If you’ve been holding off purchasing Apple’s sleek looking 2015 MacBook, now might be a good time to pick one up, unless you’d rather wait for the inevitable MacBook Air refresh set to be revealed in a little over a month at WWDC 2016.
This 2016 update to the original 2015 12-inch MacBook, which debuted last year, is far from a complete overhaul of the sleek but ultimately underpowered device.
The new Macbook comes with Intel’s latest Core M3 processor, a step-up from the chip featured in the first generation 12-inch MacBook.
While the 2016 edition’s processor is slightly faster, don’t expect Intel Core-i style performance from this year’s 12-inch MacBook. The computer still struggles when it comes to performing resource intensive tasks like rendering video or in some cases, even editing multiple photos in Photoshop. Apple also claims that the computer’s battery life has increased by one hour, from 9 to 10, though I’ve never achieved this mark with my 2015 12-inch MacBook.
What’s perhaps most important to note about the 12-inch 2016 MacBook is its lack of a USB 2.0 port, as well as the fact that it still comes equipped with a single USB-C plug. While including USB-C in the device makes sense given the industries eventual shift to the standard, not adding more than one plug, means there still isn’t a way to charge the MacBook and plug a device into it.
The base version of the 2016 12-inch MacBook is priced at $1,549 CAD, features 256GB of flash storage, a 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core M3 processor and 8GB of ram.
The upgraded $1,899 CAD 2016 12-inch MacBook comes equipped with a 512GB of flash storage, 1.2GHz dual-core Intel Core m5 processor, 8GB of RAM and an Intel HD Graphics 515 card.
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