Last year we got our first look at Apple’s M1 MacBooks Air and Pro,
and as the reviews came in we could feel the winds of change on the horizon.
The performance gains Apple made by integrating their custom silicon with
ultra-fast memory were unbelievable.
We held off on assigning them a repairability score at the time,
in part because the technology was so different we weren’t totally sure what to compare it to,
or what repair expectations we should approach it with.
Now, with fully-redesigned Pros on our table, we already know we’re not going to love some parts
of these machines, but we’re determined to at least pin them down on the repairability scale.
On the outside, the M1 MacBooks Pro take big strides backward … in the best way. It’s just
over half a millimeter thicker, and Magsafe is back! Right here on the left side of the laptop.
On the right side, the card reader and HDMI ports are back too.
It’s almost like Apple realized Pros need ports.
Between the speaker grilles, the keyboard now lives in a black well,
and the new ProMotion mini-LED displays look great—except for that notch.
Speaking of the display,
under a microscope you can see just how effective the mini-LED backlight is.
In a high-contrast part of a webpage, you almost can’t even see the pixels in the dark areas.
Scrolling down, you can see high-contrast text is a little less crisp, but still impressive.
Sorry MacBook, your cries for help will be ignored today.
On the underside of these new laptops is a fancy MacBook Pro label embossed onto the bottom cover.
I must admit, it’s a nice touch.
To get our first look at what we’re up against,
let’s take a look at some X-rays from Creative Electron.
It looks like the 14” MacBook Pro in this X-ray shares a lot of the same
internal design language as previous Pros, with a sprawling six-cell battery and angry owl eyes.
Between those eyes is the new M1 Pro package. Through the heat spreader
you can see there’s a lot going on under there.
Moving on to the disassembly table, the lower cover is the first thing to go.
8 pentalobe screws hold it down, along with two of those tenacious clips,
and those nasty metal teeth along the top edge of the aluminum case.
The only good thing about this design is that you know this
cover isn’t coming off on its own if you accidentally lose screws.
Inside, I can immediately see the fans are noticeably bigger than the previous 16” machine,
and the speakers—already huge in the older machines—get even
more space with the thicker chassis.
Apple mentioned with this new speaker design that the woofer, what you’re seeing here, can
displace more air for up to 80% more bass. Hard to verify that one, but it is cool to watch it dance.
There are a few minor differences between this 16” M1 Pro model and the 14” Pro model,
but they aren’t very significant. To see more of the little guy, and a bonus teardown of
Apple’s new Polishing cloth, check out our blog post at the link in the description.
Last thing to call out before we begin: something we never thought
we’d see in a Pro MacBook. Sweet, sweet, pull tabs around the battery.
This is usually a sign that the designers have taken battery replacement into account
by using adhesive that works like a command strip, so it can be removed
easily. At this point I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but this is promising.
First item on the agenda is to disconnect that battery. To do that, I have to first
disconnect the trackpad cable here. Underneath, there’s one more cable, then a large screw which
holds down the battery contact pad. Lift that up, and the battery is disconnected.
Now onto those pull tabs: the speaker makes it hard to get at the tabs easily,
but I’ll give it my best shot. First one goes alright, only breaking once.
We really love this kind of adhesive because [stretch audio]
We really love this kind of
[stretch audio] ugh! Because [stretch audio] okay … [stretch audio]
(really fast) welikeitbecuaseitmakes [stretch audio] alright just forget about it.
There are four more tabs on the left side, but before I do those I want to
see if there’s an easy way to get this speaker out of the way. Short answer:
nope. The speaker module continues underneath the board here, so it’s got to stay put for now.
These four strips come out with satisfying clunks [clunk audio], and we’re left scratching our heads
over where the pull tabs for the two cells in the middle might be. While I was applying some
isopropyl alcohol and about to start prying, we realized they might be hidden under the trackpad!
Sure enough, removing the 14 torx screws holding down the massive pad
revealed precisely cut holes giving us access to the precious pull tabs.
These strips are now soaked in isopropyl, so they come silently—which means I can
say what I was trying to say earlier. We love this kind of adhesive because,
while it’s not reusable like screws, it is at least removable,
greatly simplifying battery replacements and preventing dangerous prying.
This 6-cell battery has a total capacity of k,
which is actually slightly less than the old 16-inch MacBook Pro.
M1 repairability woes aside, an actual removable battery is
a huge step forward for the MacBook Pro lineup.
Ports and logic board One of the only good things about
the usb-c only MacBook design was that the ports were at least modular. In the new Pro, removing
these cable brackets allows me to disconnect the magsafe, usb ports, and headphone jack, but
looking closer I can see they are also fastened to the aluminum below the logic board. Drats.
Modularity here is a win,
but a replacement would have to happen after you remove the whole logic board.
Next I’ll unscrew the heatsink and the antenna hardware that runs across the top of the machine.
These are still tiny P2 screws, but at least there are fewer here than in the old design.
As the big antenna bar comes out you can see it’s been redesigned
to accommodate the larger holes for evacuating hot air from the laptop.
To remove the logic board, as always, it’s a cable disconnecting frenzy.
Many of them have their own brackets, or fragile black stickers covering them.
After everything is disconnected, I can carefully wiggle it free from the right,
sliding out the soldered-on HDMI and SD card reader ports on the left.
