2019 Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch, 16GB RAM, 1TB Storage, 2.3GHz Intel Core i9) - Space Gray

If you’re debating a pro machine for a long term investment, this is the laptop to look at. Seriously, the minor improvements over previous models are game changing. TLDR, simply the best computer for the price, especially with all the free apps MacOS gives you that would cost about $400 in total in Windows. (Obviously if you already own office/Adobe software not a factor for you). My favorite thing switching to macOS next to the smoothest gesture interface ever is never having to worry if I need to download some bloated freeware to extract or view a file.Boot camp, faster Solidworks performance than my custom desktop with dedicated GPU. Buy the +$300 option. Excellent deal, you will notice 8 cores if you do professional work (cad, editing, vfx, etc) and the 1Tb SSD leaves plenty of space for a comfortable Windows partition. Faster graphics is a plus too.Get yourself some fan control software, there are plenty of free/cheap options out there, and it can easily cool itself at 100% fans unlike some other MacBooks. You don’t even notice they are on if like me you do a lot of work in public areas. (Apple’s stock drivers prioritize noise reduction, which is nice 90% of the time, but toggle max fans is a must have for any thin/light laptop these days, not just MacBooks.Thermal improvements aside, the speakers will blow you away. Even if you have expensive dedicated drivers, you will still find yourself just using these often. They are just that good. I was hyped from reviews and still a few weeks later I’m just in love every time I play music with high dynamic range (I’m a huge piano lover, and literally no ordinary speakers can render piano well)Keyboard, excellent. You may need a few days to adjust, but I find I can fly through memorized lines of code after a bit of practice. They feel enjoyable to type on, and are honestly a bit addictive, which is a weird thing to say about a keyboard, but there. The backlight is soft but very visible, without the horrendous bleeding like on my Lenovo laptop.Battery. Ok, best you’re going to get in a 6+ core machine this capable, and still take it on a plane. The screen is very bright, but with the reflector you can really save on battery if you reduce brightness to ~80%. The 95 watt charger is very fast though, so if you do run out, you don’t have to wait long.Lastly the screen. I say this to everyone who I consult about screens, but stats are deceptive. This is the best looking screen I’ve seen bar none, certainly on a laptop. Apple really knows how to make a display, and I’d take this screen over a ‘4K’ Dell any day. Honestly don’t pay attention to Apple hate. I get it, people have opinions, but seriously, your machine, you have to use it.To conclude, while you can find other laptops that do one or two things as good or better than this one, the 2019 MacBook Pro 16” is the most well rounded computer I’ve come across. Everything just works, and boy does it work well. It will last you 6+ years, and you’ll enjoy the whole life of this machine.

I really went back on forth on this Mac. I did not want to spend the money and would have gone with a 13 inch option, were it not for the butterfly keyboard issue. I even considered a Windows box, but since i use one in my job was very resistent to the idea.In the end the 16 inch with its magic keyboard was my only real choice. These things are so expensive, but I did realize that it was replacing a 10 year old MacBook Pro that still worked, so I guess you get what you pay for. After shopping around I got a pretty good deal from an Apple authorized seller through Amazon (saved $300). I took the 16Gb i-9 quad core with the standard video memory, slightly higher end card, and a 1TB drive all for $2499. I wanted more RAM, but read that the solid state hard drive would make up the difference quite nicely; which appears to be true.Okay, so how do I like it? I absolutely love this thing!!! It works so smoothly, so fast, and so well. No hang ups or lags, no glitches or little “we’ll fix that later” items. It’s powerful and easy to use. The keyboard feels a little different, but is not a bad tradeoff for computer slimness. The track pad took me a while to get used to, but when you do it’s actually pretty handy.I even love the touch bar, which I fully planned to hate after reading the reviews. It’s easy to customize and it does so many things just when you need them. Example, in finder, the trash can and new folder are right there (in my setup). In Quicktime it has a scrubber bar that lets you smoothly scroll to the frame you want. Oh well, some will hate it - i like it.Performance: I realize that I am coming from a 10 year old MacBook, but I also use a pretty new Dell laptop in my work, which if you throw out the docking station is a pretty good workhorse. My only real performance needs are for home video editing, and ripping and rendering movies (which i buy) for my home server. Video editing is fun again! It adds clips and photos so fast, edits like a dream, and renders like lightning. Video conversion is something else altogether...Video conversion test case: Frozen 2 on blue-ray. Ripping with Make MKV was about the same, owing to my external drive limitations, but rendering using Handbrake was phenominal (to me anyway). It rendered the movie in high quality, H264, 1080p in about 45 minutes. I am no professional, so you will have to rate that against your own experience, but for me it was fantastic!Finally, less demanding software like microsoft Office 365, Apple Pages and friends, and VLC handle quite nicely - loading documents in a flash and never hanging up hiccuping.Oh yeah, i bought two USB 3.1 adapters and one SD adapter for about $8 each, all three with the tiny plug and short cord. That allows you to use all four ports at onc, plus they are all compact and blend quite nicely.Summary: i love this computer and don’t begrudge a penny spent on it.