Geek Review: Apple MacBook Pro 14 M3 (2023), 6 Months Later

It’s easy to be tempted by shiny new gadgets in the tech scene. More power, faster speeds, and new bells and whistles – the catch-up game never ends, and it can be difficult to keep track of the latest trends.

In such cases, there are always reliable picks to fall back on. Apple has never been one to disappoint, and the MacBook Pro 14 M3, released last November, continues to drive home the point, impressing as a daily driver six months after its initial release. Now packing the horsepower of a beefier M3 chip, the prosumer laptop is no longer a one-trick pony for creative work, proving competent in running various games.

A familiar sight for longtime users, it bears the design hallmarks of its predecessor. There’s the signature silver or dark grey sheen accompanying a svelte, elegant silhouette, furnished with a minimalist touch. Unlike its M3 Pro and M3 Max siblings, the gorgeous Space Black colourway isn’t available for the base chip. At 1.6kg, it’s around 200 grams lighter than before, but comes at the cost of connectivity. 

The everyday carry boasts only two USB 4.0 with Thunderbolt 4 support, as compared to the three-port tray on the M2. While it’s undoubtedly an upgrade over the offerings on the 2022 line of 13-inch MacBook Pro models, the removal feels like a step back, considering that the remaining selection – a SD card slot, 3.5mm jack, a MagSafe 3 port, and HDMI port – is unchanged. Besides, Apple has traditionally stuck to the same arrangement after making the leap to its proprietary chip technology, so it’s not wrong to expect identical treatment here (except, you know, what’s said about assuming things). 

Elsewhere, the MacBook Pro 14 M3 continues to be the familiar companion that many have come to know and love. The Liquid Retina XDR display (3,024 x 1,964) returns with its near-4K glory, delivering sharp detail, beautiful visuals with rich colours and deep contrast, and a silky smooth, stutter-free viewing experience. Part of the immersion is affected by the centre-set notch, however, which tends to eat into full-screen content. 

Typing is crisp, tactile, and pleasant, once again driving home the benefits of phasing out the butterfly keyboard tradition. As expected, the touchpad inherits the impressive responsiveness and tracking accuracy of its predecessor. 

Things are a little different under the hood. The base M3 chip may lack the added oomph of the M3 Pro and M3 Max, but the MBP 14 still proves to be highly adept at handling various demands, from light day-to-day tasks to heavy duty work like video editing. This review unit boasts 16GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage, with users able to bump it up to 32GB and 2TB, respectively.

An upholder of tradition, the ultraportable doesn’t hold back on delivering the snappy, seamless, and reliable MacBook guarantee. On Cinebench R24, it scored 3,339 points in GPU performance, alongside 677 (multi core) and 140 points (single core) in the CPU segment. The multi-core result places it higher than the M1 chip and below M1 Max, while the single-core reading surpasses that of the entire M1 range. 

Geekbench 6 recorded an overall GPU reading of 45,746, with the single and multi-core sections coming in respectively at 3,040 and 12,033, marking a significant improvement over a similarly specced 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro build (32,208). In comparison, Novabench yielded a 2,079 score, attained from the following:  

• CPU: 1,065
• GPU: 179
• Memory: 478
• Storage: 357

As for transcoding speeds, the MacBook Pro 14 M3 clocked 34-and-a-half minutes to fully convert an hour of 4K gameplay footage to 1080p resolution on HandBrake. It may be difficult to get a sense of how these numbers translate into real-world performance – seeing is believing, after all – but know that the lean, mean laptop can handle a lot of what is thrown at it, including gaming.

With Baldur’s Gate 3, it’s able to run smoothly at default resolution (1,512 x 945) on medium settings for the most part, barring the occasional dip in frame rate. There’s some slight, easily-negligible motion blur, and while the visuals naturally can’t compare to the crisp detail at higher graphical settings, gameplay was enjoyable enough with little hiccups. 

Stray yielded better performance. The MacBook Pro 14 M3 put up a breezy performance at 1,512 x 982 resolution on medium settings – except mesh quality, which was set to high – and delivered fluid movement fitting of a feline-focused adventure and consistent frame rates. However, bumping the resolution up to the highest (3,024 x 1,964) resulted in choppy gameplay, so players will have to compromise between visual and hardware prowess.  

The least graphically-demanding title of the list, Hades proved to be a total delight even at maximum resolution (3,024 x 1,964). From dashing across the screen to pummelling enemy mobs with the Twin Fists of Malphon, every action was conveyed in extremely slick fashion. Essentially, Apple’s ultraportable is highly capable of light gaming, with limited, but still decent horsepower to go heavy. 

Completing the trifecta of style, substance, and endurance that the MacBook lineup is known for, the 14-incher touts an 18-hour battery life on paper. It comes close to real-world performance, lasting around 14 to 16 hours at 50 percent brightness, and a few hours more with a lighter workload. Depending on mileage, the duration will vary, but it’s very difficult to whittle it down to an empty tank on just day-to-day tasks. 

Case in point – a six-hour writing session with various apps running in the background only drained around 25 percent of the battery, while watching the first 12 episodes of the Delicious in Dungeon anime (slightly more than four hours) brought it down by 20 per cent. Gaming is, of course, an exception to the rule, and should be done with the 70W USB-C power adapter plugged in. 

No matter the activity, the MacBook Pro 14 M3 lives up to its reputation as a quiet, task-killing machine. The whirring of fans is kept to the minimum, only picking up when carrying out more GPU-intensive chores, such as video editing, exporting large files, and in this case, running benchmarking tests. Even so, it’s not obnoxiously loud, turning into soft hissing when running Baldur’s Gate 3 and Stray at higher settings. The chassis ran hotter than usual, but steered clear of overheating for the gameplay duration. 

Six months after release, the Apple MacBook Pro 14 M3 continues to impress as a daily driver. A jack of all trades and master of most, this entry-level machine delivers on the MacBook guarantee of blistering, solid performance, sleek aesthetics, and a lasting battery life. It doesn’t quite pack enough punch for dedicated gaming, but users will be able to easily breeze through their work and casual play demands. 

All things considered, a starting price of S$2,320 is reasonable – if not for the lacking unified memory. The stingy 8GB base configuration puts a leash on the laptop’s full multitasking potential, demanding a S$600 top-up for 16GB of RAM. Still, it’s hardly a dealbreaker, so as long as users are willing to cut a compromise, they stand to gain a lot more from its versatile and reliable capabilities.