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  • Howard - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Can't say I'd ever want a glossy screen.
  • vol7ron - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I don't understand this, I like glossy screens. Everyone else seems to be against them. Of course, I rarely do anything outside. If I did, I'd probably get a removable screen attachment.
  • softdrinkviking - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    i like glossies too, and i don't ever notice any glare.
    i think there is just an assumption that glossy is bad or something, or
    people are convinced that it's a gimmick.
    maybe it is, but i like 'em.
  • Grabo - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Eh? Since it's relatively hard nowadays to find a portable with a matte screen I must conclude that most people are like you, i.e attached to glossy screens.

    I despise them. Most desktop monitors (still) aren't glossy, and thus I see them as painting a more accurate picture. Glossies increase saturation and contrast, something which then is a lie, even though most people absolutely adore it.
  • hybrid2d4x4 - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I've got natural light coming into the living room from ~135deg around me, and the glossy displays on family members' laptops are completely useless in that room- it's all reflections. I'm probably in the minority, but I'd like to be able to use a laptop outdoors (and probably would). There's no way I'm ever gonna settle for glossy, even if it means never buying a laptop.
  • MadMan007 - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Glossy is fine on a desktop monitor where you can control the environment. On a laptop though? Hells no.
  • orthorim - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link

    I have a 17" glossy. I like sunlight and a view, and working near windows with this laptop is very annoying, way too much reflection. In addition, I don't see how anything looks much better on the glossy screen - possible exception movies which really look fantastic on my screen.

    But this is primarily a work laptop, and as such, it has a major flaw with the glossy screen. When working in Cafes or near a window, I have to crank up brightness all the way to the max, which then reduces battery life.

    I will go with matte again next time. The gains from glossy are minimal, the downside clearly outweighs this. If you never go outside or don't live in a sunny climate, maybe it doesn't matter. I am in the tropics, and I love to see the outside when working.
  • iamezza - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    I agree. I don't use a laptop much outdoors, but when I'm indoors there is usually bright light coming in from the windows that can cause a lot of glare.
  • Socratic - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link

    Have to agree with others here. I much prefer a matte screen. If there are any windows in the room the glare at certain times of the day on a glossy screen makes it unusable, at least for me. In an editing room or business environment with no outside lighting, I can see the appeal. I have however seen offices that the glare from the over head fluorescent lighting was so bad that users had to hang something over the top of the monitor on a glossy screen to be able to use it.
  • cjhao - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    'MacBook Pro brought posted some incredible battery life numbers'
    i created an account because you guys are great, so i wanted to help maintain the awesome reputation in my small way by pointing this out
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Thank you!

    Take care,
    Anand
  • BanditWorks - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I don't have the new MacBook Pros, but I do have a year old regular MacBook and while I was giving the new Adobe Flash 10.1 beta (the one that utilizes the GPU and CPU) I definitely saw a noticeable difference in battery life.

    As I wasn't doing anything that intensive on my MacBook I went back to the most stable version of Flash and it felt as if I had installed a newer, longer lasting battery instantaneously.

    PS - Yeah, glossy screens suck big time. They're as tacky as a car with everything chromed out. They may be nice to look at when the screen is turned off, but for everything else they don't really serve much of a purpose in my opinion.
  • Computer Scooter Joe - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Anand,

    You mentioned under windows the dGPU will always be on. In regards to this i have two questions:

    1) Are there any heat issues with the dGPU being on all the time? Does the laptop get especially hot?

    2) Do you foresee being able to enable graphics switching under windows? (Be it via Apple or a hack/3rd-party program)

    I'm going to be attending University in the fall and i really like the aesthetics of the Macbook Pros; but these two questions have me a little worried. Having tried it, I must admit, I really do not like OSX at all (yes i know, blasphemy and all that), and i plan on bootcamping Windows 7. Price is not an issue; performance (or lack thereof) is what matters.

    PS: To other commenters, please do not flame and start saying "Go buy Laptop X from this other company, Mac's are overpriced."