Under the heatsink is some color-matched thermal paste (wow, such Apple),
and under that thermal paste is, well, nothing exciting here, or here … but under here, an apple
logo! And oh boy does that shield scratch easily. This is just a spudger so I’m thinking (low voice)
scratches at level 1 with deeper grooves at level 2? Let us know what you think, Zack.
More on that M1 chip and its impact on repairability in just a minute.
With the board removed, you can see this new display cable design—something I am so
relieved to see. There is now plenty of slack in the cables as I open and close the display,
and the bracket has been simplified, which is nice. The cables are still built
into the display, but I didn’t really expect that to change.
If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, go check out our flexgate video!
The long story short is that in the early iterations of the previous macbook pro design,
Apple made these cables too short, so they tore when you opened the laptop too many times.
At first it was a real “you’re using it wrong” moment, but they did eventually
admit something was wrong and come out with a repair program for it.
Just a few things left in here. Next I’ll pull out one of these fans.
Like just about everything else, they’re held down with torx screws, two of which
are hidden under these sticky stickers. The fan design is pretty similar to the old 16”,
though these are definitely capable of pushing more air thanks to their larger volume.
This teardown is already running long, so I’m just going to admire these modular
ports from a distance. They’re fixed to the chassis with more torx screws. The
definitive list of modular ports is all three USB-C, headphone jack, and MagSafe.
HDMI and SD card reader are soldered on. [headphone jack investigate]
The speaker is locked down with some serious glue. Heat helps a bit, but there’s no great
way to heat everything evenly, so some prying is required. This tight adhesillve seal helps
create the phenomenal sounds these speakers make, so at least this muck has a purpose.
Finally, let’s talk about the Liquid Retina XDR display. It’s secured with three beefy
torx screws under a metal shield on each hinge. This display is quite a piece of work, I wouldn’t
be surprised if this is at least a third of the laptop’s total production cost. Let’s dive in.
If you’re rusty on your Mini LED knowledge, pause here and go watch our iPad Pro video from earlier
this year, where we took the display apart to see the fancy backlight and explain how it works.
Basically instead of lighting up the pixels from the edges, mini LED displays light
them up in sections from behind, greatly increasing contrast and peak brightness.
Interestingly, the backlight on the iPad we took apart had over 10,000 mini LEDs,
and Apple claims this larger 16-inch screen also has 10,000 mini leds—in theory,
that means the MacBook Pro display would have fewer dimming zones and more noticeable blooming
in high-constrast scenes, but the word on the street (and what we’ve noticed at
the office) is that these MacBook displays are actually better at handling contrast.
I’m guessing Apple spent some time improving their optical films and diffusers for these displays.
On top of all that, this thing also supports ProMotion, or variable refresh rate up to 120 Hz,
like the latest iPhone Pros. If it weren’t for the notch and these baked-in cables,
I’d call this a perfect laptop screen. It’s pretty amazing.
Alright, enough stalling, it’s time to talk repairability.
Apple’s M1 silicon is rocketing the industry forward in a bunch of ways, and it’s unfortunate
that progress comes at the cost of the modularity that a truly Pro laptop deserves.
We’ve done as much research as we can, but we still can’t say for sure whether these performance
leaps are even possible with current socketed memory and storage performance limitations,
though we’ve got our eyes on technologies like intel’s new Alder Lake CPUs,
with dedicated efficiency cores, PCIe 5 connectivity, and socketed ddr5 memory support.
By way of comparison, our scoring system doesn’t punish smartphones for not having modular memory
and storage, because of the obvious space and size constraints, and the lack of
industry-standard sockets for such components. Up until now, the divide between laptops and
smartphones has been clear, so it’s been an easy distinction to make. But since M1 is
kind of like a beefed-up smartphone processor, those lines are blurring fast. It’s complicated.
M1 conundrum aside, these new MacBooks Pro have other repair follies.
Pentalobe screws on the lower case are completely unnecessary,
and even the process of removing the cover after the screws feels like it was designed to be scary.
And while I don’t want to undersell the importance of the newly removable battery,
even friendly stretch release adhesive can be a pain if it breaks on you,
and having to remove the trackpad to get to the last strips is confusing.
The thing is, this problem has already been solved elsewhere. Just put the battery in
a frame and fasten it with screws. I promise, nobody will mind the extra millimeter, Apple.
Beyond the battery, it’s nice that most of the screws inside these machines are Torx,
and the logic board remolkokval process is much smoother than the older Pros. It is still
annoying that you’ll need to remove the whole board to thoroughly clean your fans, though.
Also annoying is the fact that you can’t perform a screen or fingerprint reader
replacement without negative side effects. Swapped screens lose True Tone functionality,
while swapped fingerprint buttons completely lose their touchID powers.
All things considered, the M1 MacBo oks Pro (14 and 16 inch) earn a 4 or 5? out
of 10 on our repairability scale. For now, this score includes a penalty for
storage and memory integration as any other laptop would, but if we come to learn that
this level of performance is truly impossible without it, we’ll readjust our expectations.
After all, there are ways to make modular,
repairable computers without socketed storage and memory, and the goal of the repairability
score isn’t to hold back progress, just to keep these companies accountable.