MacBook Pro 2018 vs Razer blade stealth 2019?

[Jakob Gopalan]

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro 2018 13 inch with a i5 and 16 gb of ram. I realised that I can get the Razer blade stealth i7 with mx150, should I return the MacBook Pro?

[LukeSavenije]

while you're at it... look at matebooks

 

really nice things for the price, and a lot better value than both

 

kinda look like the 2012's

[Jakob Gopalan]

Thanks!

[DrMacintosh]

Ask yourself if the reason you bought the MacBook is overruled by an MX150 and an i7. 

 

If you bought the Mac for portability and battery life, keep the Mac. If you bought the Mac thinking you were going to game on it...what were you thinking? 

[GoldenLag]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

If you bought the Mac for portability and battery life, keep the Mac.

or get one of the many ultrabook options for cheaper. 

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

or get one of the many ultrabook options for cheaper. 

I mean, I guess? If you like cheap junk that just gets the job done, sure. 

[GoldenLag]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

I mean, I guess? If you like cheap junk that just gets the job done, sure. 

depends on how cheap you wanna go. 

 

you can save quite a bit and get better batterylife, performance, or perhaps both. 

 

arent the Surface Laptop or LG Gram at the top in terms of batterylife?

[DrMacintosh]

9 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

arent the Surface Laptop or LG Gram at the top in terms of batterylife?

I don't know about being on the very top, but they are easily up there on that list. 

 

Also remember the tiers of Mac Apple offers now:

7W 2C/4T MacBook Air (all models)

15W 2C/4T MacBook Pro (non-TouchBar models)

28W 4C/4T MacBook Pro (all 13” TouchBar models)

 

The Air has the best battery life, the non-TouchBars are in the middle, and the TouchBars are the worst because they have higher wattage CPUs than other similar laptops. They also have Iris Graphics except for the Air. 

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

I don't know about being on the very top, but they are easily up there on that list. 

yeah, i think i remember Macbooks being in the "average" bunch in terms of top of the line laptops. 

 

2 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

The Air has the best battery life, the non-TouchBars are in the middle, and the TouchBars are the worst because they have higher wattage CPUs than other similar laptops. 

https://uk.pcmag.com/laptops/66003/the-best-battery-life-laptops

 

testing has been done, though it doesnt show how it does under load, where i would think the macbook air would fair well. 

 

suprisingly average. again, only 1 test, i couldnt be bothered finding more. 

[LukeSavenije]

34 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I mean, I guess? If you like cheap junk that just gets the job done, sure. 

so everything except apple is junk?

 

ah, you're that type

[genexis_x]

Do you really need macOS? Usage?

 

Razer laptops have bad QC, not recommended

[Lord Vile]

13 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

or get one of the many ultrabook options for cheaper. 

That don’t offer nearly the same level of security, no MacOS and you have to subscribe to office now which I really don’t agree with. 

 

Honestly I ended up buying a MacBook recently mainly because Microsoft is pissing me off atm. Obviously still using a desktop for gaming but that’s all I’m doing on it now, productivity will now be on my MacBook. 

[GoldenLag]

26 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

, no MacOS and you have to subscribe to office now which I really don’t agree with

You dont need office....

Also Linux is a thing and OS is highly subjektive.

27 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Honestly I ended up buying a MacBook recently mainly because Microsoft is pissing me off atm. Obviously still using a desktop for gaming but that’s all I’m doing on it now, productivity will now be on my MacBook. 

I mean sure, just know you most likely arent getting the best laptop, nor the best laptop for the money or the best performer for what you are looking for. 

 

the criteria clearly being performance. 

[Lord Vile]

13 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

You dont need office....

Also Linux is a thing and OS is highly subjektive.

I mean sure, just know you most likely arent getting the best laptop, nor the best laptop for the money or the best performer for what you are looking for. 

 

the criteria clearly being performance. 

If you want a good productivity suite on windows you do. And don’t say Google’s suite because it’s nowhere near as good and personally I avoid Google’s services like the plague and have stopped using everything that wouldn’t take too long to untether from.

 

Depends what you want. Raw performance is obviously a no cos I’m running a Y chip but it’s quiet and macs are amazing for productivity so if you measure performance in terms of work output then a Mac would outperform most windows laptops.  

