Verdict

When the 13-inch MacBook Pro range was first announced, many were hopeful that it would be the spiritual return of the much-loved 12-inch PowerBook. For some, it filled the role, but it didn't have the eye-opening power that the dinky 12-inch laptop had.

That's changed. Intel's Sandy Bridge processors are simply an astonishing bit of technology, and the rejigged architecture combined with a high clockspeed in this Core i7 version enables it to come close, and even sometimes beat, the quad-core 27-inch iMac equipped with the previous generation of Intel chips.

Thunderbolt is a significant inclusion, too. It's future-proofing more than something with immediate impact, but its inclusive nature when it comes to other ports means that it could become the one-stop port for connecting peripherals to the new MacBook Pros.

We liked

The power of this machine will just leave you gaping. It's 13 inches. It's 2kg. It's desktop-class CPU power.

This doesn't just come through in pro applications. This is an incredibly snappy and responsive machine to use for general browsing and casual use. Programs open quickly and there's no waiting when multitasking.

The design is a superb as ever. The manufacturing oozes quality, from the solid aluminium body to the ever-useful MagSafe power adapter and backlit keyboard.

The screen is absolutely beautiful, despite the lack of a resolution upgrade. Colours are so natural and appealing, especially in HD video, and it's so bright and clear that we can mostly forgive Apple for this one. As we said before, though, we really think it should be an option.

We like the idea of Thunderbolt, and its capabilities. To say we like much more than right now, with no peripherals to take advantage of it, would be overstating, but we think it could be a significant development for future laptop designs.

We disliked

The graphics have been improved, but they're still below what we'd really like to see in a £1000+ laptop. Yes, many games will play well enough on it as is, and OpenCL is supported, but we'd still like to see graphics grunt to match the CPU.

The FaceTime HD camera is a bit of a letdown. It seems like an upgrade for upgrade's sake, rather than a useful addition.

The world turns, and there's still no Blu-ray appearance in Apple's hardware. It's less important in this model than the larger notebooks and desktops (and particularly the Mac Mini and its HDMI output), but it's something that could put some people off.

And we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that £1,299 is quite a lot of money. As we said, quality and power is obvious in almost every part of this machine, but it's still no small change. The battery life was also a bit of a letdown, but not a major one considering the power on offer.

Verdict

Intel and Apple are on to a winner in this 'small notebook, massive power' form factor. If additional graphics power isn't important to you, then you can add half a star onto the 13-inch MacBook Pro's score. The speed and capability on offer are just superb.

Though it certainly has reasons why some potential buyers will be turned off (not high-res enough screen, no Blu-ray, no discrete graphics), this is an undeniably excellent machine. If you want serious computing ability in a small package, look no further.