The 13-inch Pro is compact and thin, but compared to wafer-thin Apple products like the iPad and MacBook Air, it ends up feeling heavier. That being said, we wouldn't mind some design improvements in the future, especially when it comes to thickness and weight. Construction quality is, as always, rock-solid: compared with other flexy laptops, the seamless metal body of the Pro feels like modern art. A wide expanse of aluminum and Apple's simple but excellently constructed keyboard feel like tech minimalism in a world of overwrought and overdesigned laptops, and the large multitouch clickpad is still-even nearly three years later-one of the largest we've seen. The slot-loading drive lines the right side. Ports line the left side, and the side-connecting MagSafe charging cable plugs toward the rear, staying out of the way. The iconic design and unibody construction has remained intact, even identical, to last year's 2010 model, even down to the port layout. Walk up to the 2011 version and you'd have no idea that you were looking at a "new" Mac. There's nothing different design-wise about the new MacBook Pro. To be honest, we'd rather have a longer-lasting battery. And though its integrated Intel graphics are a bit less capable than the previous model's Nvidia 320M GPU, the payoff comes with a sizeable jump in battery life. To put it in perspective, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is about as powerful CPU-wise as last year's $2,199 15-inch Core i7 model. In the end, the 2011 13-inch Pro is a big step up in processing performance for the same price as its predecessor. For now, it's a wait-and-see gamble on a future technology, but at least the port is backward-compatible with Mini DisplayPort, and a FireWire 800 port remains for legacy hardware. We don't know when Thunderbolt-compatible peripherals will be available (although Apple says the first ones should show up in the spring of 2011), how much they'll cost, or if Apple will be adding the technology to future displays or iOS devices.
Thunderbolt is envisioned as a sort of future unified successor to USB, FireWire, and DisplayPort, allowing peripherals to carry data and video at 10Gbps.
The entry-level 13-inch Pro also still comes with the much-talked-about high-speed data/video port, Thunderbolt.
2011 MACBOOK PRO CPU UPGRADE WINDOWS
Though it's a bit of a backslide, however, it still amounts to better graphics than low-end Nvidia GeForce GPUs, and it's leaps and bounds above Intel integrated graphics in 2010 Windows laptops. One small drawback: the integrated (and nonupgradable) Intel HD 3000 graphics in both 13-inch models are a step backward from the integrated Nvidia graphics found in the 2010 13-inch Pro.
The entry-level version has an identical screen, graphics, RAM, and ports to the $1,499 model, with the exception of a 320GB hard drive instead of 500GB. In our benchmark tests, the Core i5 13-inch model performed so closely to the Core i7 version (and, in single-task tests, not that far off from the quad-core 15-inch Pro) that, for the $300 savings, it's arguably the better buy. Though both configurations use differently branded CPUs, the Core i5/Core i7 difference turns out to be pretty insignificant between these two 13-inch Pros. The 2011 MacBook Pros are the first laptops we've reviewed at CNET with these processors the entry-level 13-inch model features a second-generation 2.3GHz Core i5 processor, whereas the $1,499 configuration has a 2.7GHz dual-core Core i7.
2011 MACBOOK PRO CPU UPGRADE UPGRADE
That upgrade comes in the form of next-generation Intel Core i-series CPUs. This year's 13-inch Pro gets a cutting-edge processor upgrade that many were waiting for-including us.
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