Apple MacBook Pro Retina 13 (Early 2015) Notebook Review

Since the chassis and the ports are identical to the predecessor, we won't cover them extensively once again. All the corresponding information is available in our unboxing and test video on YouTube as well as the previous review article.

The MacBook is still the benchmark for all the rivals in respect of the quality. Although there are many high-quality Ultrabooks with Windows nowadays, not many can actually reach the level of Apple. The chassis, which is milled from a single piece of aluminum, is not the lightest of its kind with 1.6 kg, but the stability is excellent in return and you probably get the most precise display hinges in this class. Our critical eyes could not find any build quality flaws, but we can still notice the very limited upgradeability. The specialists from iFixit only rated the MacBook with 1 out of 10 possible points.

The highlights of the port variety are the two Thunderbolt 2 ports (also usable as Mini-DisplayPort, up to 4K @ 60 Hz); in addition you get two USB 3.0 ports as well as one HDMI port (4K @ 24 Hz). This means the MBP can be used as a real working device – one ambition that does not apply for the slimmed down Air-series or the new 12-inch MacBook. The wireless connectivity includes the usual features like Bluetooth 4.0 as well as WLAN 802.11 ac. Apple uses a particularly fast triple-stream adaptor from Broadcom.

The BCM94360CS reaches an enormous theoretical transfer rate of 1.3 Gbps, but the module did not work very well with our TP-Link Archer C7 and we did not manage more than 100 Mbps at first. A firmware update, however, improved the situation and the transfer rate was increased to almost 580 Mbps or 65 MB/s, respectively – a record result and the Broadcom chip can beat common dual-stream solutions like Intel's Wireless-AC 7265 by around 50%.

Apple did not make any compromises in regard to the panel and still uses a high-quality IPS screen. It is probably the same (or a very similar) model from the predecessor; at least the similar measurement results suggest that. The rich black value of just 0.36 cd/m² results in a contrast ratio of exactly 1,000:1 – a very decent result, even though the XPS 13 is even better. Still, there won't be a big subjective difference with such high results.

The MacBook-series is a very popular choice amongst photographers as well as graphics artists, and not without a reason: The devices from Cupertino have convinced with accurate colors for years now. The new MBP 13 confirms those high expectations with impressively low DeltaE deviations, which can even be further reduced with a calibration. The important sRGB standard is covered by 97% (Correction 20.5.2015 due to a wrong sRGB-reference-profile) and the bigger AdobeRGB color space by 61.9%.

Not every IPS panel is similar: Displays with this technology are generally known for their good viewing-angle stability, but there are actually pretty big differences between the individual models. The panel in the MBP 13 is at the highest level in this respect and hardly shows any deviation in terms of contrast or the colors, even with very flat angles. You can clearly see a difference compared to the slightly less expensive rivals like the Asus Zenbook UX303LN.

13-inch subnotebooks almost exclusively use ULV CPUs with a TDP of 15 Watts nowadays. They result in good battery runtimes; the performance, however, is not really outstanding. The MacBook Pro 13 uses an Intel Broadwell processor with a TDP of 28 Watts, which suggests bigger performance reserves, especially when you stress the CPU and the GPU at the same time.

The Core i5-5257U in our entry-level configuration has a nominal clock of 2.7 GHz, which can be increased up to 3.1 GHz via Turbo Boost. Apple also offers an optional upgrade to a Core i5-5287U (2.9 - 3.3 GHz, 100 Euros more, ~$108) or Core i7-5557U (3.1 - 3.4 GHz, 350 Euros more, ~$380). Apart from the clock differences as well as the slightly bigger L3 cache of the i7 version, however, the models hardly differ at all: All three chips have two CPU cores each and support Hyper-Threading to execute up to four threads simultaneously.

