Apple MacBook Pro 14 2023 M3 Review - The base model now comes without a Pro SoC

We will also review the other versions of the new MacBook Pro 14 & 16 soon and also have a closer look at the performance as well as the efficiency of the new M3 processor in our analysis article, which will be published soon. It will also include a preview of the new MacBook Air models, which will also be updated with the M3 SoC.

Right now, the main rival for the new entry-level MacBook Pro 14 is the MacBook Pro 14 with the M2 Pro, which is actually similarly priced with the same memory (16 GB). There are also Windows rivals like the Huawei MateBook X Pro or the Schenker Vision 14, but also multimedia devices like the Gigabyte 14 Aero OLED or the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 14 with a Mini-LED screen, and both of them are equipped with discrete GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPUs.

Apple keeps the familiar chassis design of the two previous years and the new entry-level model is still available in silver or space grey – the new space black option is reserved for the more expensive M3 Pro & M3 Max SKUs. The quality of the chassis is still excellent and the aluminum case feels premium and sturdy. The display hinges also leave a good impression, only the maximum opening angle (135 degrees) could be larger.

The hard front edge of the base unit can be an issue and cut into the skin when you use it for longer periods. The design of the base unit without any tapered edges also makes it feel quite bulky. It is also much bigger than the outgoing MacBook Pro 13 since it has a bigger screen, but the MBP 14 is actually slightly thinner at 15.5 vs. 15.6 millimeters.

Looking at the port situation, the new base model of the MacBook Pro 14 is actually closer to the MacBook Air since the two USB-C ports on the left side support USB 4, but only Thunderbolt 3 and the USB-C port on the right side is gone. It’s not all bad news though, because the new Pro offers HDMI as well as the SDXC card reader compared to the MacBook Air. Like on previous M2 based MacBooks, the new MacBook Pro M3 only supports one external screen (up to 6K @ 60 Hz) and the HDMI output is limited to 4K at 120 Hz. For comparison: The M3 Pro MBP 14 can drive two external screens and the HDMI port supports 8K at 60 Hz or 4K at 240 Hz, respectively; the M3 Max can drive up to four external screens.

The SDXC card reader on the right side is still very fast and we determined up to 230 MB/s with our reference card (Angelbird AV Pro V60) and still 146 MB/s when we copied image files from the card, which is a good result as well. Inserted cards protrude by around 1.5 cm.

Apple still uses last year’s Wi-Fi 6E module including Bluetooth 5.3 and the overall performance is very good, even though there were some fluctuations of the transfer rates in combination with our reference router from Asus. However, there are no limitations and we did not experience any problems with large downloads or bad reception. Apple does not offer Wi-Fi 7 modules yet.

The image quality of the 1080p webcam is still good, but not comparable to front cameras on iPads. Face-ID or Center Stage are still not available, either.

A direct comparison to the MacBook Pro 14 M3 Max (also M3 Pro) immediately shows the massive difference of the internal layout since the second fan is missing on the new base model. Everything looks nice and is hidden underneath covers, but Apple wastes a lot of space here and we do not see the reason for the smaller battery compared to the more powerful MBP 14 models. 

The base warranty for the MacBook Pro is one year. You can purchase a warranty extension (Apple Care+) for three years, which costs $279. This also includes costs for accidental damage (each subject to a service fee of $99 for screen damage or external enclosure damage, or $299 for other accidental damage). It is also possible to pay $99 per year for AppleCare+.

The trackpad has been the benchmark for years and the implementation with macOS is just excellent. The clicking experience is also completely identical anywhere you touch since there are no moving parts. macOS also offers plenty of customization.

The new Apple M3 processor is one of the first chips manufactured in a 3 nm process. The core configuration does not differ from the previous M2 processor and you still get one performance cluster with four cores as well as an efficiency cluster with four cores. The clock of the cores is now higher at up to 4.056 GHz (M2 max. 4.38 GHz) for the performance cores, at least in theory. We only observed up to 3.78 GHz (usually 3.7 GHz) in single-core tests as well as 3.63 GHz in multi-core tests. The efficiency cores can now reach up to 2.748 GHz (previously up to 2.4 GHz).

We will take a closer look at the efficiency in our comprehensive analysis article of the new Apple M3, but the power consumption is pretty much identical to the Apple M2, which means the efficiency is better. We see consumption figures of around 20 Watts in multi-core tests as well as slightly more than 5 Watts in single-core tests.

Apple managed to increase the performance and we see an advantage of around 20 % over the M2 both in multi-core as well as single-core benchmarks. The multi-core performance is sufficient to beat the old M1 Pro SoC with 8 CPU cores, but the base model M2 Pro is still faster (~13 %). Intel’s U-series like the Core i7-1355U is beaten, but the P-series chips like the Core i7-1360P (at more than 30 Watts) as well as the Ryzen 7 7840U (at 24 Watt) are still a bit faster.

The situation changes in the single-core benchmarks and the performance is sufficient to keep up with Intel’s Performance cores, but they require much more power. AMD’s current Zen4 mobile processors do not stand a chance, either, and fall behind by around 10 %, despite higher consumption figures. This is a very impressive result considering the low consumption.

As per usual, the processor performance is not reduced on battery power until the battery capacity drops to 3 %. More CPU benchmarks are listed in our Tech section and we also recommend our analysis article for more information about the efficiency, which will be published soon.

We also performed our Cinebench R15 Multi loop, but you have to keep in mind that this benchmark is emulated, which affects the performance. However, it clearly shows that the CPU performance is rock steady even under sustained workloads.

The new Apple M3 is available with two different GPU version, but the MacBook Pro is always equipped with the faster 10-core unit. The updated iMac uses the slower 8-core model, which will most likely be used for the upcoming MacBook Air M3 models as well. The number of cores is once again identical to the previous M2 GPU, but we are not able to determine the GPU clock. We think the clock is once again higher (similar to the CPU clocks) compared to 1.4 GHz on the M2 GPU since the maximum power consumption is increased from 13.5 Watts to 15 Watts.

Our benchmarks show an advantage between 10-20 % compared to the M2 GPU with 10 cores, but the new M3 GPU does not stand a chance against the two 16-core GPUs of the M1 Pro and the M2 Pro. The cross-platform 3DMark WildLife Extreme Unlimited test shows a clear advantage for the M3 GPu over the rivals from AMD (Radeon 780M) as well as Intel (Iris Xe Graphics G7). The OpenCL performance on the other hand is comparable to the Radeon 780M. The discrete GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop in Lenovo’s multimedia laptop Yoga Pro 9i is noticeably faster.

The GPU performance is completely stable, bot under sustained workloads and on battery power. More GPU benchmarks are listed in our Tech section.