15-Inch Quad-Core i7 MacBook Pro Unboxing & Review (February 2011)

15-Inch Quad-Core i7 MacBook Pro Unboxing & Review (February 2011)

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What's in the Box:

Upon opening the box of the early 2011 Macbook Pro, we find everything that is to be expected. Along with the DVDs and manuals we find the Magsafe power adaptor, AC wall plug, power cord, cleaning cloth and of course the Macbook Pro itself. This years model ships with Mac OS 10.6 and iLife 11 which includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb and Garageband.

Three flavors to choose from:

Within the 15in models we have three levels from which to choose:

2.0GHz Quad-Core i7 CPU, AMD RADEON HD 6490M 256MB GPU ($1799 US)
2.2GHz Quad-Core i7 CPU, AMD RADEON HD 6750M 1GB GPU ($2199 US)
2.3GHz Quad-Core i7 CPU, AMD RADEON HD 6750M 1GB GPU ($2499 US)

Display:

The line gives us three options in regards to the display

Standard Resolution 1440 x 900 Glossy Display
1600 x 1050 Hi-Res Glossy Display (+$100 US)
1680 x 1050 Hi-Res Anti Glare Display (+$150 US)

It should be noted that all options maintain a 16:10 Aspect Ratio with the Hi-Res options yielding a sharper text and 36% more pixels providing more screen real estate. Whether to go Glossy or Anti-Glare depends on the user. Glossy provides vibrant colors great for enjoying movies and other media while the Anti Glare (featuring a silver bezel) is wonderful for doing photo/video work.

CPU:

This installment's CPU is all about power, the Quad-Core 2.3 GHz i7 CPU has four physical cores and will intelligently overclock up to 3.4 GHz (single-core applications) with Intel "Turbo Boost". It features hyperthreading utilizing your four cores as eight threads. We also find a 50% increase in speed from the previous Dual-Core i7 2.8GHz Model ( Geekbench nearly doubled!!! 10164 compared to 5910)

Design:

In terms of design, we see no major changes to the physical structure of the 15in Macbook Pro. The aluminum unibody design remains unchanged with dimensions of 14.35" Wide by 9.82" Deep by 0.95" High, weighing in at 5.6 lbs. It features a Multi-Touch Trackpad with both a physical click and tap to click functionality. It is also equipped with a backlit keyboard, an 8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW) and on board stereo speakers with a subwoofer giving you the best quality you could expect from a laptop, reminding us that we should never underestimate the usefulness of some good headphones.

What's New:

New features on the 2011 15in Macbook Pro include a Facetime HD Camera which will capture in 720p at 30 FPS for video, an improved built in microphone located next to the Facetime HD Camera and the new Thunderbolt High-Speed I/O.

Thunderbolt:

In this year's model's we see featured the new Thunderbolt I/O, which was previously called "Light Peak" developed by Intel. This high speed I/O features PCI-Express and Display Port functionality which means it can be used with Displayport, DVI, HDMI and VGA displays. Thunderbolt provides transfer of 10 gigabits per second which puts it at 20x faster than USB 2.0, 12x faster than Firewire and 2x faster than USB 3.0! It also has two independent channels that can supply power to two devices (up to 6 can be daisy-chained). An array of Thunderbolt devices are currently in development and should hit the market by Summer 2011.

Additional I/O:

Magsafe Power
Ethernet
FW800
x2 USB 2.0
SDXC (up to 64GB support)
Audio in
Audio out
Battery Meter (push to check level)

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

This installment of the Macbook pro is definitely worthy to upgrade to from the previous iteration. It is insanely fast for a laptop and is great for all around media production (HD video, Photo edition, Music Production). As far as which configuration to go with, the 2.2GHz upgrade is a no brainer because of the speed bump and better 1GB graphics card (better for 3D rendering: Motion, After Effects & Gaming). Hi-Res is also a definite upgrade for sharper text and more screen real estate, whether to go with Glossy or Anti-Glare again depends on your application. If you are planning on using this for Audio/Video production you might want to think about upgrading to the 7200RPM HD or SSD for better performance and 8GB of RAM for smoother multitasking.

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15-Inch Quad-Core i7 MacBook Pro Unboxing & Review (February 2011)
15-Inch Quad-Core i7 MacBook Pro Unboxing & Review (February 2011)
15-Inch Quad-Core i7 MacBook Pro Unboxing & Review (February 2011)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• 2011 MacBook Pro Review
• Quad-Core MacBook Pro Review
• 15-Inch
• 15
• Quad-Core
• i7
• MacBook
• Pro
• Unboxing
• Review
• February
• 2011
• Benchmark
• 2.2GHz
• Core
• 2.3GHz
• 2.0GHz
• AMD
• RADEON
• HD
• 6490M
• 6750M
• 4GB
• RAM
• Final
• Cut
• Photoshop
• Canon
• 60D
• Logic
• tldtoday
• techfastlunch&dinner

[DraperHaz]

dear santa...

[AlamsAccount]

You helped me so much deciding what to buy! you are the best thank you so much!

[icekillez]

@Aymdicate obviously

[Aymdicate]

Will it run minecraft no lag?

(serious question I'm asking)

[mariokid2115]

@steamkidsdad If you want a high end gaming machine get a maxed out iMac or consider a desktop PC. There is no laptop on the market that can compare to a desktop.

[hellowhkitti]

nice video =p

[TheSmartPresenter004]

Where is the unboxing???

[eivis13]

@steamkidsdad handle- yes handle on max res and textures-never

[steamkidsdad]

so if i was to buy the basic 15 inch macbook pro from the apple site would that be good for gaming not that i want it specifically for gaming i was just wondering before i bought it if it could handle one high end game.

[jswac]

Mine's 2.4 GHz and it was 2199? What?

[darkhunter2121]

@mrnoizeh1 yes it is if you wan a spend 300 Bucks on final cut pro x

[mrnoizeh1]

if i buy the macbook pro 13inch thats with 1200dollars is it good for video editing and gfx?