2GB RAM
160GB hard drive
DVD±RW
13.3 inches (1,280x800)
Nvidia GeForce 9400M (256MB)
4.5 pounds
1x12.8x8.9 inches
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Apple's new entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro ups the battery life, adds a much-requested SD-card slot, and brings back the FireWire port, all at a lower price than its non-Pro MacBook predecessor. At $1,199, the new MacBook Pro is now more competitive with Windows notebooks, and it's a strong competitor in the thin-and-light notebook category, too.
Our 13-inch MacBook Pro is the base model, featuring an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor running at 2.26GHz, with 2GB of DDR3 1066 SDRAM, a 160GB hard drive, a slot-loading 8x DVD burner, and the Leopard version of the Mac OS (OS X 10.5.7). Though the laptop ships with OS X, it can dual-boot a copy of Windows XP or Vista that you provide using Apple's Boot Camp software and drivers.
Despite its low price (low for a MacBook Pro, that is), it exhibits all the refined construction you'd expect from the line. Its solid-aluminum "unibody" (weighing in at 4.5 pounds) and thin design (just a hair under an inch thick) make it nearly identical to the previous 13-inch MacBook on the outside.
Opening the MacBook Pro's lid reveals a full-size 78-key Chiclet-style keyboard. Its styling is distinct, but its feel is merely decent. For touch-typing, the nearly flat, wide-spaced keys aren't as comfortable as those on high-quality traditional keyboards, such as the one found on the Lenovo IdeaPad Y650, but it's one of the quietest keyboards we've used. Our favorite keyboard feature is its LED backlighting, which can turn on automatically when the brightness in the room drops.
More impressive is the huge glass-surface, multi-touch-capable touch pad. If you haven't used one of these before, it takes a bit of getting used to, as it lacks buttons. To click, you press the entire pad; press down with two fingers to right-click. We had some initial troubles with dragging and dropping, but the large size of the pad and the nice library of gestures for window and picture manipulation make the learning curve worthwhile. By default, you have to hold the touch pad down (keeping the button engaged) while you drag an icon, text, or other item, and then release the button when you drop it. There are options in the control panel to turn on tap-to-click and the ability to double-tap to select an icon for dragging, but they're switched off by default.
The backlit, 13.3-inch screen has a resolution of 1,280x800 and, according to Apple, a color gamut that's been improved by 60 percent over the previous MacBook screen. The panel is very bright and crisp, and it offers vibrant and accurate color reproduction. It's covered edge-to-edge by glossy glass, which makes images pop but also results in glare and reflections under some lighting conditions. The display is driven by the integrated Nvidia GeForce 9400 chipset, which offers reasonably good gaming support and superb video playback. Unlike the larger MacBook Pro models, there's no option for adding a discrete internal GeForce 9600 graphics card. An integrated iSight Webcam sits just above the screen.
Audio-playback volume and clarity aren't quite as good as on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, which features speakers right next to the keyboard, but the sound quality is still above average. We did encounter an issue when running either Windows Vista or Windows 7 under Boot Camp: The maximum volume was about half of what we could achieve running OS X.
