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Why I’m Returning My M3 Max MacBook Pro
Don’t worry — it’s not all bad news
I’ve finally put my money where my mouth is.
Remember my moaning, whinging, and incessant whining about how biblically heavy and unwieldy the 16-inch MacBook Pro is? Well, it has been replaced by a brand-new 14-inch M3 Max MacBook Pro.
I said I’d do it, didn’t I?
There’s just one problem — I’ve made a mistake, which has resulted in said 14-inch MacBook Pro immediately winging its way through the Apple returns process.
I’ll explain how I’ve cocked up in this M3 Max MacBook Pro review — after I’ve given you my thoughts on Apple’s latest powerhouse laptop.
Oh, and I think I’ve worked out who should — and who definitely shouldn’t — buy this thing.
Thoughts on the Space Black M3 Max MacBook Pro
It’s all about the new colour, isn’t it? Let’s not kid ourselves. Every single review you’ve watched or read about the M3 MacBook Pro (bar those that focus on the base model) features a Space Black laptop. Because of course it does.
Is it black? No, not at all. It’s a deep, deep shade of grey. Does that matter? No, not at all. It just looks very cool and you’ll want one as soon as you see it in person. As for fingerprints and smudges, it fares better than the Midnight MacBook Air, but I need longer with it to see how often the cloth needs to come out.
I’ve been testing an M3 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro with a 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 48GB of unified memory and a 2TB SSD. It’s a beast — because of course it is. It’s also an incredibly expensive machine — £4,199 of my hard-earned English pounds, to be exact.
Despite the astronomical cost of entry, these are the best MacBook Pros Apple has ever produced. They’re retro-chunky without feeling ancient, built like tanks, powerful enough to smash through any computing requirement, and will last for an extremely long time. But that’s the problem for Apple; this has been the case since the introduction of the M1-based MacBook Pro in 2021 — it was so far ahead of its time and so powerful that anyone who invested in that generation has no need whatsoever to upgrade to the M3 version.
