If you’re on an M2-series MacBook Pro, the M3 performance boosts might not be enough to pull in you just yet.
Apple released 14 and 16-inch variants of the MacBook Pros touting its newly-released M3 chips. It doesn’t bring a lot of new upgrades and doesn’t make much sense if you’re on an M2-series chip already. However, if you’re one of those Intel or M1 MacBook Pro holdouts, now might be the time for a change.
Probably one of the most exciting things about this release (at least for me) is the new Space Black color variant. After years of getting just Space Grey and Silver, we really needed this. Sadly, that’s only for the 14-inch version with the Pro and Max chips, so I didn’t get to experience that, and my heart is broken.
The configuration I was sent hosted the M3 chip, along with 16GB of memory and 1TB of storage (in gray) for $1,999, which feels like the sweet spot since the $1,599 model with 8GB and a 512GB SSD seems a little underpowered especially if you plan on taking advantage of the M3 chips gaming performance.
Another thing I missed out on because of being sent the machine with the M3 chip was an additional Thunderbolt port. I only have two Thunderbolt ports, as opposed to the 14-inch models with M3 Pro and M3 Max, both of which host three Thunderbolt ports. My machine also features a 3.5mm headphone jack, a MagSafe 3 port, an HDMI port, and an SDXC card slot.
Like the 2021 M1 MacBook Pro and the 2023 M2 model, Apple has decided not to include a USB-A port, which is a serious omission when you insist that your machine is ideal as a gaming rig. Sure, you can connect a USB-C hub to get your other peripherals to connect, but that’s extra effort.
I get the idea behind giving M3 users one less Thunderbolt port than M3 Pro and M3 Max folks. It didn’t give me any FOMO either; the two available ports met all my USB-4 needs.
Looking at how modern laptops have started featuring very few ports (especially omitting the HDMI out) to keep their form factor as slim as possible, I was pretty content with the generosity of the M3 MacBook Pro’s port layout.
You get the same Liquid Retina XDR display that you did on this laptop’s older models. It hits a 120Hz refresh rate and 1000 nits in brightness. Some consumers (like me) have been patiently waiting for Apple to do OLED displays, but here we are.
