Apple MacBook Pro MGXA2LL/A 15.4 inch Laptop with Retina Display Review

15.4 inch Apple MacBook Pro MGXA2LL/A
via Amazon

15.4 inch Apple MacBook Pro MGXA2LL/A is one of the newest MacBooks with Retina display. As usual, it is a very powerful workhorse with a 4th generation Intel i7 processor, generous amounts of system memory and Solid State Drive (instead of a slower traditional HDD), is super thin and has a beautiful solid symmetrical aluminium design, offers long battery life from its lithium polymer battery- for things like browsing the net with its high level of power management and other high end features and specs.. Let’s see if this would be the right Apple computer for you.

MacBook Pro 15.4 inch comes with the top of the range quad core Crystalwell Intel i7 CPU (6 MB shared L3 cache) at 2.2GHz base speed that goes up to 3.4GHz dynamically with Turbo Boost and four cores can handle eight threads in parallel with the Hyper Threading, 16GB of DDR3L RAM for super efficient multitasking and better overall performance with also the 256 GB of generous PCI-e based Flash storage for much quicker start ups. The CPU can be considered a low voltage one as it has the max power consumption- TDP of 47W including the integrated GPU Intel Iris Pro, VRMs and memory controller. The pre-installed operating system on the new Macbook Pro is the much loved super stable OS X Mavericks as a great platform for anything you do on the computer.

15.4 inch glossy finish LED-backlit IPS widescreen (up to 178 degree viewing angles and 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio) Retina display has the native resolution of 2880 x 1800 pixels (a total of 5 million pixels) and the integrated Intel Iris Pro graphics card with a 128MB eDRAM cache (performs as well as the mid-range discrete graphics cards like the NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M). It is the best integrated graphics card ever with great multimedia performance and lets you play some of the latest titles at medium to high resolutions.

The sound quality is pretty amazing too on the new Apple MacBook Pros- pretty loud and clear. There is no optical drive but a variety of connectivity options including SDXC media card slot, high speed and wide coverage 802.11ac wireless that supports the a/b/g/n networks as well, Bluetooth 4.0, high speed interface Thunderbolt 2 (Mini DisplayPort) at 20 Gbps speed to link to two external displays simultaneously, an HDMI port to connect to HDTVs and external displays at high resolutions, 2 x USB 3.0 ports, 1 x Audio-out port and a MagSafe 2 power port with a magnetic connector.

Silver MacBook Pro in all aluminium design weighs 4.5 pounds with the measurements of 9.73 x 14.13 x 0.71 inches. Battery life is up to 8 hours in average use from its lithium polymer battery on a single charge and up to 30 days of instant-on standby. The chiclet style keyboard is great for accurate typing with spaced out keys and backlit for comfort in dim light and has a glass trackpad that supports multiple gestures- pinch to zoom, scroll through with two fingers, tap once to left click and tap twice to right click and without separate buttons so you can click anywhere on it. You have the iPhoto to edit and arrange your photos, iMovie to edit videos, GarageBand to compose music, Pages instead of Microsoft Word, Numbers for spreadsheets and KeyNote for great presentations. Time Machine on the OS X ensures data back-up to an external hard drive for security.

Conclusion: The latest 15.4 inch Apple MacBook Pro MGXA2LL/A with better than Full HD Retina display is very stylish with the amazing classical slim Mac design (so perfect that many high end Windows laptops often imitate the design), very sturdy, stable and reliable- built with the best quality components, super fast and powerful for whatever you do with its i7 processor, 16GB memory and 256GB of Solid State Drive. This 15 inch model doesn’t come with a discrete NVIDIA graphics card but the more than capable integrated Intel Iris Pro that is equivalent of a mid-range graphics card- even the gaming performance is pretty decent, you can run demanding software like Aperture and Final Cut Pro easily and the 128MB memory acts as a super fast cache, speeding up the graphics intensive tasks.

To be able to achieve a very thin body, the DVD optical drive is missing but not many modern computers have them these days and you can always connect an external one if you’ll need it. And the design is unibody with memory, SSD or battery glued and not removable easily by the user and you need to turn to Apple for upgrades. Macbook Pro is offered with a 12 month limited parts and labor warranty and if you have the budget for this model whether this is your first Mac computer or upgrading from an old one, you simply can’t go wrong. And the new Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite as the 11th major release by Apple will be out soon in the Fall of 2014. *The links on this page will take you to the previous Macbook Pro and you will find the newest one just below the product highlights.

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