Have you been putting off upgrading that Retina MacBook Pro? I've been reluctant to upgrade to Apple Silicon because, well, most of my Macs are eight or nine years old and they still work fine. There's a familiarity - but also if you look at the benchmarks of typical Intel machines the benefits of upgrading are quite small. My late-2014 i7 is not significantly slower than the company 2019 i7 on many tasks and benchmarks.The M1 Pro version of the MacBook Pro, however, is an immense leap and I'm very happy I went for it! Returning to a 14" form factor is a brilliant move, with a large, lush screen that has excellent colour rendition and sharpness, and this MacBook Pro regains the SDXC card slot and HDMI connection so vital for work (and play) on the road. You will want to play, as I've found that despite the unified memory and unfamiliar architecture the gaming performance on the few titles I've tried from Steam and WoW is amazing. I'd happily hook this up to a TV and use it to play some rally games.Battery life is great. I charged it up on delivery and have used it for a few hours in the evening, including downloading and installing games on the first evening, and it's very much on target for four evenings of use with power to spare. Apple rate it for 17 hours of Apple TV streaming - or 11 hours of wireless internet - but that seems to be a rating for 'solid hours' and it's efficient when not actively working. For word processing and other traditional applications it seems quite happy to trot along for a typical working weekend. Very impressive indeed (and easy to charge - if you forgot your MagSafe cable, just hook up a USB-C cable to one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports!).The return of the MagSafe charger is very welcome (my work MacBook is USB-C all around and I fear for the longevity of the ports), but unlike past models the cable is a USB-C lead going into the PSU and can be swapped into readily-available 96W USB chargers, so having more than one is not very expensive at all. In terms of other changes - I like the black keyboard surround, though must admit the lack of Touch Bar feels like a backwards step; on the other hand Touch ID works so well.This MacBook Pro is the first I have used that supports sidecar with an iPad as a second display. It's brilliant! You can use the iPad as a substitute for a Cintiq or similar graphics tablet if you have the pencil (if you don't you have to control the iPad with the Mac's mouse - you can't touch-screen control the Mac apart from the substitute Touch Bar the iPad provides. Forgot to charge the iPad? Just plug it into the Mac with a USB-C to C cable.Sound quality is amazing. Deep bass with remarkable clarity, lovely crisp reproduction. I use a lot of soft synths on my main Mac and have to admit, I'm leaning towards moving Reason or Korg Gadget 2 to the M1 MacBook Pro because it just sounds so good (and can easily swap to my phone's AirPods). It even has a conventional headphone port that supports line-level output as well, and the MacBook Pro's built-in DAC operates up to 96kHz. However, it looks like you need a USB or Thunderbolt interface for audio in - many modern synths and gadgets already output USB audio.Most of all, this MacBook Pro has already proven extremely usable. The form factor, screen clarity, weight and battery life mean I've returned to using a laptop on my lap, rather than as a desktop machine. I've already ordered a protective shell for It, anticipating taking it more places and letting it be a more personal, essential device than any laptop I've owned since... well, since the plastic G4 iBook really.Downsides? I'm struggling to think of any. The battery is sealed in, but my experience of this has been that the batteries in my past MacBook Pros (2012, 2014) have lasted well over six years and ultimately have not been the drama to replace it first seemed. So far none of the apps I've wanted has been slow, unsupported or unavailable (the critical Apple and Adobe ones fly along, the latter is notably quicker than on Intel). The cost of storage upgrades is high - I chose 16GB RAM and 1TB and that's a big price jump, but one that I think future-proofs the Mac for a long life.It even has wider, deeper feet than the old models for better protection from desks.As a long-term Apple and Mac users (since 1980 and 1984 respectively) I generally find the high cost of the machines is offset by a much longer useful life than I've associated with Windows machines of various makes; it is not impossible that I'll still be using this MacBook Pro in 2032. So if you're unsure if the cost is worth it - in my opinion it really is. If nothing else it's a highly usable machine with speed, ease of access and essential apps all included out of the box, and the best investment in a computer is in one you will actually use. This is one of Apple's best laptops yet - incredible performance for the cost, excellent finish and build quality and a great keyboard, and enough connectivity not to feel limited.