Apple MacBook Pro 16" MVVK2LL/A Space Gray 2019

The 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro still has a killer display, top-tier ports, and a keyboard that doesn't make you want to scream. But 16GB of RAM and an aging Intel i9 hold it back. At $600 it's a bargain, at $1,280 it's a bad call.

The 8-core i9 sits at the 81st percentile for CPUs, which means it still hangs with plenty of modern mid-range chips for photo editing, coding, and music production. The Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of VRAM lands at 71st percentile, fine for 1080p video edits and light 3D work but it'll wheeze on heavy GPU renders. The 1TB SSD is solidly average at 63rd percentile. The real bottleneck is 16GB of RAM at the 26th percentile. For a machine marketed to pros, that's tight in 2025. Chrome plus a few Adobe apps and you'll feel it. The six-speaker system and that 3072x1920 display are still best-in-class for a laptop this age.

Against the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10, this MacBook gets smoked on raw GPU and CPU performance, but the Legion can't touch the MacBook's port selection or that 16-inch Retina panel. The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition are thinner, lighter, and have much better battery life, but they're also more expensive and less repairable. The MSI Prestige and ASUS Zenbook Duo are interesting alternatives if you want newer silicon, but neither has the MacBook's speaker system or trackpad. This MacBook wins on build quality, ports, and display. It loses on performance per dollar and portability.

Pricing is all over the place. US listings run from $600 to $1,280, which is a $680 spread for what should be roughly the same machine. At $600, this is a steal for the screen and build quality alone. At $1,280, you're flirting with used M1 Pro or M2 Pro territory, and those machines will run circles around this Intel i9 while sipping battery. If you go this route, hunt for the lower end of that range and make sure the battery health is decent.

The 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro is the one that fixed the keyboard mess and brought back a little sanity to Apple's pro lineup. This MVVK2LL/A config pairs a 9th-gen 8-core i9 with a Radeon Pro 5500M, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It's a used machine at this point, but the bones are still solid for a lot of creative work.

Our database puts this thing at the 100th percentile for ports and 98th for reliability. The screen is still a stunner at 90th percentile. But that RAM situation, 16GB at the 26th percentile, is the one spec that feels dated in 2025. If you're buying used, you're buying the chassis, the screen, and the macOS experience, not cutting-edge internals.

Skip this if you need serious GPU power for 3D rendering, AI work, or high-res video. The Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of VRAM is not built for that in 2025. Also skip it if battery life matters, the Intel i9 is thirsty and this machine is heavy at 1.91kg. If you can stretch your budget, a used M1 Pro MacBook Pro is a smarter buy for nearly every workload.

Buy this if you want a big, beautiful macOS laptop for photo editing, writing, coding, or music production and you find one under $800. The screen, speakers, and keyboard are still excellent. Just know you're buying a machine that's near the end of its macOS support window and has a RAM ceiling that'll frustrate you in a few years. It's a great used buy at the right price, not a future-proof investment.