. Pros 13+ hours of battery life in our tests.
Brilliant Retina display with higher-than-1080p resolution. Two Thunderbolt 2 ports.
Comes with iLife and iWork software suites. Cons Only upgradeable at time of order. Base 128GB Flash Storage capacity is small. Glossy screen. Ethernet requires adapter.
Bottom Line The latest 13-inch Retina Apple MacBook Pro gives you top-notch performance and more than 13 hours of battery life in a beautifully designed laptop. It's our top pick for high-end ultraportables.
The Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch, Retina Display (2014) ($1,299, as tested) is the newest base model in the line, with a 2,560-by-1,600-resolution screen, speedy Intel processor, and excellent connectivity, particularly with its pair of 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports. It lasted more than 13 hours on our battery rundown test while topping our performance benchmark tests. These improvements help the latest 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro replace the previous version as our Editors' Choice for high-end ultraportable. The Retina Display has a 2,560-by-1,600 resolution, which translates into a 16:10 aspect ratio. In comparison, the 1,920-by-1,080-resolution display and the 2,560-by-1,440-resolution screen both have a 16:9 aspect ratio. The extra pixels can give photo, video, or spreadsheet editors the ability to clearly display images that would overwhelm a screen with a lower resolution.
Note that your experience may vary, as apps that haven't been updated for the Retina Display may show blockier text and images. In any case, OS X automatically scales items on the screen by default to make some windows show up in approximately 1,280 by 800, which is a good thing. If it were displaying at true 1-to-1 pixel all the time, then icons, menu items, and text would look tiny. Port selection remains excellent. There's an HDMI port, a headset jack, an SD card reader, two Thunderbolt 2 ports, and two USB 3.0 ports on its outer edges.
You can use the Thunderbolt ports to connect to an iMac and use it as your external display, or connect the MacBook Pro to an external mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt display natively. Apple, along with a wide selection of third-party vendors, make adapters for DVI, Ethernet, VGA, and even external PCIe card expansion chasses (but devices connected thusly would run at the slower interface's speeds).
Thunderbolt 2 has a theoretical maximum throughput of 20Gbps, and can be daisy chained through up to six devices per port (12 devices total). The 128GB Flash Storage module (analogous to a solid-state drive on other systems) has a somewhat low capacity for a high-end ultraportable or ultrabook, but it's sufficient if you tote along a speedy Thunderbolt portable drive for your video files or database files. The drive has about 110GB available when you first set up the system. There's built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi for a speedy connection to the Internet and any network you connect to.
The following models are Thunderbolt capable: MacBook Air (Mid 2011) and later, MacBook Pro (Early 2011) and later, MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), Mac mini Server (Mid 2011), Mac mini (Mid 2011), iMac (Mid 2011) FaceTime HD camera; The MacBook Pro and Thunderbolt Display are designed to work together. Rating: 4/5 Works well August 10, 2018 I replaced the battery in my 15' retina macbook pro 10,1. The replacement procedure is time-consuming and not for the faint of heart, but the video instructions are perfect.
If you need more storage, the $1,499 MacBook Pro configuration doubles the storage to 256GB, while the $1,799 model has 512GB and a slight speed bump to the processor. The included 8GB of system memory can be increased to 16GB for an extra $200 before purchase, but not after.
The system comes with Apple's (GarageBand, iPhoto, iTunes, etc.) and (Keynote, Numbers, Pages, etc.) software suites, which means you won't have to buy a copy of Microsoft Office unless you rely on Office's more obscure functions. The MacBook Pro 13-inch comes with a one-year warranty, and 90 days of phone technical support.
![Monitor Monitor](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bzMabrljPmA/maxresdefault.jpg)
Performance The Intel Core i5-4278U processor with built-in Intel Iris 5100 graphics helps the MacBook Pro score some of the fastest multimedia test times, compared with ultrabooks like the Acer Aspire S7-392-5410, the, and the Toshiba Kirabook 13 i7s Touch. It finished the Cinebench R15 test with 279 points, the Handbrake test in a scant 2 minutes 32 seconds, and the Photoshop CS6 test in 4:11. It was able to beat the other systems because its processor has a higher clock speed than even the Core i7 processor in the Toshiba Kirabook. Oddly enough, the came the closest in terms of scores for these three tests, on account of its relatively fast Core i5 processor. Battery life was even more impressive than that of the last year's 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which lasted 11 hours 26 minutes on our rundown test. The current system lasted 13:41. The scored 11:26, scored 11:26, but most other contenders lasted between 8.5 and 9.5 hours on the same test.
All of these improvements make an already-excellent ultraportable laptop even better. Thus, the new Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch Retina is our Editors' Choice for high-end ultraportables. If the $1,300 asking price is within your budget, this is the laptop to buy.
![Pro Pro](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125486185/920948231.jpg)
OP: You didn't tell us WHAT YEAR your MacBook Pro is. That's important information. Just to clarify - IF it's a 2015 or earlier MBP. The cable you use with the 2015 and earlier MacBook Pro is not 'a thunderbolt' cable. Rather, it's a minidisplayport (mac end) to displayport (or whatever the other end is).
And I don't think that kind of cable will work with a 2018 Mini. Instead, you'll need a: USB-c (Mac end) to displayport (display end) cable/adapter. Something like this: If you want to use the Mini's HDMI port, you'll need: - A USB-c (Mac end) to HDMI 2.0 cable/adapter (the 2.0 is important) and - A 'high speed' HDMI 2.0 capable connecting cable. The USB-c to minidisplayport connection will work the best, in my opinion. ALSO BE AWARE: (and this, too, is important) SOME (not all, but some) USB-c to displayport cable/adapters that worked with 2016 MacBook Pros DO NOT WORK with 2017 and later MBP's.
I'm going to take a -guess- that the same issue applies to the 2018 Mini. Again - what year is your MBP? I've used both display port and usb-c on my LG 4K HDR monitor and they both work well for me. The only thing I didn't try was HDMI. This is going from usb-c on my mac mini. However, before I got my monitor I was trying to use HDMI - HDMI with my mac mini and predator x34 100 hz monitor. That gave me issues, but then I realized it was due the older HDMI port.
When I used display port, it was fine. So, HDMI is a good option, but it also depends what type of port you have. My predator was rocking HDMI 1.4.