Product Reviews

Apple may insist that the three MacBooks which make up the range constitute its offering in the market for consumer laptops. Certainly when the MacBook's predecessor, the iBook was launched, that was the idea. A quick look at the price and peformance test results, however, tells a different story.

In truth, Apple has no consumer laptop range. In 2006, a consumer laptop can be had for somwhere in the region of £500, Apple's cheapest notebook costs £749. Also, a consumer laptop can be clearly differentiated from its professional siblings by the way it perfoms in any test designed to stress its major components. It takes no more than a quick scan of our results box to see that, other than in the Quake test, there's nothing between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro.

In fact, not only does the MacBook provide a match for Apple's high-end laptops, it keeps pace with the Pro desktop range too. Compare the 2GHz MacBook tested here with the results for the 2GHz Mac Pro and you'll see that for Photoshop work or high-end number crunching, such as that involved in rendering 3D models, it's every bit as a capable.

The only area where the MacBook slips up in comparison to the two Pro ranges is in games performance. Its integrated graphics chip just isn't a match for the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 in the MacBook Pro, or the Nvidia GeForce 7300GT in the Mac Pro. If you want to play games, this isn't the Mac for you.

So where are the other differences between the MacBook and the Pro? Screen size is the most obvious one: the 13.3in 1280 x 800 pixel glossy screen is gorgeous, and has enough pixels for most work, but if you need the extra screen space for Quark

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or InDesign work, or for video editing, the Pro is the best choice. And if you need a FireWire 800 port, or an ExpressCard/34 slot then a MacBook Pro is your only option. Other than that, unless you have a particular objection to white or black, and just must have an aluminium laptop, your money would be much better spent buying a 2GHz MacBook and adding more Ram and a bigger hard drive.

In its standard configuration, the 2GHz MacBook tested here has 1GB Ram, an 80GB 5400rpm hard drive, and a 6x SuperDrive. Ram can be boosted to a maximum of 2GB for an additional £120. If you think you're likely to want to add more Ram at a later date, it's worth doing it at the point of purchase as a 2GB kit from Crucial costs £180. Increasing the hard drive to its maximum 200GB capacity will set you back £239, however the drive in question is rated at only 4200rpm, so you may be better doubling the capacity to 160GB for £170.

Other notable features of the MacBook are the iSight camera, built in 802.11g and Bluetooth 2, two USB 2 ports, a FireWire 400 connector, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a mini DVI socket. If you want to connect your MacBook to an external display, you'll have to fork out £15 for the appropriate adaptor as none are include in the box. Audio is catered for by a pair of stereo speakers, an omni-directional microphone and digital input and output mini-jacks.

With all that performance and all those features it's easy to forget some of the less obvious, but equally important touches, such as the sudden motion sensor - designed to protect your MacBook's hard drive in a fall, the MagSafe connector, the two-fingered trackpad, and the latchless lid.

At £879 the 2Ghz MacBook is faultless. There are debates to be had about the merits of shelling out an extra £120 for the Black version, or saving £130 and losing some processor speed, 512MB Ram, 20GB of hard drive capacity and the SuperDrive. But in-between those two models sits the jewel in Apple's notebook crown. By any measure this is a five mouse product, if you want a portable Mac, in fact, given that it runs Windows under either Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop, any portable computer with a bit of grunt, you'd have to have a very good reason not to buy this MacBook today.