Apple has a hit product today. Fans of the company’s compact desktops are salivating with the new Mac Mini, and the portable crowd can ‘oh’ and ‘oh’ with his new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro units. Inside, there’s a new generation of his Apple’s custom silicon in the form of the M2 Pro and M2 Max (above). Apple says it’s the most powerful and efficient chip ever put in a computer, and it has the numbers to prove it.
The new chip is an evolution of the M2 ARM silicon that Apple released last year in devices like the iPad Pro and MacBook Air. The M2 Pro is his 5nm chip with 40 billion transistors, which is 20% more than the previous generation M1 Pro and double his M2 number in the base model. Memory bandwidth is also doubled compared to M2 at 200GB/s. There are 10 core and 12 core CPU variants. Apple claims a 20% performance boost compared to the M1 Pro. On the GPU front, the M2 Pro has 19 cores from the M1 Pro’s 16 cores. Combined with the larger L2 cache, graphics rendering is said to be 30% faster than the M1 Pro.
If the M2 Pro doesn’t give you enough power, there’s a new M2 Max with more features, as the leak predicted. There are 67 billion transistors using the same 5nm node process. Doubles the M2 Pro’s memory bandwidth to a staggering 400GB/s and supports up to 96GB or unified memory. When working with large files such as 8K videos, this setting can significantly improve speed. There is only one version of the Max chip, featuring 12 ARM CPU cores and a whopping 38 GPU cores. It also has a larger L2 cache than the Pro, but can handle up to 96GB of unified memory.
If you want to get your hands on Apple’s latest silicon, you have two options: the latest Mac Mini and MacBook Pro. Starting at $599, the Mac Mini is the cheapest way to enter Apple’s desktop ecosystem. There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, support for two displays (or one 8K display), and even an upgraded headphone jack that works with high-impedance cans. There is no M2 Max option on this machine, but you do get a 10-core M2 Pro chip. However, this is not the $599 version. That Mac Mini includes last year’s base model M2, which is still a very powerful chip. If you want a fancy new M2 Pro, you’ll see a significant price increase. That version of the machine starts at $1,299. You can order yours today.
If you want to get away from your desk, the new MacBook Pro 14 and 16 inches are now available in M2 Pro and Max. These computers have three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an SD card slot, and MagSafe 3 charging. It also has a display notch like the 2021 MacBook Pro model, but no Face ID yet.
Apple’s latest laptop really shows what the M2 Pro and Max can do, starting at $1,999. That’s the price of a 14-inch with a 10-core M2 Pro. There’s also a 12-core variant ($2,499), and finally the M2 Max at $3,099. Stepping up to 16 inches brings the price to $2.499, $2,699 and $3,499. You can also pack in 96GB of RAM for an additional $800. All of these new laptop models are available for purchase today and should arrive in about a week.
