Apple MacBook Pro 16" MVVK2LL/A Space Gray 2019

The 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro is the best Intel laptop Apple ever made, with a killer screen and great build quality. But its soldered 16GB of RAM and hot-running i9 chip show their age next to any M-series Mac. It's only a smart buy if you find a refurb deal near $600 and absolutely need Intel or Boot Camp.

That 8-core i9 can still chew through multi-threaded work like video encoding and code compiles, landing in the 83rd percentile for CPU muscle in our database. The Radeon Pro 5500M is a solid mid-pack performer for creative apps, but its 69th percentile GPU score tells you this is no gaming rig. The real bottleneck is the 16GB of RAM, which sits at a disappointing 26th percentile. It's fine for most things today, but you'll feel the pinch if you're juggling huge design files or a ton of virtual machines.

Stacked against a modern MacBook Air with an M2 or M3 chip, this Intel Pro gets left in the dust for single-core speed and battery life, though it still holds an edge in raw multi-core grunt for sustained renders. Compared to Windows alternatives like the Lenovo Legion 5i, you'll get way more RAM and a proper gaming GPU for similar money, but you'll sacrifice that pixel-dense 16-inch display and macOS. The ASUS ProArt PX13 is another strong rival that offers a newer, more efficient chip and a touchscreen, making this MacBook feel its age.

Since this is a refurbished model, pricing is all over the place, ranging from $600 to $850 depending on the vendor. At the lower end of that spread, you're getting a lot of premium hardware for the money, especially that top-tier screen and build quality. But you have to weigh that against a used battery with an unknown cycle count and a processor that's been lapped multiple times by Apple's own M-series chips. If you can snag one closer to $600, it's a decent deal for a sturdy workstation. Pushing $850 makes it a much harder sell.

The 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro is a bit of a throwback at this point, but it was the last Intel-powered hurrah before Apple Silicon took over. You're getting a gorgeous 16-inch Retina display, a proper scissor-switch Magic Keyboard that fixed the butterfly disaster, and an 8-core Core i9 that still has some fight left in it for the right tasks. Just know you're buying into a platform that Apple has clearly moved on from.

If you care about battery life or silent operation, look elsewhere. The i9 processor guzzles power and the fans are quick to kick in, so a fanless M-series MacBook Air will feel like a revelation. Anyone who needs more than 16GB of RAM for heavy creative work should also skip this, since the memory is soldered and can't be upgraded.

This machine is for a very specific person: someone who needs a big, color-accurate screen, relies on older Intel-optimized software, or absolutely must run Windows via Boot Camp. It's still a capable workhorse for audio production or software development, scoring a solid 76.6 for developers. But for everyone else, the world has moved on. You're buying a slice of history that still works, but it's not the future.