MacBook Pro 13 inch: Notebook with new Apple M2 chip presented

In addition to the new MacBook Air, Apple also presented a new edition of the small MacBook Pro 13-inch model at the WWDC 2022 developer conference. The design remains unchanged, but the new and more powerful Apple Silicone ARM M2 chip is installed inside. The touch bar returns.

The MacBook Pro 13 inch in detail

The 14- and 16-inch variants of the MacBook Pro get a new little brother by their side. The MacBook Pro 13 inch shows a general overhaul. Not necessarily in terms of design, but in terms of the built-in technology.

Compared to the new Air and the Pro models from last year, the MacBook Pro 13-inch does without a notch in the display. It also has a brilliant 13.3-inch Retina display (2,560 x 1,600 pixels at 227 ppi, 500 nits brightness and True Tone), a FaceTime HD camera with 720p resolution and studio-quality microphones.

Besides the ISO keyboard including Touch ID, ambient light sensor and Force Touch trackpad for precise pointer control and pressure-sensitive functions, the small Pro model once again relies on a Touch Bar above the keyboard that replaces the F-keys. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 are also offered, as well as two USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 and a 3.5 mm jack.

The 58.2 watt-hour lithium polymer battery is said to last around 20 hours of video playback and is charged via 67W USB-C power adapter. In addition, thermal management has been improved to ensure maximum performance at all times, even in compute-intensive applications.

MacBook Pro 13-inch also with M2 chip

As in the Air, the new MacBook Pro 13-inch also uses Apple’s M2 ARM chip, which comes with a decent performance boost compared to the M1. Apple combines an 8-core CPU (4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores) with a 10-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine.

At the same time, the memory bandwidth has been increased to 100 GB/s. In addition, there is a maximum of 24 GB of unified RAM. In Pro, the M2 is supposed to work up to 1.4 times as fast as the M1 and up to six times as fast as the model with Intel processor.

When it comes to ProRes video encoding, the M2 is even said to be almost three times as fast as the M1. Image editing, for example with AffinityFoto, is also said to be around 3.4 times as fast as on the Pro with M1 chip.

Prices and availability

The new Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch will make its way to retailers in July 2022. It will be offered in silver and space gray. Starting at an MSRP of 1,599.00 euros for the model with 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage for 1,599.00 euros. The variant with 512 GB of storage costs a whopping 1,829 Euros. The upgrade to 24 GB of working memory costs 460 Euros (~$460). In combination with the maximum working and system memory (2 TB), you end up with 2,979.00 Euros – without software like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro.