Review of my first Mac: 15" i7 MBP

Since I've been fairly active here over the past few weeks in discussions about the relative merits of Macs in general and of mine in particular, I figured I would go ahead and give you all my version of a review. I've had my new Mac since Wednesday morning and have now done a little bit of everything on it: school work, gaming, web surfing, benchmarking. I thought I'd go ahead and share my experiences as they might be of interest to the community here. Both in terms of the performance of the machine, and in terms of Mac vs. PC, for anyone in the same place I was -- considering making the switch.

About me:
I'm a PhD student in the sciences who needs a machine I can take to school on a daily basis and do some legitimate work on. This includes running MATLAB simulations and writing code, as well as standard PDF / email / web fare. I like games but rarely have time to play them. One of my hobbies is chess, and thus I'm interested in the raw performance of the CPU for chess analysis, especially in Windows (the only environment in which the strong engines run). I've been a PC guy for as long as I've been choosing my own computers, which dates to the time of 486s. I have a Dell desktop with an i7-920 running Windows 7.

I've recently had a lot of contact with Macs via my girlfriend and coworkers. In need of a laptop, I decided I wanted a MBP but of course wasn't going to get one with a C2D, so I waited for the update. When it arrived, I got one, and so here it is.

My rig:
i7 15", hi-res anti glare display, 8gb ram, 7200 rpm HDD. Set up as a 375gb Mac disk and a 115gb Windows disk with Windows 7 professional in boot camp.

My review will probably be redundant in parts for many of you, especially if you are familiar with previous generations of MBPs. Take it for what it's worth! I just wanted to share my experiences with the community so far. Additionally, if there's anything you'd like to know that I don't cover, ask me and if possible I'll let you know.

LOOKS and STYLE:
---------------------
On this count, I love it. I know it's the same as the last generation and the pics are available everywhere so I won't spend much time on this. But the machine is really attractive both on and off. It's remarkably slim and a joy to type on. The HR screen is perfect to my tastes. I like the fact that it is 16:10 and the reflections are minimal. Staring at the screen all day is quite easy and I think much less difficult to deal with that any comparable glossy monitor. The screen cleans easily with a damp microfiber cloth. The trackpad is large and nearly the same color as the surrounding aluminum. It's a very attractive package all around. The USB ports are a little close together for my taste, but I don't have any issues getting my flash drive and another USB peripheral (like my wireless mouse) plugged in next to each other. If you have large dongles you might have a different experience, but it works quite well for me. The lack of HDMI is of course a major disappointment, but at least the minidisplayport now transmits audio so eventually one adapter will take care of HDMI, which I understand is a modest improvement on previous generations. Unfortunately, those adapters aren't available yet.

PERFORMANCE:
-----------------
CPU is exactly what you'd expect from the i7-620, really. Cinebench 11.5 comes in around 2.5 both in Windows 7 and OSX. Graphics performance is quite good for my purposes but probably wouldn't cut it for the hardcore gamer. In Windows 7 I got a PCMark06 score of 6091. The only game I have installed is Dragon Age Origins, which is fully playable with the settings pegged at 1680x1050. Frame rate will improve with lower settings for sure, and some may prefer to run with graphics at medium or even low detail setting if the resolution is maxed. But I found 1680x1050 and all video levels maxed to be completely playable. I can't provide FPS figures however, so you'll just have to trust me on that! The Windows Experience Index gives a 6.9 for CPU, 6.9 for RAM, 6.4 for Aero, 6.4 for Gaming GFX, and 5.9 for hard disk speed.

In everyday use with Mac OS-X, it is a very snappy performer and I've noticed no slowdowns despite having lots of MATLAB going on and up to four spaces worth of open stuff. I'm not sure how much the 8GB RAM is helping, but I am unable to tax the machine to the point of getting any slowdown without doing some truly ridiculous stuff on purpose.

By default the screen will set its own brightness by the ambient light in the room, and the keyboard backlighting does the same. This can be a bit annoying at times when it can't quite decide on what level it wants to be at and goes back and forth. But overall it works well and it can be disabled.

