Apple's 13-Inch Pro Now Every Bit as Impressive as Its Big Bros

- Wired.com

Product: MacBook Pro 13-inch Notebook

Manufacturer: Apple

Wired Rating: 8

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The littlest MacBook Pro finally gets all the features of its larger brethren, making it pound for pound one of the most impressive laptops on the market today. For starters, the aluminum unibody construction is solid to an extreme: There's no wiggle or shimmy when you lift up this laptop. It's a high-tech brick that, if you gathered enough of, you could probably pave your driveway with.

Of course, if you did that you'd be missing out on this machine's killer specs: LED backlighting on a 13.3-inch screen, Nvidia 9400M graphics, 2.26-GHz CPU standard, 4 gigs of RAM, a 250-gig hard drive, and slot-loading SuperDrive. Apple finally throws in an SD card slot, and FireWire 800 also makes a return alongside a mini-sized DisplayPort plug. Wi-Fi, complete with Draft N support, is also standard, of course.

All that hardware powers the MacBook Pro 13-inch to dazzling benchmark numbers, whether you're running under MacOS (with Snow Leopard preinstalled as of its imminent release date) or Windows via Boot Camp. Yes, you can find similar machines on the market for a lot less than $1,500, but just consider how long this bad boy will last you and it might be worth the investment.

WIRED Seriously solid unibody design shrunk down to more portable proportions. Dazzling performance for a machine this small (just 4.5 pounds). SD card slot. Love the backlit keys.

TIRED Teensy keyboard, puny arrow keys. LCD could be brighter. Nonremovable battery doesn't last "all day" as advertised (reality: not quite four hours with a DVD going).