Hands on with the MacBook Pro 'baby'

The 13-inch MacBook Pro may look better than the plasticky MacBook - but how much better does it perform?

The baby of the MacBook Pro family, in the latest Apple line-up the smallest - the 13-inch - is now even more like Apple's similarly-sized white polycarbonate consumer MacBook laptop.

Sure, the MacBook Pro 13 is aluminium, making it both stronger and more recyclable, compared to the hard plasticky Poly shell of the MacBook, which has the same size screen.

The MBP 13 has a Core 2 Duo CPU like the MacBook, too, whereas Apple's latest professional laptops use faster, later generation Intel i5 and i7 chips in the bigger 15-inch and 17-inch versions.

It all begs the question: what's the difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro 13-inch?

The obvious answer is $250. For $250 NZ dollars less than the smallest Pro, you get the same 13.3-inch LED backlit monitor displaying up to 1280x800 pixels, the same NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics with 256MB VRAM and the same 250GB 5400rpm hard drive, all driven by the same 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. But only 2GB RAM, not 4GB.

There's a 2.66GHz option for the 13-inch MacBook Pro, for $2599. This also has a 320GB hard drive, not 250, and this is the machine I tested.

Tipping the balance even more in favour of that saving is that the recently updated MacBook may not have an aluminium case, but it does have a slimmer, unibody shell compared to the chubbier 2009 version.

So why would you buy a 13-inch MacBook Pro? Certainly not for raw processor speed. The 15 and 17-inch versions with their newer chip generations are demonstrably faster, as you can see from my Geekbench test results.

GarageBand boots in 16 seconds on my old MacBook Pro 15-inch, which has been modified with a faster (7200rpm) hard drive. But, impressively, in just four seconds on the mid-2010 MacBook Pro, even though the clock speeds don't seem all that different in the test results.

Here it appears Apple's other little hardware tweaks through the system help, plus all the newer machines seem to get more benefit from 64-bit mode, compared to older machines like my workhorse 2007 15-inch.

Other compelling reasons include 4GB of RAM not 2GB, that tougher case and 10-hour battery life (between seven and ten in my tests, depending essentially on how much video was played), whereas the bigger MBPs get a still-very-impressive nine hours max.

But the MPB 13 has the same hard drive and the same spec CPU as the MacBook. It has the same LED backlit 13.3-inch glossy screen powered by the same GeForce 320M integrated graphics processor with 48 processing cores - three times as many as the previous model's video.

This is a step-up from the last version of the MBP 13 - but the MacBook has the same graphics processor. In its favour, the MacBook Pro 13 has its own dedicated video RAM, whereas the MacBook uses onboard system RAM, whittling down that stock-installed 2GB capacity further.

So the MacBook Pro would be much better at Photoshop, with its dedicated video RAM, but note there's no matte screen option (there is for the 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pros).

But processing power is the same - if video performance is important, you have a choice. Adding RAM into the MacBook, at Apple's price and as a build-to-order option, will cost you $200 more.

(I must note that you can get the right RAM from a third party supplier yourself, and it's easy to install yourself, too.)

Even so, you don't get a full 4GB RAM since the 320M will still be taking 256MB of it for video tasks. Now that $250 more for a tougher shell and dedicated VRAM looks more attractive, and it's about 90 grams lighter than the white MacBook, too.

I haven't had the chance to evaluate the latest white MacBook, but I did get a couple of weeks with the littlest MacBook Pro. It's definitely a capable and handy machine - easy to slip into a bag, yet capable of driving an additional monitor at up to 2560 by 1600 pixels when it's on your desk. (As can the white MacBook.)

Design-wise, it's a very attractive machine with a crystal clear display, handy full-size keyboard and those discrete design touches Apple is famous for.

For example, on my old MacBook Pro 15 (which is slower than this 13-inch with the same type of Core 2 Duo processor) there's a battery indicator underneath. So you have to turn it upside down to check the battery.

This isn't designed for when you're working - there's an onscreen indicator for that - but, say, if you pull it out of your bag and want a quick indication of battery life before you start something, it's useful.

But it's much more useful on the newest MacBook Pro 13. The indicator is on the front left side, ahead of all the ports, and uses tiny, bright, discrete green lights - five lit means full charge; you just depress a little button to activate it.

Full specs are on Apple's website.

So, which would you buy? For the money, the latest MacBook is a hell of a machine. On the other hand, the MacBook Pro 13 doesn't cost much more, gives you better video and longer battery life than the bigger Pro laptops - but these bigger models now really eclipse this smallest MacBook Pro in processor power. But the MacBook Pro 13 has the same rugged aluminium case as the other Pros and it's certainly easier to slip into a bag or case than the bigger ones.

However, we're talking a $250 step-up from a white Polycarbonate MacBook to an aluminium 13-inch MacBook Pro, but a much stepper $1099 step-up to the i5-powered MacBook Pro 15-inch.

At such a small differential, it almost comes down to what you find more attractive.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com