New MacBook computer with M2 (2023): Price and Performance

Recently Apple released of new Macbook Pro line with M2 Pro and M2 Max processor on their website. 

Price

New 14-inch Macbook pro with M2 processor will start 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16GB memory with 512GB SSD storage come out at $1,999. It will be increment of $500 for 12-core CPU, 19-core GPU and 1TB SSD and another $500 increment for 30-core GPU and 32 GB memory.

New 16-inch Macbook pro will start at $2,499 with 12-core CPU, 19-core GPU, 16GB memory with 512GB SSD storage. additional $200 will get you 1TB storage. 16-inch with M2 max with 12-core CPU,32-core GPU, 32GB memory with 1TB SSD storage will set you back $3,499

Performance

Apple's System on a Chip(SoC) integrate CPU, GPU, memory, Neural Engine, Secure Enclave, SSD controller, image signal processor, encode/decode engines, thunderbolt controller with USB 4 support to single component. 

With built-in unified memory architecture with M2 processor CPU, GPU and processor components don't need to copy data between them and access the same data pool.

Apple stated the M2 processor is built using 5-nanometer with better performance. It includes 20 billion transistors about 25 percent more thant the m1 and adding memory bandwith at 100GB/s.

The M2 chip is about 1.4x faster than m1, with 18 percent performance increase on CPU, 35 percent on GPU and a 40 percent faster on Neural Engine.

Geek Bench benchmarks show M2 is about 20 percent faster than the previous M1 for Multi-core performance and about 12 percent increase on Single core.

Battery Life

The M2 chip with MacBook air lasted about 18 hours and additional 2 hours on 13-inch MacBook pro.

Battery life in an M2 processor lasted about 2 times longer than intel-based MacBook.

Security

The M2 chip has built-in secure enclave that manages Touch ID and a storage controller with AES encryption hardware for SSD.

 

Compatibility

The M1 and M2 chips is using ARM architecture, Apple has built tools to allow developers to create Universal App binaries to run both apple silicon and Intel chip called Rosetta 2. Rosetta 2 transition layer allows x86 apps to run on M1 chips.

With Rosetta 2, intel-based app will continue to run but will have some performance compromises. There is no boot camp yet to run arm-based windows yet.