Prior to this, the $1,199 13-inch MacBook Air had become Apple’s go-to for everyday consumers, while the recent 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display was the $2,199 reach system for power users. Even though the standard 13-inch Pro (starting at $1,199) remains a strong seller for Apple, it has also become the most archaic-feeling Apple laptop, saddled with a low native screen resolution and a chunky (by contemporary ultrabook standards) body.

At a starting price of $1,699, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is a big step up in price from Apple’s other 13-inch laptops, but it also offers features they cannot. Like the 15-inch Retina Pro, this new model includes a high-resolution display — at 2,560×1,600 pixels, it’s the highest resolution you can get in a 13-inch laptop — plus two Thunderbolt/DisplayPort outputs, and even HDMI.

This update is not as revolutionary as the 15-inch version, which really was something we had never seen before. But, it leapfrogs some recent Windows 8 ultrabook-style laptops that were giving the MacBook Air serious competition as the go-to premium laptop in that price range, such as the Acer Aspire S7 and the Dell XPS 12.

Is $1,699 too much to ask for a 13-inch laptop? I’ve recently seen some flagship Windows 8 laptop with similar prices. The aforementioned Acer Aspire S7 is $1,649, but that includes a low-voltage Core i7 and a 256GB SSD. The convertible Dell XPS 12, with a slightly smaller 12.5-inch screen, starts at $1,199, but our review unit of that system also traded up to a Core i7/256GB SSD combo for $1,699. Both of those laptops have 1,920×1,080-pixel displays, which is as high as you can get on a consumer Windows laptop, and both are touch-screen laptops, an area Apple has yet to get into.

Compared with those, the base model Retina 13-inch Pro has a Core i5 and 128GB SSD. The unit we’re testing is actually the step-up model, which upgrades the storage space to 256GB, for a total of $1,999. Add a Core i7 processor to that, and it’s $2,199 — the same price as the 15-inch Retina Pro, with a Core i7, 256GB SSD, and discrete Nvidia graphics.

The takeaway? None of these superpremium laptops is inexpensive, and at $1,199, $1,699, or $2,199, you have several options depending on your need for storage space, screen size, CPU power, or graphics.

The main selling point of this system, the Retina Display, is something that presents itself much better in person than online. Like the 15-inch version, this won’t actually look like you’re seeing full 2,560×1,600-pixel resolution (or 2,880x,1800 pixels, in the case of the 15-inch), if you still think about screen resolution in the same way Windows laptops do.

Instead, Apple uses a different dot pitch for the screen, which makes the desktop appear to be operating at 1,280×800 pixels, just with a much finer grain to the image. You can pop into the System Preferences menu and change that to “look like” 1,440×900 pixels or 1,680×1,050 pixels. The end result is a screen that’s higher-res than a 1,920×1,080-pixel laptop, but appears to operate at a lower screen resolution, all while appearing crisper and sharper.

If all that sounds confusing, just know that you’re unlikely to notice the difference between a Retina and non-Retina screen until you see them side by side. Then, it’s definitely noticeable, but I’ve found it primarily of use in reading onscreen text more than anything else (the same was true for the Retina iPad versus previous non-Retina iPads).

The Retina MacBook Pro is on the right, a 13-inch Air on the left.

Interestingly, the non-Retina 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops continue to exist, although it’s hard to imagine anyone not needing an internal optical drive or huge HDD going to those as a first choice (a budget-driven choice, perhaps).

While we continue to test the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, my initial impression is of a laptop following an inevitable evolutionary pathway, shedding size and weight, along with arguably legacy hardware, from optical drives, to platter hard drives, to Ethernet jacks (a point sure to be hotly disputed by those who still use those features every day).

I’d still call the 15-inch Retina Pro the best all-around MacBook in Apple’s current roster, and the 13-inch Air the most practical for on-the-go lifestyles. That puts this model just behind those in the complex calculation of value, practicality, and features, but still miles ahead of most other 13-inch laptops.

Design and features
The new Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro feels like neither a standard Pro, nor like a MacBook Air. Instead, like the 15-inch version from June 2012, it’s caught somewhere in the middle. Thinner than a Pro, it also feels dense, leaning toward heavy, when you pick it up. It doesn’t taper to a fine point the way a MacBook Air does, making it a bit harder to carry by hand comfortably.

I took the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display and lined it up next to a current-gen 13-inch MacBook Air. The results left me feeling that each design has its advantages, but there’s still a big difference between the two.

While the new Retina MacBook Pro is not as thin and light as a MacBook Air, it actually has a slightly smaller footprint. The Retina Pro is 12.4 inches by 8.6 inches, whereas the 13-inch Air measures 12.8 inches by 8.9 inches.

I know plenty of people who lug around full-size 13-inch MacBook Pros to and from work everyday — and a few who do the same with 15-inch models. Both camps would benefit greatly from the smaller Retina Pro. Some time ago, I decided to carry a 15-inch Retina Pro around with me every day for a week as a test. It ended up being much easier to travel with than I expected, so the 13-inch model could certainly be an everyday machine, although many ultrabooks (and the MacBook Air) clock in at around half a pound less. The keyboard and trackpad are the same as seen on the last several generations of MacBook, and they remain an industry standard. Other laptops have matched, but not surpassed, the backlit Apple keyboard, and the trackpad, with its multifinger gestures, remains the easiest to use in any laptop — although Windows 8 is making a major play for improved touch-pad gestures.

On the 15-inch Retina Pro, the high-res display felt like a real hardware breakthrough. Since then, we haven’t seen anything like it on any other laptop until now (although the same higher-res technology can be found in recent iPhone and iPad models). Adding it to this 13.3-inch model doesn’t yield results that are quite as stunning, but even on this smaller scale, colors pop, images appear to have great depth, and text is much crisper than on any non-Retina laptop.

Apple says this screen has less glare than previous MacBook screens — the glossy top layer still seemed to reflect plenty of light from nearby sources. The Retina Pro sticks with a 16:10 aspect ratio (the much more common 16:9 aspect ratio is only found in the 11-inch MacBook Air). It won’t make a tremendous amount of difference, but there’s something to be said for matching the aspect ratio of HD television content, for letterbox-bar-free viewing.

Connections, performance, and battery life
The new MacBook Pro isn’t going to satisfy every potential customer’s connectivity needs. Ethernet, the optical drive, and FireWire are gone, but HDMI and a second Thunderbolt port (which also works as a DisplayPort out) have been added, just as on the 15-inch Retina Pro.

While Thunderbolt remains an underused connection, I did find it handy in the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro for hooking up multiple monitors easily, so having multiple ports of this type can be useful.