    Thanks in advance.
  • Brian Klug - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I can't speak entirely for the dGPU temperature in Windows 7 or boot camp installed OSes, but I do think I can talk a little about the dGPU temperature because I find myself switched on it a lot for what I do.

    I run a lot of Matlab related software on OS X (as I'm also a student), which requires an X11 instance. It seems that the X11 window system on OS X inevitably calls one of those core libraries that triggers the discrete GPU switching, and usually I don't notice until a good hour or so later that I'm on the dGPU. You'll notice that the battery life estimate changes. It doesn't immediately dramatically suffer, but it just seems shorter. Temperature creeps up a bit, but in practice for what I'm doing being switched on the dGPU doesn't raise internal temperatures more than 15 degrees F. I'd imagine playing games or doing some heavy OpenGL loads would change that though.

    Apple has done a pretty good job with the thermal management from what I've seen thus far. I've had a couple of eyebrow-raising moments burning in the matte MBP I used for the display review section, but it's important to understand that temps up to 200F (while admittedly INSANE IMO) are well within the T_junction spec from the i7 spec sheet. The CPU will throttle long before you do any physical damage.

    -Brian Klug
  • solipsism - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Thanks for the review.

    I know that there is a Sys Pref option to keep the dGPU on all the time, but there is no power saving option to disable the dGPU completely. Did you find a secret switch, like in an PLIST file that will allow this to happen. This would come in handy for long bouts without a power cord attached.
  • etikka - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Hi,

    Thank you for the review.

    It would be great to have a review on the Macbookish HP envy 15". The looks are ok and it would be great to have a quad core CPU and working GPU switching under Win7.
  • MySchizoBuddy - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    offtopic
    So Matlab is still using X11 on Mac OS X. I think they were working on a mac native version I guess they haven't released it yet
  • Brian Klug - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    See I agree completely! There needs to be a native version already. I haven't investigated it a lot, but it could be related to the 64-bit version I'm running. I'm on 2010a.

    I did some reading a while ago and the consensus was that Matlab on OS X just runs a LOT slower. Almost twice as slow in some cases. It isn't so much a problem stemming from the X11 window session rendering pipeline, but the java swing rendering pipeline. I'm puzzled why the platform is getting so little attention from the Mathworks when I see a huge population of students with exclusive mac setups. Oh well.

    There's an awesome (bit dated though) thread here: http://www.macresearch.org/matlab-and-os-x

    -Brian
  • ken.atwell - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link

    I work for The MathWorks and a little while back I blogged about MATLAB on the Mac, including MATLAB's (diminishing) dependency on X11 . The performance of MATLAB on the Mac platform is also discussed, though you need to dig into the comments a bit (comment #12). If you are interested in these topics, you may want to visit:

    http://blogs.mathworks.com/desktop/2009/08/31/poun...

    Ken Atwell
  • damianrobertjones - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Thank you for the info, but, when are you going to review or run ANY articles with regards to the new Fujitsu, HP and Toshiba i7/i5 Tablets which are brand new and just out......

    Why don't they/haven't they been mentioned at all?
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    If you're referring to the upcoming slate PCs I don't believe any of them are out yet. We've contacted HP and expressed our interested in reviewing the HP slate, so we should be good to go whenever they start shipping :)

    As far as the other Arrandale based notebooks go, we've got a lot on our list. Jarred and his team have been cranking through them but I'll see about the possibility of getting an HP Arrandale machine in there.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • serkol - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I have a very old 17" macbook pro with a TN panel. I hate TN panels. All my desktop monitors are IPS.

    I assumed that Apple uses IPS panels in their new mbp. Do they also use TN panels in 17" models?
  • icrf - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I read somewhere that IPS panels consume more power than TN panels. It had something to do with the panel letting less light through so it needed brighter back lights or something. Plus, they're more expensive to produce.

