New 16" MacBook Pro - Running Slow

I feel the same way. I am coming from a Nuc Canyon i7 with 32gb of ram and 2 970 EVO's in a raid 0. My nuc feels so much more responsive then this Macbook Pro. It's a beautiful machine but seems sluggish at times. At near 3200 with apple care I feel like it should be a lot more responsive. I thought possibly it was the disk encryption so I turned off but didn't really notice a change. My 2015 Macbook Pro which I handed down to an employee seems to run neck and neck with it. It's snappy but things like lightroom seem slow and uncompressing files wasn't very impressive.

Installed large update today and we did at the same time on the 2015 macbook pro and my new i9 took 45 minutes longer to install.

Within the return policy only had a couple days so hope to see some feedback here so I can make a good decision. Don't mind spending the money but want top performance.

I have the same issue!!! i just APPLE MAIL IS SOOOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOW !!!

#1 all the same emails are on my iphone and ipad pro 2 years old 9.7" work completly fine and fast with no issues.

#1 opening the apple mail app is sluggish

#2 once opened , typing this compaint form out has been the fastest typing that ive ever done this whole thing im typing here took me 2 minutes - equivalent email 5 minutues with dragging letters as you type.. they just stop so you dont know if your typing anything. ( annoying )

#3 - i purchased the 15" mac book pro two months ago, had 16 Ram and 500 gb spent 2899 on it..

returned it as i thought it waas the computer. called apple care about 20 gazillion times for 3 months

#4 they told me it was my RAM that i was running to many other porgrams on my computer.. i was like.. this is a 3000 dollar computer it should fly me to work and back for this MUCH MONEY !!

#5 i then based on the data that i gathered from the returned the 2 month old Macbook pro 15" 2899 computer and just purchased a

#6 fully custom built - fully loaded 64 g of ram, 1TB all the graphics crap cards you can get.. loaded this thing up with every fricking fast feature you can get for you money on the apple store.

3500.00 and extra 1500 more..

#7 guess what, here i am writing to confirm.. It has nothing to do with the computer..

64g ram memory

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 mb

2.4 GHZ 8 core intel core I9

etc.

HELP !!!!!! ME PLEASE !!!

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I'm experiencing the same slowness. Even with no programs open, the transition between screens is not natural (not always). The scroll in a simple webpage is not natural, it is not continuous. Even the mouse getting moved on the screen, sometimes there is lag in the pointer. Checked always Activity Monitor and no issues neither with the RAM (even with everything I could open, I had 3GB free) nor with the CPU (far from 100%).

I'd to share the report generated using Etrecheck (all permissions granted) but I can't, I don't know hoy. Only images can be attached (and links, but I don't have a link to the report, it is on my Desktop iCloud and locally saved).

It was like this out of the box. Resizing windows drags. Load times seem way slower than my previous Macbook Pro 15 from 2015. What is strange is the BlackMagic speed test shows the drive performance near double my 2015 model.

Opening software takes several seconds which on old mac were instant.

There has to be something major here with Catalina. I know I should hold out for the next update but am concerned that my return date is coming quickly. It's pretty unacceptable for a computer of this expense.

Note - installed bootcamp and none of these issues are present in Windows 10. This confirmed to be that it must be the OS. Windows 10 side everything is instant.

I restarted the compute in Safe Mode and it was awful. First of all, I checked if I did right and I did. Then, I tried to open Google Chrome but it took at least 20 seconds. After that, the computer fan started running a lot, like if the CPU computer was at 100% of the capacity (I couldn't check because Activity Monitor was disabled). Apart from that, I couldn't even write this post. I tried but I simply couldn't, not even with Safari. When I tried to login on the browser (both Chrome and Safari) it got blocked. It is not a password issue, I doubled checked the password because I copied and pasted (which was difficult as well because it took almost 30 seconds to open the text editor and no comments about copying and pasting ...). It got blocked because it got blocked, I could see the coloring circle which appears when an app doesn't work properly.

I don't like at all this behavior. What's happening??? Really bad experience with Safe Mode.

I'm thinking of returning the computer.

I have just bought the MBP 16" 32GB I9 8 core 2,3GHZ in order to upgrade from the 2,8GHZ MBP 2015 MID model.

