How Customisable Is The 2016 MacBook Pro Range?

The Apple MacBook Pro line has traditionally been user-customisable, which was one of its major appeals. The new MacBook range that was announced last week is considerably thinner, however the design makes it a lot harder for users to do their own upgrades on the laptops. So what has changed? iFixit did a teardown of the new MacBook Pro 13-inch to find out.

iFixit has cracked open the new Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch version with no Touch Bar to see what’s inside and to find out how easy it is to upgrade and repair the notebook. The good news is, the trackpad is easy to remove, which would be nice if you wanted to give it a bit of a clean.

The bad news is, proprietary Pentalobe screws makes opening the device a pain in the neck. The battery is glued onto the case which takes a lot of effort to get it out. Also, here’s what’s going to be a dampener for people who want to do their own upgrades on the MacBook Pro, the RAM is soldered to the logic board. Unless you are skilled at desoldering, it will be difficult to swap out the RAM. The SSD, while easily removable, isn’t a standard drive.

iFixit gave the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch 2016 model a reparability score of 2/10.

Watch the video for the full teardown.

[iFixit]


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