    The thing most people notice about them is the increased viewing angle, and that's generally not a factor with laptops nearly as much as it is with other devices. It is much more important on mobile devices, which is why Apple chose IPS for the iPad.
  • serkol - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I think that laptops need panels with good viewing angles (IPS or at least MA panels). If a cell phone battery (and iPad battery) has enough power to light an IPS screen, a laptop battery definitely has enough power. If it's bright enough for iPad - it's bright enough for a laptop. I don;t see any technical reason to keep using cheap TN panels in expensive pro-level macbook pros. The only reason - greed.
  • Cali3350 - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Is the 1440*900 screen still of the same quality as the previous generations? I dont want the high res but heard they are now using a slightly worse panel (it does have a different model number).
  • jeffbui - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Are you guys compensating for the diminished battery capacity of the older computers in any way? The newer notebooks all have an inherent advantage with their fresh battery.
  • darkswordsman17 - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I greatly prefer glossy to matte, it just looks so much nicer. To my eyes, matte has a shimmering veil and if glare would be a problem on a glossy display it would be even worse on a matte one for me, as matte generally just blurs the glare so that you get this big blob of light instead of a reflection. That's not always true, but the glare/reflection that matte gets rid of isn't bothersome to me on glossy displays. I also get the screen door effect on matte displays, or rather it becomes noticeable to me.

    I've never agreed when people say that matte gives you an accurate image. I know that the devices used to calibrate displays can't work properly on glossy (or at least that was one of the big issues a few years back, so maybe they've improved since then?), but when it comes down to it, the matte finish isn't offering an acurate image either. At least not to my eyes.

    Unfortunately, all the quality panels get paired with matte, so you're stuck with a not very good panel to get glossy or pony up to get a good quality one with matte.

    I'd like to see them use a glossy finish, but then apply a matte/anti-glare screen protector, this way if you want matte you can leave it on, but if you want glossy you can just peel it off. Or maybe offer where you can just swap the bezel.

    One last thing, when are we going to get an OS that will let us scale what's being displayed on the fly, sort of like how we can zoom in/out on browsers on smartphones, but this would work all over. I know we can adjust DPI settings and text size, but that often doesn't work perfectly, and you have to navigate settings menus. I'd be happy with even just being able to in a browser, as there's so many sites that have large amounts of empty space. Make it so that you can hold the left click button and then scroll which would zoom in and out?
  • Computer Scooter Joe - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    It sounds like you are referring to a functionality that already exists. If you hold down Ctrl + Scroll the scroll wheel, the page will zoom in and out.
  • IceBreakerG - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Hey Anand, thanks for the update on the 15" MacBook Pro. I bought mine last week from Amazon for my birthday, and so far have been pretty happy with it. Doing a lot of experimenting and testing. This is my first "real" mac, my only other experience was with osx86, and that was a different experience. Either way, I decided to go with VMware Fusion 3 because Parallels Desktop 5 did not work for me with Windows 7 in Bootcamp (and I need to be able to boot to Windows 7 natively).

    Anyway, is there anyway you can say what type of hit I'd take on battery life running Windows 7 in VMware Fusion? I'm not sure if it triggers the dGPU or not, so I don't know if it's just more cycles or something else. I'm assuming I'll most definitely suffer "worse" battery life due to more resources being used, but I'm not sure how much worse. One of the reasons I got the laptop was to be able to run Office 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 in it, but battery life was very important too. Just curious to know if you've done any battery life tests with virtualization as well. Thanks.
  • dver - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    The higher resolution is a welcome option, though I'd prefer a 1080 option. The smaller pixel size the better for me. Having now used the 27" iMac screen for a couple months I can honestly say i'll never use anything but glossy now. It's a true wonder to behold. For me there's no contest...matte screens look so terrible now, I can't stand em. I can't bring myself to go TN though, so I'll be waiting and hoping for an ips option in the future.

