READ NEXT: The best laptops to buy today Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (M2 Pro, 2023) review: Design and features

But it still isn’t quite a perfect ten. As I mentioned above, the bathtub notch housing the 1080p FaceTime HD camera is still, in my view, an unnecessary compromise. The fact that there’s no USB-A port is an annoyance, too. I understand Apple has to draw the line somewhere, otherwise there would be no end of holes littering the edges of its otherwise pristine devices, but one small nod to legacy devices is surely not too much to ask. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that in addition to the all-singing, all-dancing default XDR display mode, Apple has included a number of pre-calibrated modes aimed at different creative scenarios. For now, however, Mac power junkies will have to satisfy themselves with the redesigned 14in and 16in MacBook Pro machines. Not that I can imagine anyone being dissatisfied with either one. These are just starting points, however, as there’s a whole lot more flexibility to the configuration process. For instance, looking at these three builds, you might think there were only two processor options available but that’s not the case. What if you're after something that's ideal for gaming? Look no further than the HP OMEN 16, HP's cutting-edge gaming laptop that can be configured with up to a beefy 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H or AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, up to an NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 2TB of SSD storage.

I’m also surprised there’s no AdobeRGB colour calibration mode, which would be useful for professional photographers. However, it is otherwise a staggeringly good display capable of delivering enough brightness and colour accuracy for professional content creators from all walks of life. And it’s also great for watching a little streaming video once you’ve finished work for the day. Thanks to the new Apple M1 Pro and Pro Max processors, sumptuous mini-LED displays and an expanded array of physical ports, among many other things, Apple’s new machines should be the laptops of choice for the demanding mobile professional for the foreseeable future. While there aren't a ton of 16-inch laptops on the market, it's not a form factor that you should overlook when buying your next laptop. In many cases, 16-inch devices offer much of the same powerful hardware that you can find in larger 17-inch laptops, but in a chassis that's less cumbersome and easier to carry around. On top of that, 16-inch laptops also tend to have better battery life than 17-inch options, and are often less expensive. This makes them a great alternative if you want something larger than 13, 14, or 15 inches, but don't want something as big or as expensive as 17-inch devices typically are. In short, this is a very, very good display. It’s incredibly bright, very colour accurate and, more than that, it’s a display that even demanding creative professionals should find usable without the need for further calibration. Plus in your downtime, it’s a supremely enjoyable screen to enjoy Dolby Vision movies and TV shows on via Apple TV+. READ NEXT: Our guide to the best laptops you can buy Apple MacBook Pro 16in review: What you need to know

It has 12 CPU cores for the grunt work, comprising 8 performance cores running at up to 3.5GHz and 4 efficiency cores for tasks demanding less power. That’s two more cores in total than the maximum you could get with the M1 Pro and four more than in the Apple M2. There’s also a 19-core GPU, three more than on the M1 Pro and nine more than on the M2. These include “HDR Video”, which sets the display so professionals working on HDR10 video can preview material correctly. In this mode, the brightness is capped at 1,000cd/m2, the colour space set to P3 and the gamma to ST.2084. The last significant overhaul to the MacBook Pro’s design came with the first generation of Pro 14in and 16in laptops in 2021. I wasn’t expecting any changes with this generation and so it proved. The same applies to other rivals in the Windows domain as well, at least the models we’ve reviewed in the past. Laptops such as this year’s updates of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 and the 2023 Razer Blade 16 are on a par with the MacBook for power and best it on the gaming front but can’t match its battery life or specialist video editing capabilities.I loaded it up with 17 simultaneous clips of 8K H.265 video and used DaVinci Resolve to output to 4K ProRes 4444 XQ and it popped out in 4mins 5secs. Compared to my M1 Mac mini, which completed the same task in 9mins 31secs, that’s seriously fast. The only thing you might want to upgrade to the M2 Max for is if you’re doing lots of ultra heavy-duty video editing and rendering. This is because the Max has two video encode/decode engines (for accelerating HEVC and H.264 video) and twoProRes video encode/decode engines, where the M2 Pro only has one. Both the Apple M1 Pro and Apple M1 Max CPU chip options offer blistering performance in creative workloads, and the laptop also comes with up to 64GB of RAM and up to (a ridiculous) 8TB of SSD space for even more power. Its mini-LED 3456x2234 display looks incredible as well, and the device also has an impressive max battery life of 14-15 hours. I can’t comment on the M2 Max chipset’s performance levels in this review as Apple supplied an M2 Pro (12-core CPU, 19-core GPU) for testing. If my results are anything to go by, though, most users won’t need anything more. As with the M2 Pro Mac mini, this is an absolute beast of a machine, that will take everything from 8K video editing, colour grading and editing to 3D rendering in its stride. Much the same could be said for the MacBook’s performance levels, which are ready for pretty much any demanding professional creative task you could possibly ask of it.