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Design9
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Display8.5
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Processor7
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Battery Life7
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Value for money7
I wasn’t sure whether to publish a long-term review of my M3 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro. That isn’t because I’ve lost interest in it (far from it – it’s an essential tool for my business) – it’s just that MacBook Pro reviews have pretty short shelf lives.
I’m not sure why, but whereas the Mac mini and MacBook Air seem to always draw in a crowd, the MacBook Pro has always been less likely to do so. In my experience, anyway.
Despite this, I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people out there who are still wrestling with what is a very expensive buying decision.
Well, good news – I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind as a click-hungry tech content creator and give you my long-term thoughts on the M3 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro after seven months of intense use.
The switch from the 16-inch MacBook Pro
For those who haven’t been following my MacBook Pro journey, I should highlight that I made the decision late last year to switch from my 16-inch MacBook Pro to its smaller brother. This was mainly because of the increased travel I’ve been undertaking and my desire to maintain a relatively light backpack.
The spec I chose wasn’t quite maxed out, but it was as far as I was prepared to go before remortgaging the house and selling my right arm. Inside my 14-inch MacBook Pro, there’s an M3 Max chip with a 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 64GB of unified memory, and a 2TB SSD. It set me back an eye-watering £4,399.
Was it the right thing to do? Yes. Well, let me caveat that – switching from the 16-inch MacBook Pro was the right thing to do; spending that much money on a laptop? I’ll get to that later.
A lot of people have thrown plenty of shade at me following my moans about how heavy and unwieldy the 16-inch MacBook Pro is, but I don’t care. The 14-inch version has, by comparison, been an absolute breeze to travel and live with. The weight saving may not look like much on paper, but it’s significant when you’re moving around all the time – as is the laptop’s footprint.
In my opinion, the 14-inch MacBook Pro looks nicer, feels nicer to sling under your arm, and fits on just about every surface I have in front of me at any given time. I only miss two elements of its big brother.
The first is the 16-inch display when editing video; the 14-inch MacBook Pro is slightly too cramped for serious video work (it’s why I use it in conjunction with Vision Pro when editing at home, away from my big studio monitors). The second miss is the battery life of the 16-inch, which I’ll talk about later.
What I love about the 14-inch MacBook Pro
The biggest win for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, as you might guess, is its size. The combination of a footprint that means this laptop can be used pretty much anywhere and the immense power within that chassis is unbeatable.
The display is lovely, too. No, it’s not OLED. Yes, it has a cut-out at the top for the camera housing. But in everyday use, neither of those things matters. ProMotion is a welcome addition, but not particularly noticeable. Again, that doesn’t matter – this laptop just has an utterly lovely, bright display – and that’s all that matters.
Connectivity remains a big highlight of this MacBook Pro generation, too. I rarely use the HDMI port, but the SD card slot sees constant use, and I never find myself scrabbling around for an available USB port or dongle. It’s what separates the MacBook Pro from the MacBook Air and makes it such a workhorse.
Lastly, I can confirm that Space Black is as lovely as it looks on Apple’s marketing material (this isn’t always the case) and whatever they’ve done to the coating to prevent fingerprints has worked. Mine rarely, if ever, needs a wipe – which is far more than can be said for the Midnight MacBook Air.
What I don’t love about the 14-inch MacBook Pro
It hasn’t been plain sailing with my 14-inch MacBook Pro. Having spent considerable time with the 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro, it still surprises me how often the fans spin up on the smaller one. This thing is, clearly, considerably less thermally efficient than the big one (whose fans only came on once in a blue moon).
Does this impact performance? Possibly. I’ve been experiencing some weird hangs and glitches in Final Cut Pro that simply weren’t happening with my old 16-inch MacBook Pro. Apple’s video editing suite has never been the pinnacle of stability for me, but it does appear to be slightly less reliable on my 14-inch M3 Max MacBook Pro. There’s always the chance, of course, that it could be the result of an app update, but I guess I’ll never truly know.
The battery life, as noted earlier, isn’t as good as the 16-inch MacBook Pro, either. I should caveat this by saying that it remains brilliant and not at all troublesome while out on the road, but the 14-inch MacBook Pro definitely chews through those percentage points a little quicker.
Last on my list of niggles is a pretty big one: the price. My M3 Max MacBook Pro set me back £4,399, which is the most I’ve ever spent on a computer and still makes me wince whenever I think about it. Do I need this spec? No, not really. But if this is the price of future-proofing my MacBook Pro purchase, it’s still a hard pill to swallow – even as a business expense.
Will I stay 14 inch?
Yes. I’d be mad not to with the travelling I’m doing these days. Despite the niggles noted today, the 14-inch MacBook Pro is the best professional laptop I’ve ever owned and I’d genuinely be lost without it.
If you’re wondering, I can confirm that I won’t be replacing this one for quite some time – no matter what the eventual M4 and M5 upgrades bring. I’ve had my fill of spending big on laptops for the foreseeable future.
Final thought
Where does Apple take the MacBook Pro next? This is a question that’s regularly knocking around at the back of my mind because the current version is not far off perfect.
Firstly, if they do anything (beyond the inevitable chip upgrades) they shouldn’t increase the price any further. If anything, it should be trimmed slightly; I genuinely can’t get over how expensive these MacBooks are if you start to spec them up beyond the base models.
An OLED display and FaceID would silence any lingering moans about the current design, but neither is a big deal for me.
If you’re thinking about the switch from the 16-inch to the 14-inch MacBook Pro, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Those compromises are worth it.
