Game over! No Windows laptop can come close to what Apple has done to the 14-inch MacBook Pro — and I’m a hardcore Microsoft fan
If you have the means, then Apple offers the absolute best in terms of all-day performance
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
I started this article looking forWindows-based laptopsthat could compete with a fully-loaded 14-inchAppleMacBook Pro and I couldn’t find any. I won’t sugarcoat this: there’s no laptop, powered byMicrosoft’soperating system, that combines a small 14-inch chassis, a processor that has 16 cores, a powerful GPU, 128GB RAM and an 8TB SSD. If anyone finds one, let me know. Yes, the latest Apple MacBook Pro is expensive at almost $7,000 but then, at least you can buy it if you want to.
Should you look for aWindows 11laptop, models like theRazer14 (2023) will offer less CPU cores, laughable amounts of memory and comparatively much smallerSSD. The one advantage that these laptops used to have was a reasonably powerfulGPU, in the case of theRazer 14 (2023), anNvidia GeForce RTX 4070.
But even then, Apple is coming dangerously close to matching them; for example, our review of theMacBook Pro 14 (late 2023, M3 Max)shows that the 40-core GPU is within 10% of the RTX 4070 on at least one benchmark.
While deploying all this GPU grunt eats battery life, remember that this is a laptop that weighs a bit more than three pounds (1.7Kg) and has a 72.4WHr battery and don’t even get me started on the 1,000 nits display that has almost three times the pixel count of your high-end Windows laptop.
14-inch MacBook Pro is a better buy than the 16-inch
For all intents and purposes, the 14-inch MacBook Pro seems to be the sweet spot and if you neither need a bigger display nor more battery life, then it’s the perfect alternative to the bigger, more expensive and heavier16-inch MacBook Pro.
I compile a list oflaptops with 128GB of RAMand these are what professionals usually aspire for when using complex software for anything from rendering, 3D modeling, video editing to GIS and CAE/CAM/BIM. These are what we call,mobile workstations, and Apple just overtook a bunch of competitors with the most compelling 128GB laptop ever made.
There’s two things that will give the Windows camp some hope; competition always brings forth innovation and lower prices and Apple can’t match the depth of after sales support that the likes ofLenovo,DellorHPcan offer.
To illustrate this point, Lenovo sells theThinkPad P16 Gen 2, which is its most powerful mobile workstation ever, fully loaded for just under $5,400 at the time of writing, that’s $2,800 less than the equivalent Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch. You not only get 128GB RAM but also a 4K display and a dedicatedNvidiamobile GPU, its most powerful ever, theRTX 5000 Ada Generationwith 16GB GDDR6 memory.
Add Premier Support Plus for an extra $400 and you can get up to five year support with next business day repair, accidental and extended battery warranty. Only snag is that it is a 16-inch model thatweighs almost twicethe MacBook Pro 14. Ouch.
So there you have it: Apple simply has no competition in Windows land when it comes to 14-inch MacBook Pro; however, the MacBook Pro 16 faces tougher rivals especially if you don’t mind a lower battery life and a bit more heft.
More from TechRadar Pro
Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
Google puts Nvidia on high alert as it showcases Trillium, its rival AI chip, while promising to bring H200 Tensor Core GPUs within days
A new form of macOS malware is being used by devious North Korean hackers
This new malware utilizes a rare programming language to evade traditional detection methods
