For anyone considering a new MacBook purchase, all this new hardware makes choosing which one to buy even more difficult. Unfortunately, there's not one single perfect MacBook recommendation for everyone, and each model has its strengths and weaknesses. It comes down to a combination of budget, required features, and just how portable you need to be.

The new 12-inch MacBook this a design and engineering marvel, but is also missing features some might find irreplaceable, such as nearly all the common ports and connections, or a mainstream Core i5 processor. It's also expensive, and costs just as much as the much more powerful 13-inch MacBook Air.

Meanwhile, the 13-inch MacBook Air soldiers on, relatively unchanged year after year. It's a testament to just how far ahead of the curve this laptop was that it's only now started to look dated, as the best Windows laptops finally catch up.. It also continues to break battery life records, with the 2015 update adding a new fifth-generation Intel Core i5 processor for 18 hours of life in our video playback battery drain test, and 10 hours in a tough online streaming test. 

The Best Choice Is..

In the final analysis, it's clear that the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the most all-around useful laptop Apple makes. But, it's not the right choice for everyone.

The Pro is not nearly as portable as the other two models, even if it could still go along with you in a laptop case a couple of times per week without too much aggravation. Meanwhile, the 12-inch MacBook is the perfect portable laptop, and it's so thin and light, you'll hardly notice you're carrying it, but it forces many feature and performance compromises.

That means a lot of MacBook shoppers will still end up looking seriously at the 13-inch Air. While it's not the superstar it once was, it's hard to ignore at $999. Our key takeaways include:

• The 13-inch MacBook Pro has excellent battery life, a beautiful, higher-res screen, and plenty of ports and connections.
• The 12-inch MacBook isn't powerful enough for more than casual tasks and web surfing, and you'll be lucky if that battery lasts a full day.
• The 13-inch MacBook Air still works well enough for most any mainstream workload, and it has the best battery life of any laptop we've ever tested.