In our standard video playback battery drain test, the 2015 MacBook Pro ran for 15 hours and 46 minutes, only 40 minutes behind our all-time leader, the 2014 13-inch MacBook Air. But, both this new model and a 15-inch MacBook Pro from 2014 led in most of our tests (note that the 15-inch Pro from 2014 had a more powerful, but older, Core i7 processor and twice the RAM, at 16GB), although Apple's promise of a faster hard drive didn't help this system in our Photoshop test, where it groups with other Broadwell systems and last year's MacBook Air.Īpple has promised an extra hour or so of battery life from the Broadwell leap, and we were very impressed with the lifespan of this system. These new CPUs have made greater gains in efficiency, which can lead to better battery life. For this 2015 model, the jump to Intel's Broadwell line of fifth-generation Core i-series CPUs, in this case a Core i5-5257U, didn't move the needle much on application performance, but we didn't expect it to.

MacBook laptops, especially the Pro models, which generally have faster CPU options and more RAM, always perform well in our benchmark tests. Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display (13-inch, 2015) That leaves this 13-inch Pro as the best balance of performance, battery life, portability and expandability in the current Apple laptop lineup, and one of the first places you should look if you're looking to buy a premium-priced laptop. There's a lot of buzz around the new 12-inch MacBook, but its low-power Intel Core M processor, lack of ports and low-res webcam mean it likely won't be the workhorse that other Macs are. The classic non-Retina-Display MacBook Pro is surprisingly still hanging on as the last MacBook with an optical drive, but it has little else to recommend it.

The current Air models are held back by aging designs and low screen resolutions, and the 15-inch MacBook Pro has not received the same updates or new trackpad, and is simply too big to lug around more than once or twice a week (although it's great for a desk-bound system). It's perhaps because this model has best kept up with the changing laptop landscape.

2015 apple macbook pro