Since there is no dedicated graphics card (unlike the Asus UX303LN, for example), all 3D calculations are handled by the integrated Iris Graphics 6100. Compared to the old Iris Graphics 5100, Intel has increased the number of Execution Units (EUs) from 40 to 48 for the new chip, so the shader performance is roughly twice as high as the popular HD Graphics 5500 (24 EUs). Still, based on our experiences (at least for Intel GPUs from the last couple of years), the frame rate does not scale according to the theoretical performance.

One reason for this is the limited memory bandwidth. Both the processor and the graphics unit are still attached via a small 128-bit interface (2x 64-bit dual-channel) in the Broadwell generation, but Intel now allows – at least for the 28-watt models – slightly higher clocks up to LPDDR3-1866. Apple either solders 8 or 16 GB to the motherboard, the latter for a hefty additional charge of 200 Euros (~$217). Just as expensive is the upgrade of the 128 GB SSD; 200 Euros (~$217) for 256 GB or 450 Euros (~$489) for 512 GB (adjusted for differences in equipment), respectively, are a bit too expensive in our opinion.

The combination of increased clocks and slightly improved per-MHz performance results in an advantage of around 10 - 15% for the Core i5-5257U over the previous Core i5-4258U. This is pretty much on the performance level of the Core i5-4310M or Core i5-4200H, both of which have a much higher specified TDP of 37 and 47 Watts, respectively. It is interesting that the benchmark results under Windows 8.1 are repeatedly higher compared to OS X – we suggest that Apple chose a more defensive approach for the Turbo Boost to improve the power efficiency. The performance on mains and battery power is identical with both systems.

Another interesting aspect is the comparison of the Core i5-5257U with the Core i7-5500U inside the Zenbook UX303LN. The "small" 15-watt model is surprisingly close to the 5257U, although it is only surprising at first: Thanks to the advanced 14 nm manufacturing process, the real power consumption in CPU benchmarks like Cinebench is clearly below 20 Watts, so a higher TDP classification hardly makes a difference. It is unfortunate that Intel does not offer quad-core models in the (U)LV segment yet (except for the Atom chips) – four lower-clocked cores would certainly be more efficient than an extremely fast dual-core CPU in multi-threaded applications.

Apple already replaced classic SATA-SSDs a while ago and the manufacturer uses the much faster PCIe-interface instead. While SATA-III limits the net transfer rates to a little under 600 MB/s, PCIe 3.0 x4 almost reaches 4 GB/s.

Although our 128 GB drive has the designation "Apple SSD SM0128G," it is probably the Samsung SM951 (maybe with a customized firmware) that was just recently launched. This M.2 SSD (2280) is based on the Samsung S4LN058A01 controller in combination with 19 nm MLC NAND and 512 MB LPDDR3 cache.

Since there are no limitations from the interface, we can see sequential transfer rates of up to 1,200 MB/s (reading) and around 600 MB/s (writing) – the highest results that we determined for a single drive with this capacity so far. Slightly disappointing, however, are the results for the 4K tests, where the Apple/Samsung SSD is actually slower than several SATA rivals. This small weakness is only overcome with heavily parallelized accesses and the MacBook can secure the top spot within the competition.

We already talked about the specifications of the Iris Graphics 6100, now we want to have a look at the performance results. However, we do not get a very uniform picture: While the GPU is around 50% ahead of the HD Graphics 5500 and Iris Graphics 5100 in 3DMark 11, the advantage drops to 10 up to 20% in 3DMark 2013, which benefits from more memory bandwidth. It is possible that the current (Windows) drivers cannot utilize the full potential; but it seems that the Iris Graphics 6100 cannot compete with a GeForce 840M. An upgrade to the Core i5-5287U or Core i7-5557U – both with slightly higher CPU and GPU clocks – won't really change that.

As expected, the GPU can handle all our multimedia tests without problems. Even a 4K video in the H.265 codec runs smoothly with reasonable CPU load; at least if you have installed a corresponding video player with working hardware acceleration. It is recommended to use the very efficient Quick Sync unit of the processor (with Handbrake, for example) if you want to encode and transcode movies.