neilm

uffenman said:

MagSafe makes perfect sense for the laptops which consume larger amounts of power like MBPs. It is not needed for MB/MBA’s.

Strongly disagree.

Other than its obvious safety and convenience benefits, Magsafe also frees up a TB port for uses other than charging, such as video, external drive, etc., without the need for an external dongle or dock. The new Magsafe 3 port on my 2021 MBP 14" is no taller than a USB-C port, so there could be room for one on an updated MBA without compromising that model's primary "thin and light" mission.

Without drivers you can't get dual external monitor support with the 2020 M1 laptops.

I've had my 14" MBP (10-C/16-C 32GB/1TB) for about a week now.

It's noticeably heavier and bulkier than my outgoing 2016 13" MBP, but while it looks thicker, it isn't. It's the lack of taper in the new MBP's top and bottom surfaces that no longer fools the eye. However eliminating the taper also opens up a lot of space inside, and makes the HDMI port and card slot possible. So there's logic behind the new MBP's slightly chunky appearance. Nonetheless, the old one is better looking.

The new MagSafe is terrific, although I don't use it on a daily basis because I have a single TB cable link to a 27" 5K LG monitor, which also provides charging power, wired network, etc. Wish Apple would get with the times and supply a compact GaN power supply.

The 14" screen is gorgeous. Notch, who cares? You're getting an extra 74 pixels of screen height over a regular 16:10 anyway. Keyboard is great, although it'd be better with a case-colored grid between the keys rather than black. The new speakers won't make you throw your studio monitors to the curb, but they're pretty good for a laptop — another benefit of the extra space around the case edges.

Migrating 400+GB of content from the old MBP over TB never caused the fans on the new one to kick in, at least not that I could tell. Running Cinebench R23, which repeatedly renders a photo image over about 10 minutes did cause the fans to wake up, but even so they're not loud, just present.

Performance is obviously very good. In Cinebench R23 the multi-core core score exceeds that of a 14-C iMac Pro. I haven't run on the battery for long enough to test that, but clearly it'll be fine.

This is big! 

There's really no point in comparing the new 16" MBP with the XPS 17 version with a low-res screen. I mean how many times have you ever heard a premium laptop buyer say "Yeah, the version with the sh!tty screen is just what I want"? I haven't bothered to look it up, but is Dell's hi-res display option also a touchscreen? That's often the case with Win laptops. (Not that I'd want that myself.)

That said, it's hard to price compare with Dell, because they're known for never-the-same-twice pricing. If their current deal-of-the-moment happens to be what you're looking for, then you'll likely get a pretty good price. But if you want what you want, and build it out accordingly, then Dells can get pricey in a hurry.