I basically restored a backup from the MBP2015 to this computer and one of the things I find strange is that my Google Chrome browser seems sluggish... It is mostly pronounced when changing between tabs.... Sometimes it seems like forever changing tabs

The installation is a pretty fresh Catalina install with all upgrades.

And offcourse the sound popping is anoying...

Looking forward to a fix on the popping sound and hopefully the slugginesh...

BR Flemming Dahlhof

[Personal Information Edited by Moderator]

I tried installing a brand new Catalina install but gave same slugginesh result in Google Chrome Browser....

And now as a developer i use Visual Studio Code all the time and unfortunately scrolling up/down inside the code view often is not responsive and stutters for maybe half or a whole second....

You can replicate this by opening a large javascript code file inside VS Code, maybe scroll down to the middle of the contents, wait for some seconds, then try scrolling up or down using the touchpad.... Maybe repeat this several times

This gives me some nasty delays until the code starts scrolling - like something is holding the cpu...

This is pretty annoying...

BR Flemming Dahlhof Jensen

I just love that I have a fresh computer (MBP16) with a fresh install of Catalina. I use and it's slow and painful compared to my last Mac (which was 7 years old). Call support and they want me to spend hours and hours trying to sort it out for them. WTF. Not my job. I spent $2800 on this machine. My work is my computer so this hurts.

Well ... Just so you all know from my original posting. I have solved my issue.

DO NOT USE APPLE MAIL ...... I completely disregarded using it entirely and problem resolved.

Countless hours of headaches gone.

I have now been using Microsoft 365 Outlook... on Mac.. and works like a charm.. I am wondering if I should even post this as they may now put a bug in my Mac..

Big Mac fan.. but not with issues like this !! FIX IT and ill go back. seriously ! APPLE Mail needs serious fixing !!

Just want to say that same issue for me! Macbook Pro 16" noticeably worse than my 5 yr old Macbook Pro, despite using migration assistant so all the same settings/software/etc. Only difference then is my hardware (i.e. the new computer) and the new OS (was using High Sierra on my old MBP).

Sluggishness is most noticeable with Chrome (although it's variable) and loading the computer after restart.

Hoping someone else has figured out a solution! I don't use Apple Mail, so that's not the issue.

I spoke with tech support and they had me wipe my month old MBP16 hard drive and do a fresh install. It's been a couple of weeks since then and it is working better. But the finder is still not as responsive as my old MBP15 mid-2012 with Sierra. I think it's just a bad OS. Can't downgrade to Mojave and not going to sell it. Just going to wait and see if it gets better with OS updates. Suffer along and keep an eye on things. It doesn't feel like a hardware issue but at least I have a one year warranty if it turns out to be. Mail is working fine BTY.

Glad you mail is working. I have about 12 email accounts and run a business. I don't have time for Dragging typing and seconds of delays.

Ive been using outlook so far and it has fixed my issue. Now I am wishing I got 2Tb instead of the 1 TB..

But still im not that impressed.. with this fully decked out 4k machine. seriously mail should not slow it down.

they need to do something about it for sure. I have not even attempted to open it again after 3-4 months of complete aggravation.

By the way tech support... was the one to convince me that I needed a bigger machine that would fix my issues... that i had to many applications open.. .. it was mail and they don't wanted to recognize the issues.

My brand new 16" base model, same as yours, is 15-20% slower in FCPX and Compressor (h264) than my old 2.8GHz 2015 Macbook Pro...spent several hours on the phone with Apple Care demonstrating the issue while thye take diagnostics. They were able to pull up remote screens on my 16" and old 2015 at the same time and run side by side encoding exports to see the problem. Got to a point where they said I should take it into an Apple store to have them run a hardware diagnostic on it, because there are some things that can't be uncovered remotely or just with logs. Other than slow h264 exports, the 16" is much snappier and happy, even with Chrome.

On my third hour long phone call with Apple Support, so many tests, so many logs, so many archives to send, so many extra engineers have heard of the issue and have jumped in to work this. Currently they have me creating a new partition for a new second MacOS install that they can sandbox for FCPX library testing of some files, then I have to run the same tests and log on diagnostics mode on my old Mac...shouldn't take more than a couple of hours 😳

New glitch found...my 16 inch Mac cannot transcode 4K to HEVC...it has some sort of memory leak or something that freezes repeatedly saying 135GB of memory used and out of memory. old 2015 breezes through that test with 5GB RAM usage...so yeah...lemonaid. :(

Paul