MacBook Pro With Retina Display Hands-On

Apple's new MacBook Pro with Retina display isn't just the best looking MacBook of all time, it's the best portable performing Mac money can buy. With the power of Apple's very own snappy SSD storage, a magnificent 2880x1800 screen resolution and powerful processing power all packed into a slim unibody enclosure, your $2,200 are just about worth it all. All things aside, we think the Retina display is really the cream of the crop and should be the first decision factor you should be thinking about if you're looking to grab yourself a Retina MacBook Pro.

It should be a no brainer for industry professionals, photographers and graphic designers. The new behemoth resolution opens up quite a lot of incompatibility on the web, however. Sites, apps and photos that aren't Retina-ready will look drastically worse than you've ever seen them before. It'll take time until developers learn how to best support such high display resolution. In the meantime, the MacBook Pro's Retina display is unbelievably sharp, clear and full of rich vivid contrast that looks incredible from any angle. Text looks beautiful regardless, and Apple's own apps including OS X Lion and Mountain Lion fully support the Retina resolution. Most if not all third party apps don't, at least as of today.

We noticed so much more detail in just about everything compared to using ordinary, albeit high screen resolutions. It's pretty amazing, and something you just need to experience first hand. If you're viewing our hands-on photos with a non-Retina display, you have no idea how much sharp detail you're not seeing. Subtle textures are much more pronounced by the Retina resolution.

Our hands-on gallery is down below! Scroll thru, click an image to see it full size.