Apple finally made a MacBook Pro that feels like a pro laptop. It has the performance, display, and port selection to back up that designation, unlike recent versions of the MacBook Pro.
It also has a new price to fit. And according to a YouGov Direct poll on behalf of Digital Trends, that changes who this laptop is really for.
YouGov polled 1,116 people on the highest amount of money they’d be willing to spend on a new laptop. The results shed light on where this new MacBook Pro fits into a demographic compared to the older models.
According to the poll, just 3% of people are willing to spend $2,000 or more on a laptop. The base configuration of the 14-inch model starts at $2,000, and goes up from there.
Previous versions of the MacBook Pro started well below $2,000. The Intel-based 13-inch MacBook Pro started at $1,799, for example. The poll shows that 7% of people were willing to spend $1,500 to $2,000 on a new laptop.
Meanwhile, the M1 13-inch model that’s still being sold comes in at a much cheaper $1,299. The poll found that 17% of people would spend between $1,000 and $1,500.
The difference between 3% and 17% is significant, and it exposes how the change in price really makes the new MacBook Pro an entirely different product.
This new MacBook Pro, more than ever before, is actually for creative professionals, people who spend the majority of their day working in a timeline in Adobe Premiere Pro or on a 3D modeling project in Blender, for example. There are plenty of quality-of-life upgrades in these new laptops that might attract a wider audience, such as the 1080p webcam or wider selection of ports, but this laptop is really not for your average laptop buyer.
The M1 MacBook Air fills that slot much more nicely. The performance is plenty fast, especially if most of your day involves work in a web browser and Zoom calls. Even the occasional work in Photoshop or other creative applications is handled by the fanless MacBook Air just fine. Forty-one percent of the polled people fall into the price category of the MacBook Air, especially with the college discount, which brings it down to just $899.
It should be noted that 14% of those surveyed indicated that Mac was their primary operating system. And 70% said that price was their primary concern when buying a laptop, above considerations such as speed, size, battery life, and device brand.
YouGov polled 1,116 US adults online on October 18 between 4:12 p.m. and 6:11 p.m. ET. The survey was carried out through YouGov Direct. Data is weighted by age, gender, education level, political affiliation, and ethnicity. Results are nationally representative of adults in the United States. The margin of error is 2.9% for the overall sample.