 And the 2019 MacBook Pro deserves all the hate it gets. It skimps on cooling, the keyboard is fundamentally flawed, the bezels are chunky by today's standards, and the touch bar means there's simply no escape from it. Apple needs to start listening to the feedback their customers have been giving them since 2016 and... Huh, what's this? Different keyboard? Slimmer bezels? It's even got an escape key! All this thing needs is decent cooling and... The... This could change everything. SSDs are great, but RGB SSDs are even cooler. The T-Force Delta Max SSD features a large mirror-like luminous surface for that RGB goodness. Check out the link below to also enter their Christmas giveaway. I've never actually daily driven a butterfly keyswitch MacBook Pro, so I never really developed that intense hatred for it that some people seem to have. I mean, mine have gone so lightly used that none of them have failed, and as far as laptop keyboards go, I mean, I'm not a huge fan of it, but I've definitely had worse. But I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't excited when I saw the new MacBook Pro. I mean, I've never actually daily driven a butterfly keyswitch MacBook Pro, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't excited when I saw the news about the move back to more traditional scissor switches as found on Apple's Magic keyboards. I mean, they never were, and they're still not, the best switches on the market. I can see why Apple wanted to re-engineer them, but they've got decent tactile feedback, a much longer travel that makes it easier to get up to speed, and they even sound better too. I mean, like, just listen. (*tapping keyboard*) Er... No, this can't be right. Either Apple reversed course based on user feedback, or- Oh crap, I must be dreaming again. Okay, someone just- someone pinched me. (*snaps fingers*) I SAID PINCH! NOT SL- (*slap*) (*beep*) Well, I'm awake. I am still finding this whole situation a little hard to believe, though. I mean, the 16-inch is even bigger than the 15-inch, so that they could jam a bigger battery in it. Next, I'm expecting someone to tell me they went and they put an SD card reader in it, and stopped soldering down all the motherboard components. No. No such luck with that. In fact, Apple got a score of 1 for repairability for my Fix-It, as a result of the glue and rivets that they used to hold the keyboard, battery, speakers, and touch bar assemblies together. But like, come on guys, baby steps, right? Baby steps? I mean, they are making some changes to facilitate the repair process. Maybe. Such as this new hinge magnet that I Fix-It found during their teardown, which could be used to determine during service if the display ribbon should be checked based on data that it provides about the frequency and speed at which it's been opened and closed. I mean, that's not terribly useful for end users who want to repair their own devices, but guys, if you want Mac OS, you'll basically take what Apple gives you. Unless you build your own Mac, like we're doing. Make sure you're subscribed for the epic conclusion of our hack pro build, by the way. The good news is that Apple giveth a lot this time around. The arrow keys are now arranged in a more traditional inverted T shape, just like the old MacBooks. This is my personal favorite layout improvement. The Touch ID equipped power button is now separated and has been given a matte finish to match the rest of the keys. And a physical escape key is now beside the touch bar. And the good news keeps on coming. On top of being thicker, the chassis is now slightly wider to accommodate a more comprehensive speaker arrangement. And it sounds astonishingly good next to its 15-inch predecessor. Base is fuller, mids are clearer, and highs are no longer a tinny shrill mess at max volume. I mean, the audio quality, I think it's safe to say, is among the best that we have seen in a thinnish style device like this, to the point where it almost feels like carrying around a portable speaker with you. Now, it does get a bit confused at max volume with busy tracks, like this one by The Green that Alex uses for testing. But overall, it's in a league of its own and Apple's done good here. And then there's the bezels. These are starting to look a lot more competitive with Dell's Infinity Edge equipped lineup, albeit a smidge taller to accommodate the larger FaceTime HD camera that Apple uses. The webcam itself, and therefore the image quality, by the way, is unchanged from previous generations, which is to say that it's decent, but not great. So that was a little disappointing. But as for audio recording, the new three-microphone array is able to capture voice with much greater clarity and less reverb than the old setup. Hi, Alanis. This is Dennis. Do you like my voice? It sounds more like it was recorded on a decent headset mic than a good dedicated mic, but that's still an impressive feat for an onboard microphone array. I mean, it really just feels like Apple's Mac team has started taking the pro name seriously again. I mean, some might say it's still short some professional I.O., like an SD card reader, but come on, guys. We've moved on. I mean, given the plethora of portable media formats that exist now, you can't support them all. And Thunderbolt 3 has matured to the point where you can use the four included ports to connect basically anything you'd want. The most pro thing about it, though, for me, is just how much more comfortable the 16-inch is to use for anything remotely productive. I mean, aside from Mac OS Catalina's Vista-esque chattiness every time you want to do something, virtually