MBP 13" M1/8GB/256GB or MBP 13" i5/16GB/512GB BOTH 2020 MODELS

[FlushaDev]

I'm stuck choosing between 2 Macbook Pros, I'm a university student and will mostly be doing designing, photoshop, a bit of video editing here and there and live music.

Am I going to notice a difference between these two?

They are priced almost the same.

[Donut417]

12 minutes ago, FlushaDev said:

I'm stuck choosing between 2 Macbook Pros, I'm a university student and will mostly be doing designing, photoshop, a bit of video editing here and there and live music.

Am I going to notice a difference between these two?

They are priced almost the same.

Id be concerned with the 8 Gigs of ram on the M1. Especially since you might actually use memory doing the stuff you mentioned. I use my Mac as just a normal web browsing machine and I use 11 out of my 16 gigs consistently. The M1 model however will likely have better battery life. You also need to investigate if all your software works on M1, because I think a few vendors are still working on it. 

[FlushaDev]

11 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Id be concerned with the 8 Gigs of ram on the M1. Especially since you might actually use memory doing the stuff you mentioned. I use my Mac as just a normal web browsing machine and I use 11 out of my 16 gigs consistently. The M1 model however will likely have better battery life. You also need to investigate if all your software works on M1, because I think a few vendors are still working on it. 

Intel it is then?

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, FlushaDev said:

Intel it is then?

Its a hard call. Because who knows how support is going to be on Intel machines going forward. I dont use my Mac for professional work, which is why Im not concerned about it. But if you are going to be professional work then you might want to think about it. I dont know how MacOS works 100%, Windows 10 caches a lot of stuff in Ram, which would cause higher Ram usage stats. Not sure if MacOS does the same. 

 

Everything I have read about M1 suggests in many work loads is equal or better than Intel and it sips power. How much more is a version with more Ram? 

[FlushaDev]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

Its a hard call. Because who knows how support is going to be on Intel machines going forward. I dont use my Mac for professional work, which is why Im not concerned about it. But if you are going to be professional work then you might want to think about it. I dont know how MacOS works 100%, Windows 10 caches a lot of stuff in Ram, which would cause higher Ram usage stats. Not sure if MacOS does the same. 

 

Everything I have read about M1 suggests in many work loads is equal or better than Intel and it sips power. How much more is a version with more Ram? 

My old MBP from 2012 had 16Gigs and an 860 EVO before it brokedown, I'll probably go with the intel one

[KaitouX]

Personally if I went Apple for a Laptop, I wouldn't get anything with a Intel CPU, I would either go with the M1 or look into non-Apple options.

[LIGISTX]

31 minutes ago, FlushaDev said:

My old MBP from 2012 had 16Gigs and an 860 EVO before it brokedown, I'll probably go with the intel one

Don't get an intel chip, they are going to slowly stop support for them since M series chips are the future. You would basically be buying something you know will turn into a paper weight if you go Intel - also, the M1 model is a lot faster.

 

That said, 8 GB of RAM just is not enough. It would be very worth while to upgrade the M1 to 16 GB of RAM and plan to keep the laptop until it dies... If you go intel, it will stop getting updates and software will no longer be supported before it dies, and if you go 8 GB of RAM M1, well, it sorta already is a paper weight since that just isn't enough RAM to be useful.

 

Sorry to say, but IMO you have to jump up to 16 GB M1, all other choices just don't make any actual sense.

[FlushaDev]

On 11/21/2021 at 3:46 AM, KaitouX said:

Personally if I went Apple for a Laptop, I wouldn't get anything with a Intel CPU, I would either go with the M1 or look into non-Apple options.

 

On 11/21/2021 at 4:08 AM, LIGISTX said:

Don't get an intel chip, they are going to slowly stop support for them since M series chips are the future. You would basically be buying something you know will turn into a paper weight if you go Intel - also, the M1 model is a lot faster.

 

That said, 8 GB of RAM just is not enough. It would be very worth while to upgrade the M1 to 16 GB of RAM and plan to keep the laptop until it dies... If you go intel, it will stop getting updates and software will no longer be supported before it dies, and if you go 8 GB of RAM M1, well, it sorta already is a paper weight since that just isn't enough RAM to be useful.

 

Sorry to say, but IMO you have to jump up to 16 GB M1, all other choices just don't make any actual sense.

After a lot of consideration I'm going for the 14" M1 Pro

[Imbadatnames]

That price are they at? Why not the base 14”?

[Darkseth]

On 11/21/2021 at 2:26 AM, FlushaDev said:

Intel it is then?

As long all your applications run on M1, then M1 it is.

If you "need" any x86 stuff, like VMs or anything, the Intel model might be the better choice.

 

You rather want to deal with a "little bit tight Ram" than deal with Intel.

 

First of all, 8gb Unified Memory won't do magic and beat "regular" 16gb Ram everytime, but it's surprising how far you can go with 8gb on M1.

Second, it's crazy how much better the M1 is. You get literaly double the Batterylife, suddenly no more Fan noise and heat output, while still having much more performance.

 

 

Also: Consider the M1 Macbook Air with 256gb/16gb Ram over the M1 Macbook Pro Base model. Similar price, but 16gb Ram.

Performance is exactly the same. The Pro simply doesn't lose 15%~ max performance under 100% Full Load. But no Fan Noise.

 

M1 Macbook Air, when it throttles in Benchmarks is still much faster than the Intel Macbook Pro 13" and consumes less than half the Energy.

 

 

 

Even with the 8gb vs. 16gb Ram thing, i think: Going for Intel here is the wrong choice, unless you need an application, that does NOT Run at all on M1.

[LIGISTX]

On 11/24/2021 at 1:32 PM, Darkseth said:

M1 Macbook Air, when it throttles in Benchmarks is still much faster than the Intel Macbook Pro 13" and consumes less than half the Energy.

MBA really is the ticket IMO. I run the last Intel based one they made (got it over a year before M1, so can't feel bad about it...), and its a "lame" dual core i5 with 16 GB of RAM and its FANTASTIC. Definitely not a powerhouse of a machine, but I am typing this response on it now; its the machine I use most often and love it. Wish it had M1 battery life, although its still miles ahead of any other laptop I have used, and I wish it had faster CPU and RAM just for when I need to relaunch chrome and all my tabs need to reload - lol. 

[Action_Johnson]

Definitly go MBA with the M1 and 16GB of memory. It's the same computer, but with completely passive cooling. 

 

The M1 can handle more audio streams than the i5, your battery will last 6x longer, and the M1's for whatever reason, handle RAM allocation better than the intel ones. I have 3 MBP's, a 2015 i7 , 2019 i9, and a 2021 M1 Max, and the M1 Max completely HOUSES the 8-core i9 with the 560X in it.