The camera and microphone work very well. I'm impressed with how well it takes pictures and does video chatting compared to its modest number of megapixels. The speakers are loud and transmit bass somehow better than you would expect of a laptop. It can fill a room without sounding tinny. It's not a stereo by design, but the stereo speakers do a really good job for a laptop, without question.

BATTERY LIFE
---------------
This was a big draw for me, and overall it hasn't been a letdown. Taking it to school with me, where I am generally surfing the net, reading PDFs, doing some office work and running some MATLAB, it lasts throughout the day and generally when I come home I have a good 40% left. This is using the computer on and off for upwards of four hours on a given day. I haven't run a detailed controlled test, but I'm guessing in general with normal use you can pull 6+ hours in OSX easily enough. Typing this now with my brightness on a notch below 50% (plenty bright for sitting in my living room in the evening) the machine has 42% left and is estimating my remaining time at just over 3 hours. This is with Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mail open, and the keyboard very slightly backlit.

In W7, the battery life is much lower. Running Dragon Age pegged gives me more like 2.5 hours. General Windows use is likely to yield more like 4 hours, but this is just an estimate. I haven't done specific tests of W7 battery life but my feeling playing with it so far is that battery life in Windows is about half of that in OS-X most of the time.

HEAT
------
I posted in another thread that the CPU can reach some alarming temps, and it's true. Running Cinebench in OS-X brought my temps up to about 98!C before they suddenly started going back down and stabilized in the 80s. Interestingly this happens without the fans kicking up audibly. I'm not sure how it works. I think OSX is reducing the available processor cycles somehow, but I don't know.

Running the same test in W7 had a different result. The temps again climbed to the mid 90s before coming back down, but in this case it was loud fan response that brought them down, and quickly, back to the mid 80s. The fans were definitely humping. I'm not sure why this doesn't happen the same way in OSX, but the result was the same - the cores quickly ran up to the mid-high 90s then quickly were brought down into the 80s.

Running a chess analysis in W7, which pegs processor usage to 100% but does not stress the GPU at all, brings my temps up to the mid 80s before the fans come on and stabilize the temp in the high 70s. I can continue this analysis forever at this temp and the fans are quieter than they are in the above Cinebench test. I found this acceptable and not too loud.

Playing Dragon Age, for example, causes the back of the bottom to become quite warm, but I was still able to play the game with the machine on my lap with jeans on. The heat is confined almost exclusively to the back part of the rear of the machine. The trackpad remains cool no matter what you do, and the keyboard becomes slightly warm but definitely not hot. After awhile of Dragon Age touching the back center portions of the encasement borders on too hot to touch, but it's not quite. For a super slim machine, I feel this is better that I would expect. I didn't want a quad core laptop for the heat concerns, and this machine is acceptable. In everyday use it remains very cool.

Right now, doing idle work on my lap in Firefox typing this review, my CPU temps are 43C and the GPU is 39C, so idle temps are very reasonable.

USABILITY (from a Windows guy)
------------
I gotta say, I love dealing with Snow Leopard. I really do! I am such a convert. The things I didn't like have been washed away, for the most part. I prefer the dock to the windows taskbar easily. I find Finder more effective than Windows Explorer, although it's something of a matter of taste. Spotlight certainly outperforms Windows search. But the real winners:

Expose / Spaces. This destroys everything Windows can do for managing a lot of work at once. My Dell has two large monitors hooked up to it and already I find this 15" screen easier to do lots of work on. Spaces allows for easy organization of your workspace into sections of things that are relevant, and with a quick click and keyboard shortcut you can move things smoothly between them. Expose is awesome. A four-finger swipe shows all your open windows and lets you find what you want very quickly. This really became clear to me today when I was running a MATLAB simulation that produced 15 figures for each run. There is nothing Windows can do that matches the ease of use of Expose here. With a simple four finger swipe I can see all 15 figures and quickly find what I'm looking for and bring it to the front. I'm such a convert.

The trackpad. People here have told me the trackpad doesn't matter because they use a mouse for any serious work. Maybe that's true, but I find this trackpad so functional that I don't even *want* to use the mouse anymore. It feels great, it's very responsive, it's huge, and it's much more capable than any PC trackpad. Tap to click, two finger tap to right click, three finger swipes for forward and back in Preview and Firefox, four finger swipes for expose or to see all your open applications.. it's really great! And two finger scrolling, which is now intertial. The lack of intertial scrolling was about the only thing I didn't like about these trackpads before, and they finally fixed it. The inertial scrolling works great and I don't know why Apple won't enable it for old models too since it is just a software change. I feel bad that my gf's Macbook doesn't have it.