every aspect of the experience is more refined and marks a return for Apple to the feel of a laptop that was made for actually busy people who need to get real work done, which is why we now need to discuss how well it gets real work done. Our 16-inch MacBook Pro is equipped with the Core i9-9980HK option, just like our 15-inch from earlier this year, which should make for a very interesting apples-to-apples comparison. In the PC corner, we've grabbed the new Dell XPS 15 equipped with that same processor, and then we also grabbed a test bench with a Core i9-9900K to see just how close our mobile cooling solutions can get to desktop-class performance. And the answer is, well, not that close. But check this out, guys. In our Mozilla Firefox compile test, we saved over two minutes compared to the last-gen 15-inch, and that's a pattern that we actually see repeated across most of our test suite. I mean, let that sink in for a moment, guys. We are seeing faster performance than the 15-inch with the same OS and same CPU, which suggests that we are looking at not just the slightly faster memory on the new model, but even a higher sustained boost clock as well. And we haven't even touched on the new Navi-based Radeon RX 5500. In productivity that relies on GPU, guys, this thing completely smokes the earlier Polaris part. Like, it's not even close. It regularly beats its predecessor by well in excess of 50%. It should be noted that AMD's best does still trail both our desktop and mobile GTX 1650. It is gonna remain PC exclusive until Apple and Nvidia can bury the hatchet, which doesn't look like it's gonna happen ever, but improvement is still improvement. Now, games aren't something that most people buy Macs for, but the couple of games that we did try ended up performing quite well. While the 15-inch delivered cinematic frame rates in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the 16-inch is at least playable. Quick shout out, by the way, to Feral Interactive for the Tomb Raider port. Performance in macOS is nearly as good as it is on Windows. Performance elsewhere, though, notably in Boot Camp, is decidedly poor. Once again, Apple is applying its custom CPU and fan adjustments only within macOS and not within the device's firmware. So anyone who needs to use Windows on their MacBook Pro is gonna end up with a machine that is stuck with poor performance even compared to our Dell XPS, which got creamed in many of these same tests while the Mac was still on macOS. This is a result of Intel's default TDP, voltage curve, and boost profiles. Adding insult to injury, thermal performance sucks in Windows, too. Back to macOS, thermals get interesting. Not only does the 16-inch remain above base clock during Blender renders, like the most recent 15-inch did, but it does so at a 10% higher frequency thanks to the more aggressive power budgets afforded by the new 100-watt power adapter. So you can see that previously, Apple limited their CPU to drawing roughly 50 watts of sustained power in order to satisfy their thermal and power constraints, while the 16-inch is allowed to draw upwards of 80 watts. And impressively, despite this increase in power consumption, the new Pro Cooler, I don't think Apple's calling it that, but I'm gonna, manages to be more effective at maintaining a consistent thermal profile than the 15-inch model was. All I want to see now is the option to configure this behavior so that I could choose to drop a few megahertz in favor of keeping my sustained temperatures under 90 degrees. I mean, come on, Apple, you're already doing it all in software anyway. Just because it's me suggesting it doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Because taking user feedback is a good thing, and by taking it, Apple has got an impressive machine on their hands here. The solder-down components, unnecessary potential for data loss from the T2 security chip, and the use of rivets and glue to keep nosy end users out is less than ideal. But the reality is that this is a laptop that is both more powerful and more usable than any MacBook Pro that has come before. And even our chunkier XPS 15 couldn't keep up in CPU-bound benchmarks. There is an Apple tax associated with this though, and as specced, our MacBook Pro costs roughly $800 more than our otherwise very similar Dell. But here's the thing, while our Dell has a DCI-P3 OLED display that is amazing for content consumption, it's actually not as bright as Apple's similarly DCI-P3 IPS display. And of course, that taller aspect ratio, that cannot come back fast enough for me. So I've seen a lot of people call this the best MacBook that Apple has produced since the last Retina model in 2015, and this is one time where I am perfectly content to go with the flow. Good job, Apple. You used your massive R&D budget to work on things that make both your industrial design artists happy and your customers. Please keep going in this direction. If you're looking for something else to watch, maybe check out our recent review of the Razer Blade Pro 17, where I give Razer some advice too. I'll see you guys there. Also worth checking out is dbrand. If you too want your MacBook Pro to look like this, or I don't know, maybe you could pick one of their other awesome colors, dbrand is your source for fantastic, true textured, authentic 3M vinyl skins. They've got them available for laptops, phones, tablets, consoles, controllers, and even the upcoming Tesla Cybertruck. The patented adhesive is guaranteed to leave no residue on your device if you want to change the skin. 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