2020 Intel MacBook Pro to 2023 M3 Pro MacBook Pro impressions

[dp226]

I recently migrated from a 2020 i5 13” MacBook Pro to a 14” 2023 M3 pro MacBook Pro. So far so good and I am happy. I am mostly using for office tasks, web browsing and watching videos while on battery. 80% is really light work and 20% medium duty work. Nothing heavy.

I purchased the M3 pro version since it seemed it was the best value to get to 16+gb of memory. On the older Intel MacBooks I had some issues using 8gb of memory and once upgraded to 16gb things seemed to run along fine though that experience is 4-5 years old. Laptop is expected to last ~4 years so a little future proofing is ok. An M2 Air would have probably been sufficient

My observations so far:

• Noticeable heaver than old one. Very Noticeable.
  • I probably should have purchased an Air for portability but this is not too bad.
• Feels blockier than the last one
• Feels twice as thick as the last one.
  • Really just a little thicker but it is noticeable
• During the migration process I followed the instructions - used migration assistant. Last couple of times I migrated a Macintosh I did it by hand. This was painless.
• Migration assistant worked great. Copied over everything including settings, cookies and everything else. I was very happy with this
• Keyboard is much better than the last one
• Had to install rosetta to make one of the apps able to run but once I did (the Mac told me I had to) that App ran perfectly.
• Safari is noticeably faster. Much faster.
• Internet seems faster
• The upgrade to 14.1.2 happened much faster. Maybe 15 minutes to accomplish as opposed to 30—45 min on the Intel MacBook Pro
• I find myself missing the Touch Bar but it is not a deal breaker. I did not think I would miss it and I never really used it but to look at some status indicators but I keep looking down for it.
• I turned on Low Power mode on battery to see how that worked. I am mostly on battery and given my workloads I have not seen any performance differences. Not sure if I will save any battery over time.

 

[jav6454]

The MBA is 0.8lbs lighter, so yeah, you would have felt it. As per processing power vs what you need, I would have argued the 13" MBA is a good choice and you can give it a good amount of RAM should you need it.

 

[MrT-Man]

Here's what I'm noticing, also coming from an Intel MBP (16" to 16" M3 max)

- Does this thing even have a fan? I've never heard it come on yet.
- The battery basically lasts forever
- It feels COOL when sitting on my lap. What a novel experience!
- Everything is so instant. Booting up, waking from sleep, connecting to my three docked monitors, etc.
- Windows ARM on Parallels isn't 100% compatible with an app I need for work. Got around this by signing up for a Windows 365 cloud PC, which I can remote into
- The screen is GORGEOUS. 16" is absolutely the right choice for me.
- Couldn't they have made this just a little bit lighter?

The only thing I would change about it would be to cut the insanely massive battery life in half, in exchange for some weight savings.

 

[M3Stang]

Here's what I'm noticing, also coming from an Intel MBP (16" to 16" M3 max)

- Does this thing even have a fan? I've never heard it come on yet.
- The battery basically lasts forever
- It feels COOL when sitting on my lap. What a novel experience!
- Everything is so instant. Booting up, waking from sleep, connecting to my three docked monitors, etc.
- Windows ARM on Parallels isn't 100% compatible with an app I need for work. Got around this by signing up for a Windows 365 cloud PC, which I can remote into
- The screen is GORGEOUS. 16" is absolutely the right choice for me.
- Couldn't they have made this just a little bit lighter?

The only thing I would change about it would be to cut the insanely massive battery life in half, in exchange for some weight savings.

Hah I just picked up a 16" Intel MacBook Pro and I do see what you mean about the heat. This thing is so hot lol. On my M1 13" MBP though I feel your pain on the windows side of things. The 16" Intel one just works with bootcamp. I find myself trying all kinds of different things. I bought parallels and crossover for gaming but each has its own pitfalls or doesn't work at all. I ended up setting on Moonlight from my gaming PC, as well as Geforce Now, Ps Plus cloud and Xbox cloud. Really hope more devs start porting to Mac so I can finally dump my gaming pc and have one machine for everything, and not have to pay $60 a month for cloud services to cover most games lol.

 

[4743913]

Hah I just picked up a 16" Intel MacBook Pro and I do see what you mean about the heat. This thing is so hot lol. On my M1 13" MBP though I feel your pain on the windows side of things. The 16" Intel one just works with bootcamp. I find myself trying all kinds of different things. I bought parallels and crossover for gaming but each has its own pitfalls or doesn't work at all. I ended up setting on Moonlight from my gaming PC, as well as Geforce Now, Ps Plus cloud and Xbox cloud. Really hope more devs start porting to Mac so I can finally dump my gaming pc and have one machine for everything, and not have to pay $60 a month for cloud services to cover most games lol.

Stop. Apple just emailed me that my 2019 i9 Macbook Pro trade-in was a success. No going back now. 🥲

 

[4743913]

Playing a streamed Forza Horizon 5 on xbox cloud is not too bad. It's all I can do.. I have a M3 Max.

 

[Al Rukh]

I recently migrated from a 2020 i5 13” MacBook Pro to a 14” 2023 M3 pro MacBook Pro. So far so good and I am happy. I am mostly using for office tasks, web browsing and watching videos while on battery. 80% is really light work and 20% medium duty work. Nothing heavy.

