12-inch MacBook 2016 Review

Yesterday Apple announced the new generation of 12-inch MacBook with a Retina display. Although people will call this the second-generation device, I prefer to say this is 1.1 update, not 2.0.

There is not much new with this MacBook. It is basically the last year’s model with a couple of small internal updates and a new Rose Gold finish.

Lets take a look at what has changed.

Faster CPU, better graphics, much faster disk speeds

I am not going to talk about the Geekbench results, because numbers are not important in this case. This year MacBook has up to 20% faster CPU performance and up to 25% better graphics. But what does this mean for regular users?

Well, it doesn’t change anything, because just like the 2015 model, this MacBook is still not powerful enough to be used for professional video editing, or any other tasks of this magnitude. For any other regular tasks, this machine is a great performer, but the same can be said about the last year model MacBook as well.

At the same time, with up to 80% faster write and read speeds, the booting time of the new MacBook will be a bit faster, apps will open quicker, and you will spend less time coping and transferring big files.

Extra hour of battery life

I would not call the battery life of the last year’s 12-inch MacBook an ‘all-day battery life’. I was able to get about 7–8 hours from it, which is not bad, but it is nowhere near 12–13 hours of the MacBook Air.

Apple promises that this year’s model will deliver up to 10 hours, one hour more than the officially stated 9 hours for the last year’s model. I will do the tests in the next month and come back to you with the real world results.

New color option

The only change to the hardware of this MacBook is a new Rose Gold finish. MacBook becomes the latest addition to the army of pink devices Apple is offering to its customers, alongside Watch, iPhone and most recently iPad.

What we hoped for, but did not get

FaceTime HD camera is still nowhere to see

Disappointing. I understand that there is probably some good technical reason why Apple is still offering a FaceTime camera with a resolution of mid 2000s, but this is just sad. 2016 MacBook is still equipped with a 480p camera.

I want to say that it is not a big deal, but it is for me. I live apart from my family, and video conferencing is a huge part of my life, so grainy 480p camera makes the experience 480 times less pleasant.

Second USB-C port

This is not a big problem or a deal breaker for me, but I know that many people were asking for the second USB-C port. It could have been a good addition, but the thing is, even with the second USB-C port, you will still need an adapter.

There are also complains that the new 12-inch MacBook have no Thunderbolt 3 support or DDR4 RAM.

Conclusion

If you are the owner of the first generation 12-inch MacBook, there is not a single reason for you to upgrade to the new model.

At the same time, if you were considering the dropping at least $1299 on a sexiest MacBook there is, the faster performance and slightly better battery life might be the factors which will help you decide to finally purchase this device.

As for me, although I love almost everything about it, I am not going to switch to this MacBook. Instead, I will be waiting for WWDC, where I hope Apple will release the next generation of MacBook Pros. Check out my expectations for the new MacBook Pro.