New Macbook Pro 13

Radically overhauled aftermost year, Apple's MacBook band of laptops confused to aluminium construction, edge-to-edge bottle over LED displays, and over-sized multitouch trackpads (with the barring of the abandoned £750 white artificial MacBook). The best recent annular of updates is added of a clarification than addition revolution, but it adds some approved features, while blurred prices on abounding configurations.

Most notably, the 13-inch aluminium unibody MacBook has been answer to accompany the MacBook Pro family. It's a move that makes sense, as the differences amid the two curve were acceptable added blurred. To complete the transformation, the 13-inch Pro, accessible for about £900, regains its missing FireWire port, authoritative it alike added advantageous for artistic professionals on the go.

Design

New to the Pro band is article we never anticipation we'd see on a MacBook: an SD agenda slot. Accepted on the 13- and 15-inch Pro laptops, this corrects one of our capital MacBook niggles. We're additionally admiring to see the admittance of a backlit keyboard on the 13-inch Pro.

Some accept able animosity about the non-removable battery, which is agnate to those already begin on the MacBook Air and 17-inch Pro. It's a accepted concern, but we anticipate the swear of added good array activity (Apple claims up to a 40 per cent improvement), and three times as abounding recharge cycles as earlier batteries is aloof as important.

The blow of the system's architecture and architecture charcoal abundantly the aforementioned as aftermost year's model, with the anatomy consisting of a solid block of carved-down aluminium, rather than a attenuate alien carapace that has had abutment struts added to it. It's both lighter and sturdier than the earlier artificial versions of the 13-inch MacBook.

The fresh Pro additionally retains the aforementioned over-sized trackpad, with the absolute apparent black like a button, although simple borer (as on a PC laptop) will additionally assignment already you about-face that advantage on in the settings menu. We've become acclimatized to the two-, three- and four-finger multitouch gestures, which let you adumbrate all your apps by across-the-board four fingers up on the pad, or accompany up the appliance switcher by across-the-board four fingers larboard or right. Already you get acclimated to that, activity aback to a accepted touchpad is difficult.

Apple says the fresh affectation offers a added colour gamut, and the awning absolutely looks ablaze and colourful, but we ambition the matte-screen advantage offered on the 17-inch Pro were accessible beyond the line. The 13.3-inch widescreen LCD affectation offers a 1,280x800-pixel built-in resolution -- accepted for screens of this admeasurement -- but we'd adulation to see Apple try its duke at a 16:9 laptop display.

While the LED awning agency a thinner lid and some array activity benefits, the edge-to-edge bottle accoutrement the absolute affectation console grabs devious ablaze application with ease, authoritative the bright awning adamantine to see in some lighting conditions.

By bringing aback the FireWire anchorage (now FireWire 800) and abacus an SD agenda slot, Apple has addressed the majority of our best acute issues with the antecedent 13-inch model. Pro photographers will point out that they usually use CompactFlash cards, but the blow of us won't accept to consistently bethink to backpack a USB agenda clairvoyant or cable to anon affix our cameras. Connecting to addition video display, however, will crave a sold-separately dongle for the mini-DisplayPort video output.

Performance

The 13-inch Pro performed as accepted in our criterion tests, with the 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU almost on a par with the 2.4GHz processor in the late-2008 adaptation of the 13-inch MacBook. Trading up to the faster 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo accessible in the 15-inch Pro yields a apparent advance on paper, but for best anecdotal use -- Web surfing, alive on appointment documents, multimedia playback, for archetype -- any of the accepted MacBooks will be added than adequate. An alike faster 3.08GHz CPU is accessible on the 15-inch Pro, but the 13-inch archetypal acme out at 2.53GHz.