 

Personally don’t have the time to mess around with Linux. 

 

With Macs you pay the premium for MacOS and the security it brings plus things like customer service and QC (along with a noticeable amount for the logo) but it’s more than you could say for a Razer Blare Stealth for example where the premium is literally just for the logo and poor build quality. 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Lord Vile

[GoldenLag]

8 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

If you want a good productivity suite on windows you do. And don’t say Google’s suite because it’s nowhere near as good and personally I avoid Google’s services like the plague and have stopped using everything that wouldn’t take too long to untether from.

the thing is. there are options. you dont have to use office suite. 

8 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Depends what you want. Raw performance is obviously a no cos I’m running a Y chip but it’s quiet and macs are amazing for productivity so if you measure performance in terms of work output then a Mac would outperform most windows laptops.  

*looks at rendering time. 

*looks at adobe suite

*looks at hardware

*looks at batterylife

*looks at the temps of chips

 

um what are you on about? work output is lower on a Mac (most). ad if you are reffering to personal effort put into the machine, what does that have to do with the laptop?

8 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

With Macs you pay the premium for MacOS and the security it brings plus things like customer service and QC (along with a noticeable amount for the logo) but it’s more than you could say for a Razer Blare Stealth for example where the premium is literally just for the logo and poor build quality. 

except the premium you pay for is MacOS. QC is like any premium company, pretty good. and Customer er service where the nice thing is that there are physical stores. 

 

Razer isnt great, not that anyone in this thread actually recommended a Razer. 

[Lord Vile]

1 hour ago, GoldenLag said:

the thing is. there are options. you dont have to use office suite. 

*looks at rendering time. 

*looks at adobe suite

*looks at hardware

*looks at batterylife

*looks at the temps of chips

 

um what are you on about? work output is lower on a Mac (most). ad if you are reffering to personal effort put into the machine, what does that have to do with the laptop?

except the premium you pay for is MacOS. QC is like any premium company, pretty good. and Customer er service where the nice thing is that there are physical stores. 

 

Razer isnt great, not that anyone in this thread actually recommended a Razer. 

What else would you use then? 

 

FCPX

 

battery life is actually pretty good.

 

more on about productivity as in getting shit done and not having to worry about bugs and shit you run into on windows all the time. 

 

Reference Razer again for QC

 

Pity that the title of the thread includes Razer then. Personally wouldn’t buy one for a W10 laptop i’d Probably go for the surface laptop 2. 

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

What else would you use then? 

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/free-alternatives-microsoft-office-365/

 

well im not allowed to tell people to google........ so i google for them i guess. 

 

2 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

more on about productivity as in getting shit done and not having to worry about bugs and shit you run into on windows all the time. 

providing you are not doing something extra peculiar. what bugs? Windows 10 is a rather competent OS. especially in laptops where bugs rarely appear. 

4 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Pity that the title of the thread includes Razer then. Personally wouldn’t buy one for a W10 laptop i’d Probably go for the surface laptop 2. 

it does include the Razer laptop. did you notice everyone wanting him to not buy a razer laptop. 

 

and instead one of the many other offerings like the Matebook X Pro. Surface Laptop doesnt fullfill what OP is looking for. he is clearly looking for performance and specs. something the Surface Laptop doesnt really offer. 

[Lord Vile]

13 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/free-alternatives-microsoft-office-365/

 

well im not allowed to tell people to google........ so i google for them i guess. 

 

providing you are not doing something extra peculiar. what bugs? Windows 10 is a rather competent OS. especially in laptops where bugs rarely appear. 

it does include the Razer laptop. did you notice everyone wanting him to not buy a razer laptop. 

 

and instead one of the many other offerings like the Matebook X Pro. Surface Laptop doesnt fullfill what OP is looking for. he is clearly looking for performance and specs. something the Surface Laptop doesnt really offer. 

So your options are Google’s suite which I have already said aren’t amazingly good, open 365 which is frustrating, zoho which I haven’t used so can’t comment and cut down versions of apples suite...

 

W10 is a bug ridden mess, when I was using it as a workhorse it constantly required restarts for even simple things like elements in the taskbar straight up not working such as the volume menu. 

