iFixit Tears Down New MacBook Pro, Compares It To Retina

With the teardown of the new Retina MacBook Pro out of the way, iFixit has turned its attention to the regular MacBook Pro that was refreshed with Intel's new Ivy Bridge processors. While the gang wasn't too crazy about the lack of the Retina MacBook Pro's repairability, the vanilla version seems to fare better, receiving a 7/10 score. In the process of the teardown, iFixit has compared some of the internals to the Retina MacBook Pro.

First, the vanilla MacBook Pro uses regular screws compared to the proprietary screws on the Retina MacBook Pro, allowing users to get access to the internals with relative ease. The battery is the same rating and thickness as previous models, 77.5 Wh and 13.8mm respectively, while the SATA hard drive used in the regular MacBook Pro is almost three times as thick as the SSD used in the Retina model.

The regular MacBook Pro's screen is deemed the most expensive part to repair even if it can't match up to the quality of the Retina panel, although it should be an easy swap unlike the next-generation Pro. iFixit note that including a removable LCD in the Retina MacBook Pro would add less than a millimeter of thickness.

Finally, iFixit details how the removal of the optical drive from the Retina MacBook Pro unsurprisingly led to large weight savings. The company goes on to say that while most won't miss the optical drive on the Retina model, once removed it can be used for an additional hard drive in the regular MacBook Pro giving customers added flexibility.

[via 9to5Mac]