    Great review as always!
  • ltcommanderdata - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    It's kind of disappointing that the Core i7 takes a noticeable battery life hit compared to the Core i5 considering they both in the same 35W TDP target. Could you double check the clock speeds of the GPU in the Core i7 model? The low-end Core i5 model you previously showed a GPU-Z shot of was definitely underclocked, but perhaps that's because it's replacing the previous pure 9400M model, whereas higher model MacBook Pros might have higher clock speeds which could help explain the battery life difference.

    As well, since you have Windows installed on the MacBook Pros, could you do your round of mid-range laptop gaming comparison benchmarks as was done for the ASUS G73Jh? People don't buy MacBook Pros specifically to game, but people with MacBook Pros no doubt do play games, so I think it'll be useful information. Running it against the Mid-2009 17" MacBook Pro you have would also be good to see the improvement of the GT330M over the 9600M GT.

    I'm also curious to see if the limited thermal room of the MacBook Pro limits the effectiveness of Turbo Boost. It might be interesting to chart the CPU frequency of the Core i7 over an hour as it cycles through an intensive benchmark to see if it can hit the top Turbo Boost bin (3 bins for 2 cores) and how long it can sustain that before the heat sinks saturate and the clock drops back down to normal. Of course, without comparison to other laptops with more thermal room, it's hard to tell the "normal" or optimal Turbo Boost behaviour of the Core i7, but it should be something manufacturers should consider to differentiate themselves from others using the same components.
  • aj28 - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Anand,

    Pardon if you've already covered this and I missed it, but have you done any tests comparing the effects on battery life by the use of Flash 10.1 versus Flash 10.0 on any of the Apple/Optimus GPU-switching i5/i7 notebooks? If Flash 10.1 kicks on the dGPU, is there a chance that the i5 might be able to power through it with ease to the point that you could actually get better battery life by not using GPU acceleration?

    I know that goes against common wisdom, and I'm sure you would be better off if we were talking about a low-power integrated chip, but it seems to me that the mid-to-high-end dGPU chips are horribly inefficient for this type of thing in cases like these where they can, unlike a desktop, simply be switched off completely in favor of an iGPU which has to be powered all the time anyway, even if in a low-power state.

    Thanks for your reply if you get around to it!
  • flgt - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I think you've already stated why they won't put much effort in OS X. It's a huge population of STUDENTS. And students don't generate revenue like fat corporate and government accounts.

    I’m sure the Mathworks don’t want to artificially limit their customer base, but if it is coming down to a decision between OS X or Windows/Linux it’s obvious which one will take priority.

    For the vast amount of companies Windows and Linux deliver equivalent or better hardware at much better price points. They also host more of the client applications that drive productivity, which could be argued to be more important than the OS itself.

    You could argue it is important to reach students who one day might be paying corporate users, but if a student learns MATLAB on their Mac they can easily be just as productive on a corporate PC. There is no real incentive to make the experience better for a minority of non-paying users.
  • mbene12 - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    I know it is totally off topic, but this is exactly why I left Matlab for python. Their lack of native Mac support. As I transitioned from student to professional I just didnt see a reason to pay $4000 a year for base license and libraries which performed poorly when I could get most of what I needed done in a mix of Python and C for free.
  • erple2 - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link

    I think that thinking is a double edged sword. Students (and more importantly, Universities) are a major piece of the Matlab licensing revenue. I know that the Educational discount is pretty decent, but that's still a significant chunk of change. I'd wager that if you looked at the total number of licenses the Mathworks distribute, Education would be an even player with Corporate and Government levels.

    The other argument (that you can get more hardware for the money) has (almost) always been the case with Apple, however. There were a few notable exceptions (Apple had the first Core2 based desktops and laptops - I can't remember if they were on the forefront with the i7 based desktops, though), plus when DDR3 first came out in a SODIMM format, Apple was curiously reasonably priced.
  • rawd - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Hi Anand, Cody Kreiger on Macrumors has already written an app to monitor GPU usage and it resides in the taskbar

    http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus.app.zip
  • bitninja - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Thanks for the mention rawd! Anyone interested in seeing the MacRumors forum thread where it's being discussed and fleshed out can visit it below until I get a formal page up on my website:

    http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=90152...