 

The matebook X pro is made by Huawei so if you want everything to go to the CCP then crack on. Funnily enough I notice your skirting of the security advantage of the Mac. 

 

When has that been made apparent? The OP didn’t even give the work they’d be doing. On an ultrabook for example with video editing nothing will beat a MacBook using FCPX without a good dedicated GPU.

[megaderp19xx]

it might be me but the macbook only gives one real thing that makes it better and that is macos but only it you like the way it works. the razer is a no go in my eyes but there are a lot of other options. like a acer helios 300 or a asus rog strix both with i7 prosessors and 16 gb of ram, but if you dont want the gaming look something like a dell insperon 5000 or a lenovo x1 carbon (no gpu tho) are also a good way to go and in my eyes a better value then a macbook or a razer blade.

 

[GoldenLag]

4 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

The matebook X pro is made by Huawei so if you want everything to go to the CCP then crack on. Funnily enough I notice your skirting of the security advantage of the Mac. 

Tinfoil hat on?

It runs clean windows. If you dont like that, you can reinstall even cleaner windows. 

 

I mean t2 chip that removes ability to recover stuff i guess. And as long as you only use stuff from the Apple store. Though the same can be said regarding the windows store. 

 

Apple does however not share data, i will give em that one.

 

10 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

So your options are Google’s suite which I have already said aren’t amazingly good, open 365 which is frustrating, zoho which I haven’t used so can’t comment and cut down versions of apples suite...

You have options, and those were the free ones. You arent forced to use office suite. In fact, a lot of peopel dont even if its free.

 

1 hour ago, Lord Vile said:

When has that been made apparent? The OP didn’t even give the work they’d be doing. On an ultrabook for example with video editing nothing will beat a MacBook using FCPX without a good dedicated GPU.

He was looking to upgrade due to specs. Which is exactly the reason why movign away from a macbook isnt a bad idea. 

1 hour ago, Lord Vile said:

W10 is a bug ridden mess, when I was using it as a workhorse it constantly required restarts for even simple things like elements in the taskbar straight up not working such as the volume menu. 

Having to restarts for drivers and updates isnt great, but one doesnt restart for taskbar items. Perhaps certain installs that need their own drivers.

[Lord Vile]

9 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

Tinfoil hat on?

It runs clean windows. If you dont like that, you can reinstall even cleaner windows. 

 

I mean t2 chip that removes ability to recover stuff i guess. And as long as you only use stuff from the Apple store. Though the same can be said regarding the windows store. 

 

Apple does however not share data, i will give em that one.

 

You have options, and those were the free ones. You arent forced to use office suite. In fact, a lot of peopel dont even if its free.

 

He was looking to upgrade due to specs. Which is exactly the reason why movign away from a macbook isnt a bad idea. 

Having to restarts for drivers and updates isnt great, but one doesnt restart for taskbar items. Perhaps certain installs that need their own drivers.

And the BIOS? Anything they can put into the MB?

 

And also acts as a Secure Enclave and video encoder.

 

You haven’t really shown a good alternative though. 

 

Persoanlly I had to restart the PC on multiple occasions because basically all of the volume options were unresponsive. 

 

Not it really it’s maonkt due to the MX150 GPU on the thin and light which isn’t a great GPU anyway. If they wanted to game they wouldn’t have bought a Mac and macs have better performance in programmes like FCPX than W10 machines have in adobe premiere for example. 

[GoldenLag]

29 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

And the BIOS? Anything they can put into the MB?

then there are tools to monitor connections. something you would anyways be using if you are full tinfoil hat. 

 

nothing is safe from malware. if you are going tinfoil hat. use Temple OS

31 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Not it really it’s maonkt due to the MX150 GPU on the thin and light which isn’t a great GPU anyway. If they wanted to game they wouldn’t have bought a Mac and macs have better performance in programmes like FCPX than W10 machines have in adobe premiere for example. 

if you bought something for final Cut. then sure. though that isnt full adobe suite either. then there is allways the choice of dualbooting with hackintosh. 

 

and when you do that. most machine have better performance than Macs. 

 

i agree the mx150 is mostly a gimmick, but its certainly not useless. a free GPU and more or the same battery for the same price? yes please.

