It’s that time again. The time where you excitedly look at updated MacBook Pro specs, start eagerly adding things to your cart on the Apple website and then realise that completing the transaction will result in an alarmed call from your bank.
Yes, Apple has updated its MacBook Pros, making “the fastest Mac notebook ever” in the process. It would be more headline worthy if the company had decided to make one slower, but all the same it’s an impressive spec sheet.
Related: Best budget laptops
Apple’s refreshed top-spec 15-inch model comes with an eight-core i9 processor with a 2.4GHz base speed, and a turbo boost of up to 5.0GHz. This starts at £2,879, but can soon spiral (further) out of control if you start ticking extras. Want to double the MacBook Pro’s 16GB RAM? That’ll be an extra £360. Want a Radeon Pro Vega 20 instead of the standard Radeon Pro 560X? Add £315 to your bill. While you’re there, you may as well toss in an extra 4GB SSD and… oh: the total is now £6,074. Maybe not, then.
Cheaper options are available, but as ever the term ‘cheaper’ is distinctly relative. You could get a six-core i7 processor for £2,349, and if you’re prepared to lose a couple of inches of screen then the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with its eighth-generation quad-core i5 processor might tempt you at £1,749.
Or then again, it might not. The fact that you could buy all six of our best budget laptops for the price of the cheapest 15-inch MacBook Pro is pretty eye-opening...
