong feelings about the non-removable battery, which is similar to those already found on the MacBook Air and 17-inch Pro. It's a legitimate concern, but we think the promise of better battery life (Apple claims up to a 40 per cent improvement), and three times as many recharge cycles as older batteries is just as important.

The rest of the system's design and construction remains largely the same as last year's model, with the chassis consisting of a solid block of carved-down aluminium, rather than a thin outer shell that has had support struts added to it. It's both lighter and sturdier than the older plastic versions of the 13-inch MacBook.

The screen is bright and colourful, but we'd like to see a matte option

The new Pro also retains the same over-sized trackpad, with the entire surface depressing like a button, although simple tapping (as on a PC laptop) will also work once you turn that option on in the settings menu. We've become accustomed to the two-, three- and four-finger multitouch gestures, which let you hide all your apps by sweeping four fingers up on the pad, or bring up the application switcher by sweeping four fingers left or right. Once you get used to that, going back to a standard touchpad is difficult.

Apple says the new display offers a wider colour gamut, and the screen certainly looks bright and colourful, but we wish the matte-screen option offered on the 17-inch Pro were available across the line. The 13.3-inch widescreen LCD display offers a 1,280x800-pixel native resolution -- standard for screens of this size -- but we'd love to see Apple try its hand at a 16:9 laptop display.

While the LED screen means a thinner lid and some battery life benefits, the edge-to-edge glass covering the entire display panel grabs stray light rays with ease, making the glossy screen hard to see in some lighting conditions.

By bringing back the FireWire port (now FireWire 800) and adding an SD card slot, Apple has addressed the majority of our most pressing issues with the previous 13-inch model. Pro photographers will point out that they usually use CompactFlash cards, but the rest of us won't have to always remember to pack a USB card reader or cable to directly connect our cameras. Connecting to another video display, however, will require a sold-separately dongle for the mini-DisplayPort video output.

Performance
The 13-inch Pro performed as expected in our benchmark tests, with the 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU roughly on a par with the 2.4GHz processor in the late-2008 version of the 13-inch MacBook. Trading up to the faster 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo available in the 15-inch Pro yields a marked improvement on paper, but for most anecdotal use -- Web surfing, working on office documents, multimedia playback, for example -- any of the current MacBooks will be more than adequate. An even faster 3.08GHz CPU is available on the 15-inch Pro, but the 13-inch model tops out at 2.53GHz.