34 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

And also acts as a Secure Enclave and video encoder.

yeah it does act as a secure enclave, though that can be a pain for recovery reasons. then there is allways the option of hashing files you really, really, really dont want people to get their hands on. 

35 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

You haven’t really shown a good alternative though. 

no, there are very few laptops that carry something like the t2 chip. not that its very needed for laptops, as there are allready plenty of videoencoders on a laptop with a iGPU and a discrete GPU. and you can allways hash files. 

 

 

then there is the fact that Macbooks only really excel at 3 things. privacy, screen color accuracy and the trackpad. 

 

then there is allways the Matebook. a better Macbook. clone? i guess

[Lord Vile]

On 5/16/2019 at 9:05 PM, GoldenLag said:

then there are tools to monitor connections. something you would anyways be using if you are full tinfoil hat. 

 

nothing is safe from malware. if you are going tinfoil hat. use Temple OS

if you bought something for final Cut. then sure. though that isnt full adobe suite either. then there is allways the choice of dualbooting with hackintosh. 

 

and when you do that. most machine have better performance than Macs. 

 

i agree the mx150 is mostly a gimmick, but its certainly not useless. a free GPU and more or the same battery for the same price? yes please.

yeah it does act as a secure enclave, though that can be a pain for recovery reasons. then there is allways the option of hashing files you really, really, really dont want people to get their hands on. 

no, there are very few laptops that carry something like the t2 chip. not that its very needed for laptops, as there are allready plenty of videoencoders on a laptop with a iGPU and a discrete GPU. and you can allways hash files. 

 

 

then there is the fact that Macbooks only really excel at 3 things. privacy, screen color accuracy and the trackpad. 

 

then there is allways the Matebook. a better Macbook. clone? i guess

If you have the money and time to monitor. After you’ve already bought the hardware.

 

And you’re getting into the wonderful world of Hackintosh which is getting harder and harder and has its own issues. 

 

whats the point in a free GPU (that isn’t free it’s probably added another 50-100 on the price) if it effectively does nothing? 

 

It’s hardware level security, houses all of your passwords and Touch ID so you don’t need a seperate piece of software and allows faster video encoding than the MX150. 

 

And software and silence and speakers and the entire apple ecosystem if you’re into that. Personally I really like the keyboard, great for one handed typing and surprised me when typing normally. 

 

It only runs W10 and Linux if you’re that way out, doesn’t have access to the same software, you’ll need a mouse, has worse speakers and will sell you out to the Chinese government. 

[GoldenLag]

7 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

whats the point in a free GPU (that isn’t free it’s probably added another 50-100 on the price) if it effectively does nothing? 

Well then instead of saving 200$ om say a matebook. Lets save more like 300-400$ on a matebook. And it does stuff, its just that in a lot of workloads its not doing a whole lot. 

7 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

 

It’s hardware level security, houses all of your passwords and Touch ID so you don’t need a seperate piece of software and allows faster video encoding than the MX150

Except you most of the time use quicksync and CPU encoding in most software. 

 

Huawei also has a hardware level security chip for touch id. Though i guess its nice with something slightly deeper. 

 

7 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Personally I really like the keyboard, great for one handed typing and surprised me when typing normally. 

The old keyboard or the new one which is both unreliable, loud and has short travel? The old one was good, the issue is everyone has that good keyboards these days. 

7 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

And software and silence and speakers

Ill give em that their speakers are pretty good, though nolonger alone on that front either. 

7 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

the entire apple ecosystem if you’re into that.

If you want to dig into the ecosystem and the money required to do that sure. Only issue is that you end up locking yourself in which limits your options later on. 

7 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

It only runs W10 and Linux if you’re that way out, doesn’t have access to the same software, you’ll need a mouse

Actually at least on the matebook x pro you only need a USB dongle for wifi untill that is fixed. 

 

And for some reason i cant compress that on mobile.

8 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

has worse speakers

[GoldenLag]

8 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

has worse speakers

Actually has good speakers, not perfect, but good enough by far.

8 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

will sell you out to the Chinese government. 

tinfoil hat intensifies

8 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

you have the money and time to monitor. After you’ve already bought the hardware

If you are going to be tinfoil hat, then you are going to be tinfoil hat.

 

Also connection monitoring software have free alternatives.

 

 

And if you are going to be super tinfoil hat. Run TempleOS