Battery life

According to Apple, the late 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina offers 7 hours of Web browsing at 50% brightness. Since 50% is too dim, we set our sample to 66% and failed to achieve the full 7 hours. In standby, MacBook Pro loses as much as 4% per night. That's more than what iPad loses but actually confirms Apple's claims about a month in standby.

We also noticed that the battery level was somewhat off. It showed 3% battery loss during the first hour, and lost the remaining 97% during the next five hours. It's good that the laptop actually worked until the battery level showed zero.

Final thoughts

The late 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina costs $500 less than its 15-inch predecessor. A non-Retina counterpart with the same hardware as today's hero has (a 128GB SSD instead of the 500GB HDD and 4GB more RAM) would only cost $200 less. So, essentially, the excellent 2560x1600 IPS display, smaller thickness, and lighter weight will cost you two hundred bucks—doesn't seem too much in this case.

Downsides are just a few: poor optimization of third-party software for Retina, the deficit of games, and strange battery indicator.

In general, the late 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina proves to be an excellent companion for travelling and daily mobile use.

Write a comment below. No registration needed!