Incidentally, the trackpad functionality is nice in Windows, but not quite as nice. There is no inertial scrolling in Windows, nor is there any three finger or four finger swiping, nor is there pinching or rotating. But two finger scrolling and tap to click and two finger tap to right click work fine. In Windows the trackpad beats anything you'll get on a PC, period.

And it must be said: OSX shutdown and sleep times are amazing. My Gateway laptop this replaces would sometimes take up to two minutes to shut down. This computer shuts down from OSX, literally, in one second. It sleeps the moment you close it, and it pops out of sleep within a second of being opened. This isn't a screen and sluggish disk loading as you MIGHT get with Windows. This is awake and ready to go at full speed from the moment you open it. I know this is something you Mac guys are used to, but it is a huge advantage over Windows if you ask me.

CONCLUSIONS
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I'm extremely happy with this computer. It's a joy to look at and a joy to use. The battery life is awesome and the performance is great. The heat issues are nothing to be concerned about, so far in my experience. If you're on the fence, don't hesitate.

There's no question the machine cost a lot of money. But I had it, and I was in the market for something I'd be using as my main work computer for years to come. As such, there is no computer I would have rather had than this one. I am not disappointed at all so far. For everything you get, in terms of style, power, and support, I don't find it more than a tad overpriced. Four days in, I have never been happier with a new computer.

I hope you have found this informative and helpful. If there's anything else you'd like to know, just ask.

 

not from Apple, but you can get fully working HDMI adapters with audio from 3rd parties...
The Dr Bott one isn't available for a few more weeks...but there are other ones that work... I can't find the things I was looking at earlier, but there have been reviews and reports of people using certain brands and having the audio work fine... the monoprice ones definitely do NOT work, but there are some that do.

But glad you like your new machine... just wait til all the Mac haters start making up stuff about you by saying you like something about a Mac anywhere on a non-Mac forum.

 

Thanks for the post, JS. Detailed 1st impression posts like this always make me wish I were a little closer to my own notebook replacement date.

Here's hoping the thread stays haterade free.

That said . . . in fairness . . . I'm not sure a top-of-the-line 15" MBP versus an old Gateway (running Vista? XP?) is a completely level playing field.

 

why does it have to be level or fair?

 

My post was just meant to be light-hearted. Thus the brevity. I didn't (and don't) want to hijack a good thread with a drawn-out post.

But if you're interested in a longer version, it would go something like this:

I saw a lot of my own experience in the original post. My last windows notebook was a Dell Inspiron with a Celeron CPU and a wobbly display lid. Then I got the MBP and I was blown away at what a better experience it provided. I attributed that mainly to OS X.

And, surely, part of it was. But part of it was that I was playing with hardware that was simply on a different level compared to the old machine. Fast forward another couple years - now I've got a machine that sleeps and resumes just as instantly as the MBP, and boots much, much faster.

Does that mean W7 has OS X beaten? Hardly. Once again, we have an unequal comparison (twice the RAM, faster CPU, and then there's that Intel SSD).

I may well go back to a MBP with my next purchase. If/when I do, I fully expect the cycle to continue

[/threadjack]

Apologies to the OP, and thanks again for starting a thread that, I'm sure, lots of folks will read and enjoy.

 

Hah, well yea. It was Vista, and it wasn't meant to be a direct comparison, just an anecdote to let everyone know where I am coming from. As far as the start up, shut down, and sleep/wake times, I don't think anyone will dispute that Mac wins this hands down at any price point. It's true on my machine comparing the OSX boot with the W7 boot as well. Though yes, my 3yo $700 Gateway was worse than most.

It's also worth noting that my Dell desktop is no slouch: i7 920, 8gb RAM, W7, ATI 5770, only a few months old. So it's not like I don't know what a current, well equipped Wintel machine feels like.

