New MacBook Pro finds it difficult to keep its cool

I enjoyed the laudable features of the new Pro, but a major problem also appeared during video editing. More information about it soon.

In 2018, Apple still sells 13-inch MacBook Pro equipped with older seventh-generation Intel processors and, at $ 1899 and $ 2199, they are the most affordable. The entry-level model is only $ 400 more than the cheapest MacBook Air, 0.02 kg heavier and 0.21 cm thick. This is an enticing offer.

The more expensive 13-inch Pros and the 15-inch Pros feature the latest "Coffee Lake" processors that offer more power and are designed to deliver a decent speed hump with more "cores". The 13-inch MacBook Pro has four cores instead of two while the previous model, the 15-inch Pro, jumps from four to six. If you do not know what kernels are, think of them as cylinders in a car engine. A six-cylinder car offers more power than a four-cylinder car.

The memory is faster this year with Apple adopting DDR4 instead of DDR3 memory. DDR4 operates at a lower voltage, which means less power consumption. If you're mainly checking email, word processing, spreadsheet filling, and watching movies, the MacBook Pro with these specifications is overkill.

Although the update is mainly about speed and power, 19659005] The color temperature of the display will adjust depending on whether you are exposed to the sun or whether you are working under a technology. 39, incandescent, halogen, fluorescent, LED or other lighting. This can mean less pressure on the eyes if you use your Pro hours on the end. This is the technology we have seen on the iPhone and the iPad. He is now on the MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Pros have a second chip, and last year's T1 chip has been enhanced into a T2 chip that controls not only fingerprint recognition and the touch bar located on the top row of the keyboard. he also brings Hey Siri to the MacBook. You can ask Siri to help you with your voice, even if the Pro screen is locked.

The T2 also offers a more secure boot process and encrypts and decrypts data written and recovered on the hard drive. Apple says that this encryption / decryption does not degrade the performance of the laptop because it is done by the T2 rather than by the main processor.

I prefer the current keyboard with a butterfly rather than a scissors mechanism; I find the travel key offers some certainty by pressing. The iFixit.com team that demolishes new technology devices has found a silicone screen on every key that it believes should protect it from dust and debris.

The most recent Pros keep the touch bar, a fine display on the top row of the keyboard this may show a different selection of keys depending on the application. At first, I liked the touch bar, but over time, I found that my brain never adjusts itself automatically by pressing the right displayed key, since the composition of the keys varies all the time . I should think before squeezing, and that's his downfall.

My review unit is totally specced with a 2.9GHz Core i9 processor that can turbo boost at 4.8GHz, AMD Radeon Pro 560X fast graphics, a solid state drive of 2 terabytes and 32 GB of fast DDR4 graphics.

Now to the problem. This is a beast made for professional video editors, 3D animators, game developers, coders, those who work with multiple virtual machines, graphic artists, and others needing all the groan.

During an Apple demo, the MacBook Pro managed to play nine 4K streams simultaneously in Final Cut Pro X. Streams shown as thumbnails and you can switch from one to the other. another edition in real time. The synchronization was done by software that matches the soundtracks of the nine streams of the same scene filmed from different angles.

I decided to get the help of our experienced videographer Alexandra Cameron to test the video montage. As a long-term MacBook Pro user, Alex is perfectly positioned to test video editing. It uses Adobe Premiere Pro used by our organization.

The test consisted of editing three 15-inch MacBook Pro from 2015, 2016 and our 2018 evaluation unit by cutting a series of one-minute clips from almost 1 terabyte of 4K video, about 40 minutes

The editing included an interview segment, an audio track, adjustment layers with color and grain, black letterboxing, and on-screen text. The video was on a LaCie hard drive connected to the MacBook using a Thunderbolt 3 for the 2016 and 2018 models and the Thunderbolt 2 port in 2015.

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The 2015 15-inch MacBook Pro ignored images while rendering and did not have the power to render 4K images. The 2016 MacBook also struggled with reading, but made the video trouble-free.

She said that our 2018 evaluation unit could not render 4K video at full or half resolution for real-time playback. He played a sixteenth resolution OK, although he skipped some pictures, but less than previous models. She was surprised.

By establishing a link between the media, the 2018 model is much better behaved, linking it in 10 minutes instead of half an hour with the 2015 and 2016 models.

Nevertheless something seemed wrong. How can a model that plays 9 simultaneous 4K streams at a given moment have trouble with this edition? Cameron says that working with the layers of adjustment and the different types of flow is a more demanding task in resources. But even that is not enough.

It seems that the Core i9 processor has slowed its performance due to overheating. Cameron says the model 2018 fan vibrated most of the time

I quickly discovered that I'm not the only one to have this worry

The problem could be ventilation with such a high performance in a small format. I've recently tested some high-end gaming laptops, and on one, half of the bottom is a huge grill. The Pro does not offer this degree of ventilation.

One suggestion is that the fan will not fire fast enough to suppress the heat. In this case, Apple could probably answer that with a firmware update to speed it up.

Another comment is that the Pro is suitable for Final Cut Pro X but Adobe Premiere Pro is not optimized for that. But Adobe Premiere Pro is an industry standard that should work well by default on stateoftheart laptops.

In the end, I do not think that our improved Pro revision unit should have worked as badly as that. The reference test with Cinebench shows that it is usually very fast (902 cb) but it can quickly heat up to 100C for some applications. This triggers the fan but also the throttling.

Apple announced this year an international partnership with Melbourne's Blackmagic design that sells an eGPU, an external graphics unit capable of improving editing performance and playback on the fly. The heating problem meant we could not test its capacity to the limit. It costs $ 1149 to Apple

It can be said that it was simple to set up. You connect it to the mains, connect it to the Pro via a Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C cable and you're done.

The eGPU tower also has USB3.0 ports to connect other peripherals to the Pro. There is no doubt, since the Pro has again 4 USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 ports. It is the state of the art, but you will need connectors to add d & # 39; 39, other types of devices.

Overall, this year's MacBook Pro bring Apple back to the high-end component market in a powerful notebook, but the company has to deal with what looks like a significant problem of limiting heat that can degrade performance.

Chris Griffith appears every Wednesday at 6:30 pm on TECH.biz on Sky Business Channel.

15-inch Apple MacBook Pro 2018
Price: $ 3499 to $ 10,339
Review $ 7139
Rating: 7/10