MacBook Pro Model With Intel Coffee Lake CPU Spotted on GeekBench, Tipping 2018 Refresh

Reports of an entry-level MacBook are doing the rounds, but now a refresh of the MacBook Pro may also be in the offing. A new MacBook Pro laptop model was spotted on GeekBench with impressive scores, and was listed to be running on the latest Intel Coffee Lake CPUs. If this is true, this will be the first time Apple will integrate Coffee Lake CPUs into its laptop lineup. To recall, Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro lineup last year with Kaby Lake CPUs and added a new 13-inch variant as well.

The GeekBench listing suggests that the new MacBook Pro 15,2 runs on the Intel Core i7-8559U Coffee Lake processor (a 14nm processor which features a TDP of 28W, a base frequency of 2.7GHz, and a maximum turbo frequency of 4.5GHz). It packs 16GB of 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM, and runs on macOS 10.13.6 with build number 17G2110. This is same as the developer beta version of macOS High Sierra that was released days ago.

The new MacBook Pro model scores 4448 in single-core test, and 16607 in multi-score testing. This is expected to be an upgraded model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro launched last year, and if the scores are true, it is a notable upgrade. The 13-inch variant earned a 4600 single-core score, and 9500 multi-core score.

This development comes as a surprise as a recent report suggested that Apple has no plans to release a major upgrade for its MacBook Pro lineup in 2018. In the past as well, Apple has been known to not refresh its MacBook lineup frequently. The company usually maintains the same chassis and design, and instead upgrades hardware internals such as processor, RAM, storage, and GPU. This suggests that Apple will possibly not make any changes to the ports, look, and dimensions of the MacBook Pro in 2018.