As for the HDMI adaptor, if anyone can link me one that is known to carry audio as well, please do! I'm certainly in the market for that, but as mentioned all I know is that the Monoprice ones do not work. It's been my understanding that I would probably be waiting a bit before such a thing was available.

 

video review about it here....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gD4Lr4RaG8

if you look in the details he has links to the cable he used... but looks like frys has it on backorder now

 

thanks for the review, TC.

it's valuable to me.

 

Not coming in to troll but it sounds like you didn't really need to pay that extra 500 dollars for you computer. You could get a similarly speced windows 7 computer and been very happy with it I think.

Well, to each his own. good to hear you are happy with your purchase

 

Not coming to troll BUT ...

Congrats on your purchase JohnSavage.

 

except then he'd have to run Windows 7 almost all the time.... not having to do that is worth more than 500.

 

oh snap. lol.

 

sounds like stuff Macs can't do yet to me.... You could browse the net on a toaster in this day and age, but if bootcamp wasn't available Macs wouldn't even have been an option. It sounds like he got a Mac when he needed to run Windows exclusive software, which is kind of backwards.

 

Well if you read the rest of the review you would know that Macs certainly can run MATLAB, and in fact I much prefer the usability of MATLAB on my Mac due to expose and spaces. If you did read that, it's unclear why you highlighted it here when making your point about software Macs can't run.

It's true that to run Rybka, the strongest chess analysis program, requires Windows. It's not something I use a lot, but it is something I'd like to be able to use. It's true that I would have had to think a bit harder if it wasn't for the option of using bootcamp, but bootcamp is there, after all.

The *only* things I need to do with my computer that won't run in OS-X is run the highest level chess programs, and play the occasional game - both of which are only a very small fraction of what I do on my laptop in everyday use. For 99% of the time I will spend on my laptop over the next few years OS-X will be fine, and to me, is a much preferred experience. However it's true that it will not make toast.

 

My Ebay one worked fine

 

Matlab runs on Macs...

I don't know jack about chess engines, but I did some quick 10 minute research, and it doesn't look like its a Windows thing. Maybe hes only used it on Windows and only knows Windows and thinks thats the only way to do it... but it looks like most of the GUIs that use Chess engines on Windows work on a port from a Linux program... doubt it would be hard to get those engines running on OSX.

 

It sort of is. The strongest OSX compatible engine is HIARCS, which is not one of the very strongest few. Nowadays the engine most serious players rely on is Rybka.. it is generally the best choice for serious analysis and it does not work in OSX for whatever reason, nor do the most common interfaces. You can get it running in wine but you will lose some strength. And while there are chess GUIs for Mac, surely, the better ones (IMO) are Windows based.

Anyway, my i7-920 desktop will clearly outperform any laptop for this sort of task so it's not a big deal anyway. I just want to be able to run it on my laptop if I want to to check something briefly on occasion, and boot camp is fine for that.

 

Nice write up. You saved me from having to do one

The perspective is nice. I am used to the OS so I would have focused in solely on the hardware changes.

Welcome!

 

Hmmmm..... interesting review.

I'm also in the market for a new laptop (Biomed Eng student) and I was debating between the i7 Envy 15 and the i7 MBP 15. What keeps me away from the Envy is the horrible battery life but I am also concerned how "well" a MBP can handle Matlab.

So in reference to your review, do you use Matlab for its basic math features or do you actually do hardcore stuff on it (considering you also have an i7 desktop...) ?

The reason I ask is because I need to run some hardcore simulations with Matlab and even a few model analyses with ANSYS, so I'm still not sure whether the MBP can handle that.

Given your temperatures, I'm starting to lean towards the Envy because 80C+ is NOT good for a laptop in the long term.

 

Kabobi,

any computer can handle your task. asking whether or not the MBP can "handle" it is asking the wrong question. The real question is of how much time difference there is relative to the size of your simulations and analysis, how important the time you may save or lose is, and what you're willing to sacrifice in order to have to wait slightly less time.

if the difference is say...15% speed increase on the Envy over the MBP...but the MBP's OS and style are like 30% better than the Envy + Win 7...you have a decision to make. lol

 

Thanks. Good point. Well, I'm willing to wait; so long as I can get my simulations done by the deadline and without over-stressing the laptop's components (due to, say, leaving it on overnight).

