Most other Broadwell-powered notebooks with integrated graphics use Intel's 5000-series level GPU Apple offers a little extra oomph with an Intel Iris Graphics 6100 GPU and 15GB of memory. That showing also demolishes the competition the XPS 13 (154.2 MBps), the Lenovo (175 MBps) and the Samsung (221.3 MBps) were all much slower.
#EARLY 2015 MACBOOK PRO RETINA 13 INCH CASE PRO#
The 2015 MacBook Pro duplicated 4.97GB of multimedia files in 13.2 seconds, a rate of 386 MBps, whereas the 2014 model was 185.7 MBps. The MacBook Pro's 13.3-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel display is crisp and far brighter than almost every other notebook we've tested.Īccording to Apple, the 128GB PCI-based flash memory in the 2015 MacBook Pro is up to two times faster than last year's model, and in our testing, nearly lived up to the claim. I had to be more careful when pressing down, but activating tap-to-click (a feature I regularly use on other notebooks) helped alleviate inadvertent Force Touches.
After trying all three levels, I preferred the lightest setting not only was it easier on my fingers, but it also made less noise. I'm glad you can adjust the force required to press down on the touchpad. but press a little harder, and you feel the second click, which engages the extra features.
When you press on the pad, you first feel the click of the first layer - which lets you select text, icons, etc. The Force Touch takes a little adjustment. However, Apple is releasing the API for Force Touch, so expect it to be available for more applications in the future. For example, it's not compatible with Google Docs, and it doesn't work in other browsers, such as Chrome. However, Force press doesn't work everywhere. When in the Web version of Outlook, Force-pressing on a word displayed its definition in a pop-up window. In Facebook, pressing on a news post opened the article in a second smaller window - too small to be practical to read -but it also let me add the article to my Reading List.
For example, in Safari, I clicked on Kathy Griffin's name, and a small window appeared with a WIkipedia summary. The second benefit of the Taptic Engine is that it has two levels of sensitivity, which lets you deep-press to activate additional features.