The 17-Inch MacBook Pro Review [Review]
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/26WqTbBikV0/the-17+inch-macbook-pro-review
Design
The battery is one of the only components that's significantly different than that of the smaller machines. St! riving f or 8-hours of battery life the newly designed power pack screws right into the chassis. (Lots more on that topic below.)
What's Different About It?
Compared to the MBP15
• Supports 8GB of RAM; the MBP15 only supports 4GB
• Includes a 256GB SSD option; the MBP15 only a 128GB
• The MBP17 includes five speakers with a wider frequency response
• There's one extra USB port (3 total)
• Slightly faster processor options
Compared to the old 17-inch MBP
• 40% larger battery (95WH vs. 68WH)
• Glossy and matte screen options are now available
• The screen has equal resolution, but a 60% wider color gamut
• Unibody structure, of course
Performance
The MBP17 features a 2.66 or 2.93GHz processor, up to 8GB of RAM and dual Nvidia 9400M (integrated) and 9600 (discrete) graphics cards. A! 320GB 5 400RPM hard drive comes standard, but that can be upgraded to a 320GB 7200RPM drive or a 128GB/256GB solid-state drive. (Note: There's no option for a 500GB hard drive, though they are readily available if you want to swap one in.)
The model we tested was fully loaded, with a 2.93GHz processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD.
Still, because the MBP17 is so similar to the 15 internally, we're going to point you in the direction of our last review for benchmarks on the dual Nvidia 9400M and 9600 graphics cards. We also ran Xbench and uploaded the predictably impressive results to their database. However, one feature we wanted to be sure to check out was the new 256GB SSD option, a drive made by Toshiba. It's a $750 upgrade that we were able to test in our review model.
SSD Speed Benchmarks:
Searching through the XBench results forums, we found a user who tested out a G. Skill Titan 256GB SSD on a unibody mac. It's not rated to be as fast as Samsung's $1000 SSD gold standard, but according to these benchmarks, it's still considerably faster than the drive Apple will sell you. The catch? The Titan runs $500, or $250 less than Apple's bundled Toshiba. In other words, as with mo! st upgra des, you're still better off going through a third party for your SSD.
Battery Life
Everything so far about the new MBP17 is all well and good, but we think there's one claim in particular that's going to interest consumers the most: A 7-8 hour battery life*.
*Assuming screen at half brightness, Wi-Fi on, light browsing, light word processing (so no Bluetooth but otherwise a standard configuration). 8 hours on integrated graphics, 7 hours with more beefy discrete GPU.
And while we didn't have the time to test Apple's 1000 recharge claim, we were able to run some battery tests.
First we put the system up against a day of blogging. This test was admittedly harder than Apple's cushy benchmarking, but I wanted to see how it would stand up to true pro use. So with the screen just a hair above half brightness, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off, backlit keyboard on, discrete graphics on, heavy web browsing and occasional Photoshop work, we achieved 3! hours 5 7 minutes of run time.
Should we be pissed? After all, Apple offers 7-8 hours in their ads! That's your call. In truth, we've found that most laptops hit about half their rated battery life under real world conditions (cough, netbooks, cough). If we can only cover our ears and hum through Apple's latest marketing campaign, we're actually fairly pleased with about 4 hours of heavy use from a fully loaded 17-inch laptop—especially since that metric includes no real compromises to our workflow.
We also wanted to simulate watching a movie on the plane. So we played back an MPEG4 with the screen at half brightness, discrete graphics off, backlit keyboard off, Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off and headphones in. We received 4 hours 39 minutes of run time. That's nearly two hours longer* than we received from the MBP15, and 2 hours 30 minutes longer than we received from the MB13. That's basically the difference between watching one movie and watching two.
*The previous MBP tests had Wi-Fi on, the backlit keyboard on and speakers on. These alterations should account for a small amount of the increase, but my no means a majority. The 17-inch unit also has an SSD, but these non-spinning drives don't necessarily mean power savings.
For the Lazy Readers Needing a Summary
The thing should feel! like a beast on the couch, but it actually doesn't. It's almost frightening how quickly you adjust, appreciating the extra screen space while disregarding that this system is supposed to be a "laptop" in name only.
If you can get over the purported 8 hours of battery life and settle for longevity around half that number, you'll be welcomed with a laptop that feels like a desktop but is actually a laptop. It's a Cadillac that you can just about park, a triple cheeseburger in the bun of a double, a stocky man in a well-tailored suit. And we're liking it. We just can't help but ask, why can't Apple fit a 256GB SSD or 8GB of RAM—or even a 4+ hour battery—into a 15-inch MBP?
External Sources [ifixit, Xbench]
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