New processors, a new gold coating, all with a better battery life – Apple is continuing to iterate on its 12 inch Retina MacBook, giving consumers more options to choose from. We can’t promise you a reduced price tag, but the new Skylake-equipped, Retina MacBook is a tempting proposition regardless of price.
Related: See here for the latest Apple products
This refresh of the entire 12-inch Retina line up keeps the same dimensions, chassis, keyboard and the same single USB Type-C port on the side that caused so much controversy. It even costs the same – a $1,300 base price, but that means you get more bang for your buck in the same package as before.
It might look a little different, though, if you opt for the new Rose Gold color scheme, which is now among the more traditional Space Grey, Silver and Gold options, giving you – as 9t05Mac points out – the same options as iPhone buyers.
Internally things are changed up too, with the new Intel Skylake Core M CPUs Apple has installed, operating between stock and more powerful turbo frequencies, depending on what you’re up to at the time. That generation has improved on-board graphical performance too, offering 25 percent more oomf than what came before, as well as better energy efficiency, which gives users up to 11 hours of media playback and 10 hours of Wi-Fi web browsing. That’s up an hour by both measurements.
If you are buying one of these brand new, you can pick one up for $1,300 if you opt for the version with a Core M3 running at 1.1GHz (2.2GHz turbo), 8GB of memory and a 256GB PCI Express storage option. If you have slightly deeper pockets, you can pay $1,500 for the more powerful 1.2GHz (2.7GHz turbo) Core M5 CPU, twinned with the same memory and a 512GB PCI Express flash storage drive.
If all of that is just too pricey, and you don’t need the new processor and color scheme, you could opt for one of Apple’s refurbished devices. It’s now offering the last generation 12 inch Retina Macbooks for just $930 for the the lower specced 1.1GHz, 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage option, or you could pay up to $1,320 for the more powerful 1.3GHz model with 512GB of storage.
Editors' Recommendations
- These 6 tweaks take MacBooks from great to nearly perfect
- If you buy one MacBook Air alternative, make it this one
- The case for buying the M2 MacBook Air over the M3 model
- Which color MacBook should you buy? Here’s how to pick
- Why you should buy a MacBook Air instead of a MacBook Pro
