New M2-powered MacBook Pros and minis have 8K video, Wi-Fi 6E, dozens of cores
Enlarge / Apple's M2-powered MacBook Pros. You could-theoretically, according to Apple, running certain apps, etc.-sit in front of one of these devices for up to 22 consecutive hours. Bring coffee. (credit: Apple)
Apple has unveiled new systems based on its M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, giving the MacBook Pro and Mac mini line 8K video output, Wi-Fi 6E, up to 96GB of unified memory on the highest-spec machine, and what Apple claims is the longest-ever Mac battery life.
The latest M2 systems on a chip (SoC) that power the systems are the biggest change since those in the last set of Pros and minis; the hardware for both looks broadly similar to their prior releases. You can buy an M2 Pro with up to 12 CPU and 19 GPU cores and 32GB of memory. The M2 Max is something else: You get an upper limit of 38 GPU cores, double the memory bandwidth of the Pro (from 200 to 400GB/s), and up to 96GB of unified memory.
Apple's M2 Pro SoC has 40 billion transistors, 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, and up to 32GB of memory (in the 16-inch MacBook Pro). [credit: Apple ]
Apple clocks the M2 Pro in a new 16-inch MacBook Pro at up to 40 percent faster than its own M1 Pro MacBook Pro at the broadly defined "image processing in Photoshop" metric and 80 percent faster than an Intel-based Core i9 MacBook Pro. For Xcode compiling, Apple cites a 25 percent gain over the M1 Pro and a 250 percent leap over the Core i9.