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00:00Hey, how's it going, Dave2D here.
00:04So these are some 2017 MacBooks with the Kaby Lake chips, and these are some 2016 MacBooks
00:09with the Skylake chips.
00:11And originally I wanted to do individual reviews for all of these, and then I realized it would
00:15just be a better video if I kind of compared and contrasted all of these so you guys had
00:19a better idea on which one of these to purchase, if any of them at all.
00:23Okay, for the uninitiated, a brief summary of the new generation of MacBooks.
00:28So these have aluminum builds, fantastic build quality, even better than the previous 2015
00:32body.
00:33Screens are all nice and bright.
00:35The Pro models in particular get really bright.
00:37So the keyboards are now rocking second generation butterfly switches all around, so that includes
00:41the 12 inch MacBook, and to me that's a much nicer feeling keyboard than the first generation.
00:46The speakers are really good on all of these, and every time I mention this, there's an
00:49Apple hater that comes out in the comments, and they're like, no bro, product X or product
00:53Y has better speakers.
00:54No, Apple has literally the best laptop speakers on the market right now.
00:59Whether or not you love them or hate them, that's just the facts.
01:02Now there are some things I still don't like about them.
01:04I don't find the touch bar useful.
01:05I definitely prefer physical controls.
01:07There's still no MagSafe.
01:09There's still four Thunderbolt 3 ports and nothing else.
01:12There's still no SD slot, and the pricing is expensive.
01:15The main differences are on the inside.
01:16These have all been updated to Kaby Lake CPUs, so we're getting slightly faster clock speeds.
01:21We're getting slightly better battery life because of some new video encoding and decoding,
01:25and we're also getting something called speed shift, which is like a way to turbo up the
01:28CPU a little bit faster.
01:30The overall system is snappier, so any kind of animation or wait time when you launch
01:34a program, those are quicker.
01:36When you do anything that needs a burst of CPU power, these Kaby Lake chips will ramp
01:40up to the turbo clock quite a bit faster than the previous generations.
01:44The 12 inch MacBooks still use Y processors, but the naming system is a little bit weird.
01:48Intel is labeling the base model as an M3, like last year.
01:52The faster ones are labeled Core i5 and Core i7, but they're still the same ultra low voltage
01:56Y processors.
01:57It's just incrementally faster clock speeds, so it's a little bit confusing for the consumer.
02:01For the integrated GPUs, they're running the HD615, which is a step up from the HD515 from
02:07last year.
02:08There's a small increase in performance, but it's nothing to write home about, and it's
02:11still really weak for gaming.
02:12You can get up to 16 gigs of RAM, which is kind of cool, but I mean, if you're running
02:15a Core Y processor, it seems really weird to me to have that much RAM, but for the people
02:20that do need it, it is available.
02:22Drive speeds are faster, and the updated keyboard is nicer, but yeah, not much else has changed.
02:26It still has that 40p webcam, which at this point, I feel like Apple is just straight
02:30up trolling us.
02:31Moving on to the MacBook Pros, I tested them on a benchmark system, and as you would expect,
02:36the Kaby Lake chips are a little bit faster, but it's not like a huge difference.
02:40I only have the top specced 15 inch model and the base 13 inch model, but you can see
02:44that the performance is a measurable, but small increase from the 2016 models.
02:49The faster speed shift is noticeable on the MacBook Pros as well, but it's not as pronounced
02:53as it is on the 12 inch MacBook.
02:55These base clocks are a little bit slower, so when it turbos up, it's just more noticeable.
02:59I noticed that the base model has an option for 128 gigs of storage, which is like their
03:03cheapest model, I think it's $1300.
03:06I just feel like 128 gigs, for most people, is really, really light on storage, but I'm
03:11sure there's some people that don't need more than that, so yeah, you have that option
03:13now.
03:14The GPUs on the MacBook Pros have also been updated.
03:17First, the 13 inch models.
03:18These have been updated to the Kaby Lake versions.
03:21The paper specs look really similar, and when I run 3DMark or just play some games, I really
03:25can't tell that much of a difference between the two.
03:27The discrete GPUs on the 15 inch models have also been updated, and looking at the model
03:31numbers, you might think it's a substantial change, but it's not at all.
03:34The paper specs look pretty similar between the 2016 and 2017 models, and it's the same
03:39story here, with benchmarks and games.
03:40I'm pulling almost identical frame rates from the 2016 model.
03:44The one difference, though, is that the 2017 base model has the mid-tier card.
03:49I use Adobe, so I did a render test in Premiere, and while the fastest model with the 560 still
03:54has pretty mediocre performance, the Radeon Pros in here just aren't as powerful as some
03:58of the other GPUs in comparable Windows laptops, and I mean comparable in terms of form factor
04:03and price.
04:04Okay, let's talk battery.
04:06Battery life is one of those things that has always been dependent on how people use their
04:10laptops, but in this case, the Kaby Lake CPUs, it's even more so.
04:14The 2016 MacBook Pros had good battery life.
04:17Not amazing, because the batteries were smaller than the previous generations, but the thing
04:21with the new Kaby Lake CPUs is that they're very power efficient when you're decoding
04:244K videos.
04:25So if you stream a lot of Netflix or YouTube, these things last a lot longer.
04:30So when I ran my regular loop of text editing and web browsing, I'm getting almost the same
04:34battery life as the 2016 models.
04:36We're talking an extra 15 minutes at most, but if I only watched 4K Netflix, battery
04:41life goes up a lot, particularly the 13-inch MacBook without a touch bar.
04:44So that's basically it.
04:45That's a lot of information for you guys.
04:47The takeaway, I would say, is this.
04:49If you're running a 2016 model already, don't upgrade.
04:52There's only one reason to upgrade.
04:53If you're a 4K Netflix or YouTube watcher and you use it a lot and you need battery
04:58life a lot, then maybe upgrade to the 2017 models.
05:02If you're running one of the older generations, then yeah, these are pretty good.
05:06They're still really expensive.
05:07The pricing hasn't changed, so it's still an expensive Apple MacBook.
05:10You get what you get.
05:11Okay.
05:12Hope you guys enjoyed this video.
05:13Thumbs if you liked it.
05:14Subs if you loved it.
05:15I'll see you guys next time.