Though knowing that quantitative difference would be useful. I wonder if OP has any data regarding that? (sample simulation you ran on the MBP and how long it took?)

 

Well, for now I can only definitively tell you that this laptop runs MATLAB in a very snappy fashion, and I highly doubt I'm losing any performance. I doubt you would classify what I currently do as "hardcore", but it isn't just basic math. It's neural simulations, mostly.. a lot of brute force solving of differential equations to simulate model networks for neurons and generate some simple plots. I don't know if that sort of thing is useful to you.

The problem is I'm running MATLAB 7.10.0 on my MBP and 7.9.0 on my Dell. I didn't think that would make a big difference .. but I just ran two simulations on each and to my surprise the MBP ran them much faster. The first simulation ran in 173s on my Dell vs 137s on the MBP. The second ran in 58s on my Dell and 41s on my MBP. So I'm surprised but as of right now the MBP is actually kicking my Dell's when it comes to MATLAB. I'm sure the new version has a lot to do with this, but how much? I'm not sure. I wasn't planning on grabbing the new version for my Dell but I guess I will now!

Regardless I'm sure you'd be pleased with the performance of MATLAB on the MBP. As for the heat, the only times I have been hanging out above 80 have been when I was running Cinebench. I think SMC Fancontrol might have even been able to keep me down below that mark anyway if I'd been running it at the time. From the reviews I've read, the Envy 15 is an even hotter machine, but what I saw only really evaluated its external temperature, not the CPU, so I'm not really sure.

Tonight is busy but if I have time I'll download and install the newer MATLAB version on my Dell and see how these numbers change.

 

Thank you so much for the feedback!
I can actually reconsider a MBP now.

 

awesome.

what are the specs on your Dell? that would give us some context.

 

i7-920, 8GB DDR3@1066, ATI 5770, W7 Home Premium 64bit.

There really is no reason my MBP should be doing MATLAB faster.. I think it's probably the version (or MATLAB isn't utilizing threads as well as I thought it did). But whatever the details on that, MATLAB definitely hums on the i7 MBP.

 

Congratulations on the new MacBook Pro and an informative review. I was wondering about the clock speed of the GT330M in the Core i7 15" model though. Could you try to run the latest version of GPU-Z the next time you're in Windows and post a screenshot?

 

lol, yea that's odd. but hey...good to know how good it performs!

 

Here's the GPU-Z stuff .. I'm not really sure how to interpret this or if you'd want the running sensor data or the general card info, so here's both. The sensor data is with nothing open but GPU-Z.





As for MATLAB, I still haven't installed the new version on my Dell, but I did try those same two simulations under W7Pro in bootcamp, with the newest version, and got some difficult to interpret results. The faster code ran comparable to the quick time on OS-X, in 39s. This is even very slightly faster than the OSX time but basically equivalent. The longer code however took 192s to run (and I tried it twice, same time both within 2 seconds), which is significantly slower than in OS-X and slower even than on my Dell. I'm not sure what to make of this beyond saying that some codes run faster in MATLAB under X11 in in OSX than under W7 on an equivalent version and equivalent hardware, but some do not. Beats me.

I will get around to putting the new version on my Dell at some point this week and will report back on those results. Now I'm just curious myself.

 

ouch.. the "default clock" shows Apple has underclocked it quite a bit.

On a stock 330m is supposed to be... per nvidia guidelines
Core 575 MHz
shader 1265 MHz
memory 1066 MHz

 

Thanks for that. It's exactly what I was looking for.

Yeah those clocks are disappointing. They actually match the GT230M which is slower than both the GT240M and GT330M. The memory clocks are reasonable though since I believe the 1066MHz rating is for DDR3, whereas Apple meets the recommendation for GDDR3 which is for 2x800MHz.

 

Nice rig overall, just wondering why you chose the 8gb of ram. Seems like overkill for what you do.

 

Matlab will eat however much RAM you give it. Be it 4, 8, or 16 gb.

 

wooooow.

can Nvidia's tuning suite be installed and those clocks adjusted?

 

if someone would actually make a Mac version to do that...

you can change it all you want if you install and boot up in Windows... but that doesn't help in OSX