Apple’s ‘Scary Fast’ event has revealed that we’re getting a shiny new MacBook Pro 14-inch, packing the new Apple M3, Apple M3 Pro and Apple M3 Max chips.
While WWDC 2023 failed to impress when it came to Mac product launches, with Apple releasing the somewhat unnecessary M2 Macbook Air 15-inch, this is what users have really been waiting for. The M3 chip promises a big performance boost over its predecessor, something the Apple M2 didn’t quite achieve in comparison.
Manufactured using a 3nm manufacturing process, M3 is expected to deliver better performance and better energy efficiency thanks to the smaller distance between the transistors – offering a nice upgrade over the current 5nm M2 SoC.
While we haven’t yet received full spec sheets for Apple’s new M3 products (which also include a new MacBook Pro 16-inch and iMac 24-inch), we do know that the new MacBook Pro 14-inch will feature Apple’s Liquid Retina XDR display and up to 22 hours of battery life (depending on configuration). The M3 Pro and M3 Max versions also come in a new ‘Space Black’ color scheme. We’ll go into more detail about the specifications later, so keep scrolling!
Apple MacBook Pro 14 inches with M3: at a glance
- M3-powered MacBook Pros can be pre-ordered
- Official release on November 7
- More power than current generation MacBook Pros
Apple MacBook Pro 14 inches with M3: release date
The MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3 can be pre-ordered now, on October 30. Just go to Apple’s website (assuming it doesn’t crash).
As for the official release date, that is November 7. If you pre-order, you’ll receive your new laptop around that date, which is also when it will be available in stores. Apple notes that the initial rollout will take place in “27 countries,” including the US, so you may have to wait a while if your region isn’t included in the initial list of countries where you can receive the new MacBooks.
Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3: price and availability
While Apple didn’t give us the full price breakdown during the “Scary Fast” live event, we do know that the MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3 will start at $1,599. Configurations with additional RAM or the M3 Pro/M3 Max chips will be more expensive.
That’s a lot cheaper than any currently available 14-inch Pro laptop from Apple, but there’s an important caveat here: those laptops start with the M2 Pro chip. You can get a MacBook Pro with the standard M2 chip, but it’s the (apparently now outdated) 13-inch version, which starts at $1,299.
In other words, we’re dealing with a sort of generational price hike here, although you do get a bigger screen (and a more powerful chip) for your money. The biggest negative is that the entry price for MacBook Pros just increased, but the entry price for a 14-inch MacBook Pro technically just went down.
Apple MacBook Pro 14 inches with M3: specifications and performance
We don’t know much at the moment when it comes to detailed specs (although we’ll of course come back to update this page as soon as we can get our grubby little mitts on some spec sheets), but we do know that the M3 chip offers much better performance than its M1 and M2 predecessors.
The MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3 will – according to Apple’s own internal testing – beat the M1 MacBook Pro by up to 60% in rendering workloads, and by up to 40% in code compilation and spreadsheet tasks. While we wish Apple had offered a more recent point of comparison (it also compared the new M3 MacBook Pros to old Intel i7 models, which are pretty much ancient history at this point), it’s still impressive performance.
An interesting aspect of the new MacBook Pro models is that they use 100% recycled aluminum for the external casing. Apple was keen to highlight the environmental benefits of the design during its livestream event, further achieving its goal of achieving net zero pollution.