New MacBook Pro 13-Inch vs New Surface Pro 2017: Battle of Kaby Lake-Powered Machines
Now that Apple has caught up with Microsoft computers in terms of its processing chips, the battle of the Kaby Lake-powered products from two of the biggest technology manufacturers has begun.
When Microsoft announced the newest model of its 2-in-1 computer, the Surface Pro (supposedly the Surface Pro 5), it immediately got an advantage over Apple's laptops since it came with the latest and naturally faster chips from Intel.
However, Apple did not allow it to go on for long as they also announced the refreshed lineup of its MacBook Pros at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference 2017 this week with changes applied on the CPU department.
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Which Has Better Kaby Lake Variants?
The MacBook Pro 13-inch (without the Touch Bar) comes out of the box with the Kaby Lake Core i5-7360U with a base speed 2.3 gigahertz and a maximum turbo capacity of 3.6 GHz. However, it can also be configured with a much able Core i7-7660U with frequency specifications of 2.5 to 4.0 GHz.
On the other hand, the 2017 release of the Surface Pro can be ordered in three CPU options coming from three different Kaby Lake tiers.
The basic variant is a Core m3-7Y30 with speeds from 1.0 GHz to 2.6 GHz. It is followed by a Core i5-7300U that can run from 2.6 GHz to 3.5 GHz. The Core i5 variant is the configuration that comes close to the base model of the 2017 refresh of the MacBook Pro 13-inch. Lastly, the most powerful Surface Pro option has the same Core i7-7660U.
As always, Microsoft gets a point for presenting more options within the Kaby Lake lineup of processors. Added to that, the base CPU for the MacBook Pro 13-inch (Core i5-7360U) still notably comes a tad behind its Surface Pro counterpart (Core i5-7300U).
Price
Meanwhile, another factor to consider when comparing the CPU powers of these products is, of course, the price points.
For the sake of comparison, people can look into the prices of the models with the Core i5 chips. With a configuration of 8 GB random access memory and 256 GB of SSD storage, Apple's entry is priced at $1,499 while Microsoft's product with the same memory and storage specs costs $1,299.
When both computers are configured with the exact same Core i7-7660U and similar memory and storage specs, the MacBook Pro 13-inch costs $1,799 while the new Surface Pro is priced at $1,599.
