Performance Preview: 13-inch MacBook Pro Benchmarks Are Here

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(Image credit: Apple)

Apple released new MacBook Pros truly aimed at professionals this week, and the proof is in the benchmarks--which are shaping up to be quite impressive. Our colleagues over at Laptop Mag got their hands on a 13-inch unit and went straight to benchmarking. We also expect to do further testing on a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar soon.

The $2,499 review unit, with an 8th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD was no pushover. You can see the full numbers over at Laptop Mag, but we'll give you a tease.

For starters, it produced the fastest SSD speeds the publication has ever seen (though being mobile focused, they haven't tested Intel's Optane 905P). Still, the performance numbers are in part likely down to Apple's APFS file system.

The MacBook Pro outpaced the Dell XPS 13, HP Spectre 13, Huawei MateBook X Pro, Asus ZenBook 13 and Microsoft Surface Book 2 in Geekbench 4,  but it also took a few losses in some other productivity and graphics tests (the 15-incher, with Radeon graphics, should fare better in that department).

Keep an eye on Tom's Hardware for more news on the new Mac Pros. We should get our hands on them to do our own thorough testing soon. 

Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.

17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jimmysmitty
    That review has a few flaws. The test seem suspicious and also not like for like.

    If they want like for like here is a similarly cost MSI laptop:

    https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834154891

    8th gen CPU, just like this one, PCIe SSD, like this one, 2x the RAM AND a dedicated Quadro GPU.

    I guess they wanted to compare just 13 inch to 13 inch and not actual specs.
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    21139756 said:
    That review has a few flaws. The test seem suspicious and also not like for like.

    If they want like for like here is a similarly cost MSI laptop:

    https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834154891

    8th gen CPU, just like this one, PCIe SSD, like this one, 2x the RAM AND a dedicated Quadro GPU.

    I guess they wanted to compare just 13 inch to 13 inch and not actual specs.

    That's their standard way of doing comparison tests. People in the market for an ultraportable of a certain size aren't going to care much how it compares to a much larger and heavier computer. There are other sites for such comparisons.
    Reply
  • krelat
    21140063 said:
    That's their standard way of doing comparison tests. People in the market for an ultraportable of a certain size aren't going to care much how it compares to a much larger and heavier computer. There are other sites for such comparisons.
    Can you link to some? I did a search for benchmarks on these machines and the sites that this one links to seem to be the only ones bothering at the moment, but I'd love more detailed opinions.
    Reply
  • heffeque
    Notebookcheck has several lists: postimg dot cc slash image slash qnzd5i9en

    Surely one or two fit your demands.
    Reply
  • ssdpro
    The picture indicates it can successfully run Fortnite. How productive.
    Reply
  • therealduckofdeath
    21139756 said:
    That review has a few flaws. The test seem suspicious and also not like for like.

    If they want like for like here is a similarly cost MSI laptop:

    It's unfortunately always been like that when blogs "benchmark" Apple products. Apple deliberately put their components in between commonly used hardware speeds and then reviewers always compares with (much) cheaper, never more expensive.
    Reply
  • stdragon
    You're buying into the Apple ecosystem; that's the "value" they pitch. In terms of dollar/performance ratio, Apple will always lose to the PC market.

    Apple used to mean "state of the art" in terms of a blended form and function. But that died with Steve Jobs. Now, it's just form. Apple just sell designer computers nowadays.
    Reply
  • nobspls
    I though Tom's had higher standards then just relaying Crapple propaganda from crap sites like laptop mag. If Tom's isn't doing their own benches there is no point in producing click baits to other sites. Keep doing this and Tom's will lose all of their credibility and destroy Tom's hard earn respect and reputation.
    Reply
  • razor512
    The areas where it fell short during the CPU benchmarks seems to be a thermal issue. The system did very well with short multi-threaded benchmarks, but for longer productivity ones, it did worse than older generation hardware. This means that apple released yet another generation of macbook where the cooling is inadequate, thus it thermal throttles after a little while. Such a thermal design also means that the system gets slower over time as any dust buildup no matter how small, will negatively impact overall performance.
    Reply
  • loveday.ben
    It was such an amateur review IMO. The benchmarks were hugely skewed in Apples favour and weren't comparing 'apples with apples' - no pun intended. Their SSD benchmark was like me saying 'wow, my all flash SAN can do a volume clone in 2 seconds!' because it never actually copied any data...
    Reply