Ever since its announcements at WWDC 2022, users have been wondering how much improvement to battery life is on laptops running the new M2 chip – well, it’s already impressing testers.
Both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro have been updated to have the M2 chip, the successor to Apple’s Silicon efforts that was announced nearly two years ago. The M1 chip and its subsequent derivatives impressed with their speed, power, and battery life, beating earlier Macs with Intel chips.
However, in our initial tests of the M2 MacBook Pro, it came out with a battery life that could easily last the workday, leaving with results of over 15 hours of battery life.
While this is obviously impressive, I’m not tempted to start saving up for a MacBook Pro M2. Instead, it’s the as-yet-unreleased M3 Pro chip in a future MacBook Pro that I’ll be interested in investigating further when the time comes.
A 24-hour MacBook Pro doesn’t seem too far away
Apple’s chip team has been on a roll since it announced the switch from Intel chips to its own silicon. In my own tests when playing on Parallels Desktop, I was impressed by how well Metal Gear Solid V and others run at 1440p resolution.
My MacBook Pro has the M1 Pro chip – something that feels like the midway point between the M1 and M2. This is mainly due to the extra cores mine has for graphics compared to the M1, which is probably why I’m getting great performance in my tests.
However, the battery is still impressing me. I can have at least five apps running, six tabs open in Chrome and Safari, and the Mac won’t hit 10% after seven hours.
Inevitably, I can see an M2 Pro chip arriving in late 2022 as Apple looks to update the MacBook Pro lineup, with better speeds and an even better battery. We’re not far from seeing a Mac running for an entire day, with iPhones catching up in that regard, and the M2 Pro could make that a reality.
But when I update a device of mine, I like to skip a generation or so to make the most of the gains. That’s why I went from an iPhone X to an iPhone 13 Pro in 2021.
Putting on M3 gear
The speed at which Apple is improving the M1 chips and beyond is impressive, and while I can only speculate about the M3 Pro, I’m confident in saying that this would be a substantial upgrade for users looking to play games on Mac. Especially with Metal 3 announced at WWDC, along with Resident Evil Village and No Mans Sky coming soon, there’s a lot to look forward to.
I can see a time when using Parallels Desktop to play Metal Gear Solid V again could result in a higher frame rate at higher graphics settings, as if the game had been ported to macOS.
Of course, I’m happy with my 14-inch MacBook Pro; it’s the best Mac I’ve had in the twenty years I’ve had an Apple computer.
However, we’re already getting to a point with these chips where it’s not an impossible scenario to imagine playing Metal Gear at its highest settings. And for me, that makes me excited about what my next Mac update might bring when 2024 rolls around.