For many users, the contextual menus and pressure-specific controls are less intuitive than a simple binary mouse click, or straightforward gesture controls. The pressure-sensitive controls offered by Force Touch aren’t as impressive, however, as they seemed back when it was introduced. Large touch pads have become the norm on midrange and premium ultraportable laptops, among them the Dell XPS 13 OLED (9310) and the HP Spectre x360 14. The Force Touch trackpad is still spacious, though its generous size is no longer an outlier. The result is a laptop with superb performance, but one that feels a step off the leading edge, even as it handily beats other top competitors in the game of raw testing numbers. The new CPU may offer enhanced performance, but the rest of the MacBook Pro is almost exactly as it was when Apple introduced the design six years ago, even as the 14-inch and 16-inch models have gotten updated styling and features. Upgraded with the first manifestation we've seen of the second-generation Apple Silicon-based processor line (the plain 'M2,' in contrast to previous-generation variants like the 'M1 Max'), the MacBook Pro 13-inch is marked as much by what doesn’t change as what does. Indeed, it feels stuck in the cutting edge of 2016, even as the MacBook Air (and other sizes of the MacBook Pro) have seen a host of updates. But the design is, in a way, a safe and conservative one, with few marked changes apart from the chip update.

In classic Apple fashion, it’s a stylish and capable laptop that can hang with the best in the ultraportable class. The 2022 hop-up of the 13-inch MacBook Pro (starting at $1,299, $1,899 as tested) brings a big silicon deal for power users to the stalwart MacBook: It's the first to hit the market with Apple's new M2 processor.

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