I purchased the M3 pro version since it seemed it was the best value to get to 16+gb of memory. On the older Intel MacBooks I had some issues using 8gb of memory and once upgraded to 16gb things seemed to run along fine though that experience is 4-5 years old. Laptop is expected to last ~4 years so a little future proofing is ok. An M2 Air would have probably been sufficient

My observations so far:

• Noticeable heaver than old one. Very Noticeable.
  • I probably should have purchased an Air for portability but this is not too bad.
• Feels blockier than the last one
• Feels twice as thick as the last one.
  • Really just a little thicker but it is noticeable
• During the migration process I followed the instructions - used migration assistant. Last couple of times I migrated a Macintosh I did it by hand. This was painless.
• Migration assistant worked great. Copied over everything including settings, cookies and everything else. I was very happy with this
• Keyboard is much better than the last one
• Had to install rosetta to make one of the apps able to run but once I did (the Mac told me I had to) that App ran perfectly.
• Safari is noticeably faster. Much faster.
• Internet seems faster
• The upgrade to 14.1.2 happened much faster. Maybe 15 minutes to accomplish as opposed to 30—45 min on the Intel MacBook Pro
• I find myself missing the Touch Bar but it is not a deal breaker. I did not think I would miss it and I never really used it but to look at some status indicators but I keep looking down for it.
• I turned on Low Power mode on battery to see how that worked. I am mostly on battery and given my workloads I have not seen any performance differences. Not sure if I will save any battery over time.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention anything in regards to the screen quality! Just kidding, enjoy your new device!

 

[MacDevil7334]

My observations so far:

• Noticeable heaver than old one. Very Noticeable.
  • I probably should have purchased an Air for portability but this is not too bad.
• Feels blockier than the last one
• Feels twice as thick as the last one.
  • Really just a little thicker but it is noticeable
• ...

It became very fashionable to slam Jony Ive late in his time at Apple (and his late products definitely made unacceptable compromises in the interest of thinness). But his designs were so good at tricking your eye and your brain. The MacBook Air was the best example. At its thickest, the M1 Air (which used the old design) is thicker than the M2 Air. But nobody remembers that. The M1 feels thinner because your brain focuses on the ultra thin edge where you open the laptop. The same is true with the MacBook Pro. My past 2014 15" retina MBP was a little thicker than my current 16". But it felt so much thinner because it had a design with a slightly curved case that tapered to a thinner point around each edge. The curved edges on the iPhone 6-11 functioned the same way. They made it hard for your eye to tell the true thickness of the phone. The iPhone 11 was thicker than the 12, but it looked thinner unless you put the two side by side.

The new boxy design language of today's Apple definitely makes better use of internal space and (correctly) re-prioritizes function over form. But these devices honestly feel a bit thicker than they actually are, whereas Ive's designs tended to trick you into thinking they were thinner than they actually were. I think that's what you are seeing and it is definitely something I have noticed with recent devices too.

 

[dp226]

I’m surprised you didn’t mention anything in regards to the screen quality! Just kidding, enjoy your new device!

Actually I do not notice that much difference in the screen but I am not doing anything that is detailed. Also I am old and my eyes stink.

And the new MacBook Pro stays very cool and I don't think the fans have run since I got it. Sitting on my lap the MacBook is definitely not hot but not doing any heavy tasks.

Also, after 14 hours of normal use I still have 30-40% battery life remaining . Normal use, not constant use.

 

[MrGimper]

Hah I just picked up a 16" Intel MacBook Pro and I do see what you mean about the heat. This thing is so hot lol. On my M1 13" MBP though I feel your pain on the windows side of things. The 16" Intel one just works with bootcamp. I find myself trying all kinds of different things. I bought parallels and crossover for gaming but each has its own pitfalls or doesn't work at all. I ended up setting on Moonlight from my gaming PC, as well as Geforce Now, Ps Plus cloud and Xbox cloud. Really hope more devs start porting to Mac so I can finally dump my gaming pc and have one machine for everything, and not have to pay $60 a month for cloud services to cover most games lol.

I've got a 2020 16" Intel i9 2.3 with 64GB RAM and 2TB storage. AC+ ran out in May and paid 150 to cover for another year, and just had a screen replacement for "free" using that AC+

No reason to update yet, expecially as CPU isn't as important to me as memory and storage. For games I use Geforce Now too, connected to my 65" OLED. And as GFN can use my GamePass Ultimare sub, I'm even happier.

I don't find my machine gets hot, but then I quite often use Turbo Boost Switcher

 

[M3Stang]

I've got a 2020 16" Intel i9 2.3 with 64GB RAM and 2TB storage. AC+ ran out in May and paid 150 to cover for another year, and just had a screen replacement for "free" using that AC+

No reason to update yet, expecially as CPU isn't as important to me as memory and storage. For games I use Geforce Now too, connected to my 65" OLED. And as GFN can use my GamePass Ultimare sub, I'm even happier.

I don't find my machine gets hot, but then I quite often use Turbo Boost Switcher

I have been using mine as my daily/main for about 3 weeks. I have not touched the M1 since really . It gets pretty hot just watching YouTube. That really is the worst thing about it, and the battery life is no where near was good, although it has about the same number of cycle counts (161 at the time of writing). I take it everywhere too. I found that I really do like the bigger screen. The extra ram and storage has made it so much more usable. My M1 I have to have a 2TB USB C SSD connected to pretty much all the time. Best $400 ever. This may hold me over till I can get an M1/M2 Max under $1,000 (probably a few more years).