Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, Late-2016)

The OLED Touch Bar promises to revolutionise shortcuts, so is it worth the cost?

When it comes to choosing the right MacBook Pro model, it’s not just size that usually differentiates the 15-inch models from the 13-inch models. If what you need is high performance, the bigger Pro is where you get it. This is the top-end 15-inch model, in which all components bar memory are improved over the $3,599 base-level model’s 2.6GHz processor, AMD Radeon 450 Pro graphics, and 256GB of storage. Both models feature the new Touch Bar.

Let’s get straight to the Touch Bar. This adaptable strip shows different options depending on what you’re doing. Select a file in Finder and it shows options, such as to add tags. Select text in Pages and it shows formatting options. Create a table in your document and it displays controls to add rows or columns. System dialog options are shown to save choosing one with the trackpad.

Physically, the bar feels great, with a super-smooth matte finish that’s different to the iPhone or Apple Watch’s glass. It’s great at resisting reflections, though the screen quality is a little disappointing compared to Watch’s similar OLED screen, and the pixels seem to sit quite deep under the surface. Brightness adjusts automatically, using a separate ambient light sensor to the one for the display and keyboard backlight. You have no control over this — and we’re unsure Apple has got it quite right. Usability isn’t affected in practice, but we had hoped for a little more vibrancy.

The bar’s potential is best revealed in apps like Keynote, where formatting text normally requires switching to the Text pane. The bar’s context-sensitive nature means you no longer have to; with the Arrange pane open, when you click a text box, formatting options appear on the bar. You effectively have two panes open at once, affecting the same box, without extra windows obscuring content.

Shortcuts on the bar are more flexible than key combos, being able to show submenus or precise controls. Pixelmator, say, shows brush size sliders you control with one hand, while your other hand stays on the trackpad.

In System Preferences, you can choose whether the Touch Bar shows app controls and a collapsed Control Strip (some of the features that were previously on the function keys) or just one of those, and what’s shown when Function is held down — numbered function keys are an option. You can rearrange items, controls, and add new ones in some apps, too.

Is the Touch Bar worth all the fanfare? It depends on how your apps use it, and your habits. We’re using it a lot in Pixelmator and iWork apps, but it has little impact on writing or in Photos, use in iMovie is minimal, and you can’t see what’s going on in Safari’s tab thumbnails (though it’s nice when your favourite sites’ icons are shown). Still, it didn’t take long for us to start reaching for the Touch Bar on other Macs, which tells you something. That’s also true of the Touch ID sensor at the bar’s right end. Once you start using it, you’re completely sold, just like on iPhone.

LET’S GET GRAPHICAL

The processor and graphics capabilities are the real meat here. The quad-core processor makes a huge difference over the dual-core chip in 13-inch models. It finished our video encoding benchmark in just 25 minutes — better than half the time — and