Display
We are sorry to express much feeling about
the new Retina screen with Pro 15in but we, to tell the truth, haven’t seen such
good screen from a laptop. Now we see another one, and it lies in a 13in model.
The screen’s natural display is necessarily reduced, from 2,800x1,800 down to 2,560x1,600
in a 15.4in unit which we call the gorgeous. This 13.3in model is as beautiful.
Macbook
Pro with 13in Retina Display
Brightness is rated at 300nit, not the
world’s record, simply good, especially with outdoor display enhanced by
reducing transparent layer inside the screen. The contrast and viewing angle
are good while color temperature is natural at first. But, if you want to make
thing cooler or warmer, you have a pre-installed editor in Mountain Lion,
allowing you to change white point at custom.
What
you still can’t do is force apps to run at the screen’s native resolution
However, what you still can’t do is force
apps to run at the screen’s native resolution. There’s lots of zooming in/out
here, the default setting is Mountain Lion enlarges apps to occupy similar
spaces onscreen. This is great for app compatibility but not in case you prefer
an increase in screen space.
Like on Retina 15in, you can manually
change to some level by sliding a small bar. Here, “More Space” option, where
things are smallest, is considered to be like 1,680x1,050.
As before, apps need optimizing to take
full advantage of the Retina screen. We have been pleased to inform more apps
ever since last June when the 15in model was released.
Performance and battery life
It’s guessable the new 13in Retina Pro
model provides a performance close to that of none-Retina 13in model – based on
similar interiors. Our model features low specs whose style we think people
would choose: Intel Core i5 2.5GHz processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD.
The
new 13in Retina Pro model provides a performance close to that of none-Retina
13in model – based on similar interiors
It doesn’t disappoint people when
mentioning computing power but the SSD itself distinguishes it from the
non-Retina brother. We often see a read/write speed of 430MBps/310MBps. It is
slower than what we often see in Retina Pro 15in which deliver a read/write
speed of 440MBps/390MBps but the difference is unnoticeable during daily use.
Apps start to work after a few tap to Dock, file is loaded fast and startup
takes just 15 sec.
In fact, you may find it hard to
distinguish this model from its bigger Retina brother during daily use, except
for work involving videos, images editing… Thus, we move on to some general
tests to define the difference.
MacBook
Pro 13in (Retina display, Core i5 2.5GHz, Intel HD Graphics 4000)
·
Geekbench: 6,812
·
Xbench: 378
·
Battery life: 6:07
MacBook Pro 13in (Core i5 2.5GHz, Intel HD Graphics 4000)
·
Geekbench: 6,817
·
Xbench: 368
·
Battery life: 6:51
MacBook Air 13in (Core i5 1.8GHz, Intel HD Graphics 4000)
·
Geekbench: 6,195
·
Xbench: 321
·
Battery life: 6:34
MacBook Air 13in (Core i5-2557M 1.7GHz, Intel HD Graphics 3000)
·
Geekbench: 5,373
·
Xbench: N/A
·
Battery life: 5:32
MacBook Pro 15in (Retina display, Core i7 2.6GHz)
·
Geekbench: 11,591
·
Xbench: 486
·
Battery life: 7:49
MacBook Pro với 15in (Retina display, Core i7 2.3GHz)
·
Geekbench: 11,082
·
Xbench: 457
·
Battery life: 9:22
MacBook Pro (Core i7-2720QM 2.2GHz, Radeon HD 6750M/Intel Graphics
3000)
·
Geekbench: 9,647
·
Xbench: 340.1 (Radeon)/157.78 (Intel)
·
Battery life: 7:27
MacBook Pro (Core i7-620M 2.66GHz, GeForce GT 330M)
·
Geekbench: 5,395
·
Xbench: 228.22
·
Battery life: 5:18
MacBook Air 13in (Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz, GeForce 320M)
·
Geekbench: 2,717
·
Xbench: 117.38
·
Battery life: 4:34
We ran Geekbench
first and got an average score of 6,812, close to MacBook Pro 13in’s result we
received last July. This wasn’t surprising as it runs the same CPU. Meanwhile, in
Xbench, it got averagely 378 points, slightly higher than 368 of Pro (without
Retina display) featuring the same size but slower than the Retina 15in model
having the lowest specs.
Mentioning battery life, Apple promised 7
hours, similar to what it rated for Retina Pro 15in, but in our test, Retina
Pro 13in lost its predecessors in the same tests. Video playback with fixed
brightness and Wi-Fi on, Retina Pro 13 in lost to Air 13 in by 20min and to Pro
13in (no Retina display) by 45min. We ran the tests 3 times to make sure the
result was consistent. We hoped for an increase in specs but it didn’t happen.