    Thanks, be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts if you try it out!
    Cody
  • rcocchiararo - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Is it posible to get a 15 inches macbook pro with a glossy/matte high res display from, lets say.. amazon/bestbuy/newegg/whatever ?

    or only directly from apple ?
  • Computer Scooter Joe - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Thanks for the info, just one more question. Do the fans spin up as a result of the dGPU being on? Or are they generally fairly quiet?

    I understand that it depends on the application, but im talking about just idiling at desktop or web browsing or working in Word.
  • maxxl - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I can't post this command here unfortunately, becouse of an error that appears when I try to, so look at this thread for "ioreg -lw0" command:
    http://discussions.info.apple.com/message.jspa?mes...

    With the model number you can find manufacturer easily, i.e. here:
    http://www.beyondinfinite.com/library.html

    Best reards,
    Max
  • Brian Klug - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    Awesome tip! I didn't know you could do that!

    Output of running that:

    LTN154MT07
    Color LCD

    Which appears to be a Samsung LCD of some kind, but doesn't have a datasheet on that website. Interesting. I'll update the article, thanks!

    Cheers,
    Brian Klug
  • Brian Klug - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    I also got that same error trying to post with the command; I think the CMS is escaping some characters in there and erroring out. ;)

    Thanks for bearing with it and posting that, I was going to resort to trying to pull that info out of some EDID tool from Windows and Boot Camp, but this is better.

    -Brian
  • maxxl - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link

    You're welcome Brian :)
    Ah! I almost forgot… there's one more thing - apart of giving LCD model to you, running this little command gives me complete control over your new shiny MacBook Pro also ;) Just joking… enjoy! ;)
  • ppayne - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    Is it possible to give an idea of fan noise? I hate it and have generally been pleased with the 2009 15 inch laptop. I can hear the difference between running with discrete graphics on and with them off. Usually see 4000 when doing stuff with my laptop like Photoshopping or playing Plants vs. Zombies, though sometimes it goes way down to 2000 rpm. (I have a 160 gb Intel SSD installed.) Can you give an idea of fan RPMs when things are quiet and slightly loud?
  • aj28 - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    Can't say how much quieter than the 2009, but it's a heck of a lot quieter than my 2008, and I kept that thing clean too! The dual fans make a world of difference. Maybe they're using a smaller glob of thermal paste too, compared to the huge mess they had been using...
  • iwodo - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    It seems Glossy Screen has Black Edge around it while Matter is Aluminium colour....?
  • Computer Scooter Joe - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    You are correct. The glossy screens have a panel of glass that covers the entire screen + bezel edge to edge. The bezel on these is black.

    On the matte option, the screen is recessed a tiny bit, and they get rid of the full glass covering, replacing the bezel with aluminium.
  • vailr - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    Could someone run Everest (in Windows) and see exactly which chipset is being used in these new MacBook Pros, and also include the similar Gulftown CPU desktop iMacs (if available)?
    P55 or PM55, H55, HM55, H57 and etc.
    Thanks.
  • araczynski - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    a person peeve, but i hate it when companies call pretty much any device that can do 1280x800 or more "HD". Whenever I hear "HD" i expect 1080p minimum.

    i know, 720p IS "HD", so all displays that can fart anything close to that think they're HD too, but I think the name is used more to confuse consumers than anything.
  • araczynski - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    a person peeve, but i hate it when companies call pretty much any device that can do 1280x800 or more "HD". Whenever I hear "HD" i expect 1080p minimum.

    i know, 720p IS "HD", so all displays that can fart anything close to that think they're HD too, but I think the name is used more to confuse consumers than anything.

    calling 1280x800 or even this 1650x1050 "HD" is a joke to me. like calling a bottom of the line minimally configured mustang a 'race car' just because it has the mustang name.
  • Penti - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    There is still no IPS-panels for notebooks being produced really even though the battery powered iPad got one in a area where there were none, but on the other hand as they try to sell it as a machine that can do anything they need a wide-angle viewing screen. Otherwise people would just laugh at it as a ebook-reader and cool colors and comics won't change that. People have grown used to sitting straight in front of the laptop screen. It just isn't acceptable in a tablet device, and smart phones has even begun using AMOLED screens. In fact the professional tablets (i.e. those costing 1500+ dollars) have been using IPS based screens for a while now. But I don't think a single screen is manufactured for 15" notebooks with IPS, and the screens for the 12-13" convertible tablets are optimized for power consumption and viewing angles any way not color. I don't see Apple pony up for IPS-panels in the macbooks. They will get them when the others do use them. Custom parts just aren't apart of their computer lineup. We can't expect more then the Geforce 320M chipset in that apartment :)
  • rcocchiararo - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link

    Are there diferent "grades" in TN panels quality ?

    im 100% sure my GF notebook has worse viewing angles than my late 2008 macbook pro, and that my 2007 or so macbook white was similar or worse than my gf notebook.

    Also, no notebook from work has a decent display either.

    I almost thought that my macbook pro had a "mobile version" of the s-ips panel my 20.1 inches dell from 2007 has :P
  • rpottol - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link

    Yup, Levanto dropped them from Thinkpads because the just could not get them reliably in the quantities they needed.

    Sigh.

    I think I will stick with older thinkpads, but then I'm the sort of person who would want a 15" QXGA display (2048x1536) and yet not have the CPU for HD playback (well, perhaps).
  • Xyp - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link

    Anand -

    There is lots of interest in seeing some of your benchmark numbers on the current-gen MBPs (128, 256, and 512...), especially after degradation. If any of your people know the skinny on whether Apple has at all revised the firmware on the currently-shipping Toshiba drives, or whether they will be attempting a TRIM-like function (let's be serious, it's Apple... they'll rename it) with updates to OSX, that information would also be much appreciated.

    Thanks for your excellent site.
  • Wolfpup - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link

    Does this let you install the normal Nvidia reference drivers under Windows? People seem to think Apple's preventing it (or possibly it won't work because of their switching technology).

    Either way, if this won't run normal drivers, that rules it out for me :(
  • asiafish - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link

    I just got the new 15" i7 with high-res matte display, and must say this is by far the fastest computer I have ever owned. Build-quality is every bit as good as my Oct 08 MacBook Air, and far better than any pre-unibody Mac (or any other laptop) I've ever used.

    Battery life is incredible with simple browsing in Safari and email/calendar in Entourage.
  • gochichi - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link

    For example, does the glossy high resolution screen offer up the same backlight? How do you know that the $50 cheaper glossy display will have the 400 nits backlight? Is the 1440x900 screen as bright?

    I mean guys, what I'm hoping a tech website can do for me just to put it bluntly is help me make a decision as to which product to use or buy. In a nutshell, help me make an informed decision. What I want to see is a 3-way comparison of the standard glass covered display, the glossy high res display and the matte high res display. What I get instead is an opinion that someone else would go with a glossy high res display that they've in fact never even seen.

    Measure stuff for me, show me some pictures of things I want to see. I've been a long term reader of Anandtech and frankly I expect the obvious. Worse yet, I can go to a local Apple shop and compare th low res to the matte display for myself.

    Honestly... on what grounds are you recommending the glossy high res. It just "sounds cool"? Sigh.
  • Brian Klug - Friday, May 14, 2010 - link

    I think you're reading a different article entirely, because basically everything you just sounded off on is actually in this one:

    1. 400 nits claim - Right inside: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3669/apples-15inch-2...

    Performance was 412 measured with an i1D2.

    2. Matte > Glossy - Also inside: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3669/apples-15inch-2...

    Comparison and side-by-side with photos.

    I'm confused what you're reading, because *all* of that stuff is there.

    -Brian
  • jlyall - Saturday, May 1, 2010 - link

    Hi Anand,

    A big cheers for both the write ups on the new MBP. You have made my job of choosing about 1000x times easier. The hole in my pocket will be bigger but I know I will be happier in the long run. Cheers again and have a lovely day.

    warmest regards,

    J
  • Woodoo - Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - link

    Hi there, I have a question regarding viewing angles differences between the glossy and matte options. Is there a noticable (or at least some) difference between the two LCD panels mounted to the latest MacBook Pros in this aspect?
    P.S.: I'd love to see an IPS panel in the future MacBooks Pro, even as a high price option...
  • bazant - Sunday, May 9, 2010 - link

    Thanks for the review - helpful! I'm about to buy a new machine - mostly to combine a lot of photography (processor and screen important), a lot of travel (size, weight and battery important) - was looking at the 15" i7 MacBook pro but then the Asus UL30JT has been announced... Any idea how do they compare head to head? It looks like Asus put all the power into 13" body with a very similar battery life...

    Any comments would be great!
  • NoOne1 - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link

    Anand-

    Could you elaborate on how you tested the machines' batteries?

    1. When you say you used iTunes, does that mean you played iTunes songs over the built-in speakers? What was the volume level?
    2. On all your tests, was the backlit keyboard on?
    3. When you performed your Xvid test, were you playing over the built-in speakers? Was the discrete GPU activated?
    4. Was the discrete 330m GPU ever activated or was only the Intel HD being used in all the tests?

    I just finished performing an Xvid test on my 2 week old i7, with the battery properly calibrated, with the backlit keyboard at one notch, the brightness at two bars from full brightness, and using HEADPHONES, at a little over half of max volume, and I could only squeeze out about 4 hours. One of the movies I played back once had the brightness set at one notch above MID brightness!! The discrete GPU was activated though.

    I have not been able to come close to your browsing number of 451 minutes using just Safari by itself browsing Mac Rumors forums, although I wish I could.
  • wuju - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link

    Not sure if it works.
  • wuju - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link

    Here is what I have

    Macbook Pro 15" High Res, i7 processor, 7200rpm hard drive. installed windows 7 in bootcamp.

    I wanted to test the battery with light web surfing with Mail and iCal running in the back to see if I can get close to 9 hours of usage. I've calibrated the battery and it's a week old machine.

    I get a 10% drop of battery from the battery indicator per 1/2 hour, which equals to about 4-5 hours of usage. I can see it drop 1% for every 2-3 mins. I have wifi on off course plus using the Apple bluetooth mouse (I imagine bluetooth does not drain that much battery?).

    Is my 4 hours of battery result from a full charge normal due to the hardware configuration - it's like half of what Apple claims the battery to be for light web surfing! What do you guys thing? Did I get a lemon and have a defective Apple product before I demand for a new macbook pro replacement? Thanks in advance for all your help.
  • wuju - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link

    The brightness is set to 50% as well.
  • hd_ - Saturday, June 5, 2010 - link

    Same experience, I took it to a service centre. I was nothing wrong with the battery.
  • PubicTheHare - Saturday, September 18, 2010 - link

    Anand,

    I think you mentioned (not sure if it was this article) that the 15" MBPs are still running hot, and that we should wait until the NEXT generation.

    Was it the latest 15" MBPs that you were referring to?

    I have a Santa Rosa 15" and likely won't upgrade until OSX natively supports TRIM and the MBP has USB 3.0, but I'm curious about the heating issue.

    My SR MBP runs HOT.

    Thanks,
  • lilee221 - Monday, September 20, 2010 - link

    I bought a APPLE MacBook Pro 15-inch Series laptop, but when i'm on trip, the battery cannot last a long time, so i search a replacement battery online for its relatively cheap price but good quality.
    Finally i bought one at www.all-batteries.co.uk
  • MacManx - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link

    On the subject of glossy vs matte screen displays for the mid-2010 15-inch Macbook Pro, I am looking for a screen protector which will fit the matte display (with silver surround) - I am aware that the Moshi iVisor AG screen guard does not fit the matte display. Many thanks for any advice.

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