Alternatives to Apple Macbook Pro M5

EdF_uk

EdF_uk

EdF_uk

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Joined
16 Mar 2018
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16
Good evening everyone,

My wife currently has a 10 year old MacBook Pro which has held up well as it was top the range with all the addons at the time she bought it. However she can no longer upgrade photoshop or illustrator so we are looking for a replacement.

I've seen the MacBook Pro M5, 16GB RAM, 512 GB SSD
Macbook Pro M5

which is £1599.

I may be able to get this a bit cheaper in the US.

My wife is a graphic designer and although she doesn't use the laptop for day to day work every now and then she does use it. Adobe illustrator and Photoshop are her goto software and does have to process large files so a decent amount of RAM is a bonus.

My question is can anyone recommend a laptop that be better for the same price?

Many thanks,

Ed
 
Just get one of the M4 Mac airs. You get the 24gb ram, 512gb SSD 15" model for £1400-ish.

I'd take the air over the pro except if you REALLY need the extra ports.

I'm a software engineer and I'm running the M4 Mac air as my daily driver for everything, every day. Brilliant bit of kit. Windows alternatives are ****e.
 
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As an Apple user another Apple is probably the right choice.

I'll offer up the LG Gram as a left field choice if you fancy something properly portable and are able to swallow a shift to windows, nice big screens, full keyboard, lots of ports, supporting lots of screens, even the 17" can be lighter than a macbook air, battery can last as long too, though I will caveat that with normal desktop web/media use but when heavy processing that processor chugs it down hard, only goes up to 32Gb RAM though but they all have 2x 4 lane gen4 2280 SSD slots so no storage issues, you can have all the terabytes. Screens are a mixed bag the 2880x1880 OLED is probably the top choice but the Pro IPS 2560x1600 is not so bad, the non pro can be calibrated to be good but mot so much out of the box.

Lacks the same build quality as Apple, it manages to be so big and a few 100gs lighter for a reason but I have had a few and they are robust. They will be offloading the old stuff for new releases next year so can often be had with big discounts this time of year, so will be about £1k rising depending on spec, price does go up to a lot more if you pick one with a dedicated Nvidia GPU which would be recommended of you do any video work but dents battery obviously and adds weight, still <1.5kgs in 17" though which makes it easy to handle.
 
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Get the Macbook Air. They're just the best laptops on the market atm (unless you need the Pro, and given the power of the Air most people don't).
 
So what about the ASUS Pro Art P16, does anyone have any experience with this had any reviews? I was in Best Buy yesterday and had a look at it. Looks like a decent laptop.
 
No personal experience but have seen a few reviews and it looks lovely, reviews well in 5070 form but the latest 5090 one with Tandem OLED, it looks like peak laptop, the P13 I have had a good play with that was very nice, just a bit small for me.
 
EdF_uk said:
So what about the ASUS Pro Art P16, does anyone have any experience with this had any reviews? I was in Best Buy yesterday and had a look at it. Looks like a decent laptop.
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Asus does not have a good reputation for customer support on this forum.

I would be getting the new MacBook Pro, although I'd be speccing it with more RAM and a bigger SSD. It's a great laptop, you won't regret it.
 
That maybe the case it all comes down to experiences I guess but personally I have had good support from them on my old Zenbook when it was repaired, I mean I could say the repair was not the best, they fitted the wrong motherboard and I lost my 1050Ti :cry: but they got it right the second time. :cool: I also had the camera fail right as Covid started and we all started using video chat, no bother there either.

Think I paid £60 or something for the 5yr warranty, turned out money well spent, brilliant, build quality is good too, hinge etc still feels as strong as they day I bought it after 6yrs, though after a windows update I lost the screenpad, only ever used it as an FPS monitor and a numpad so haven't tried too hard to resolve, my daughter uses it now, I bought a laptop with an actual numpad.
 
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Well....at work she uses a windows machine for compatibility with printing machines. At home she has an Apple but day-to-day she uses the Windows machine. I've had a good look around and for the same money you can get a significantly superior (in terms of components) machine from what I can see. For example the Asus PX13 comes with 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and an RTX 4050 Graphics card. Would you believe it you don't even have to pay for a power cable :cry:.

But I have to say the build and feel of the Mac is very nice, but I guess really it's about what's under the hood.

Would you still go for an M4 or M5 Mac if it had 16GB of RAM, 512GB of Storage and no dedicated graphics?
 
It depends on what you are doing, the M4 and M5 is very strong indeed, a case can be made for a dedicated GPU if your work flow would use it or if you gamed or did video production but in many cases the Apple silicon would be better.

This is where you need to do the research into what she uses the machine for exactly and what the software is optimised for, superior is relative to the use case, for me windows PC + dedicated GPU is superior because I like to game and no mac is there yet.

The dedicated GPU could be absolutely pointless in those bits of software she uses, they could be optimised for Apple Silicon, if that is the case it doesn't matter how good it looks on paper or how much RAM etc. you need the right tool for the right job.

But if she is anything like my missus, she might not like the change generally, no matter if it is beneficial or not and sticking with the comfort of the familiar could be the safest option for your marriage :D
 
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EdF_uk said:
Well....at work she uses a windows machine for compatibility with printing machines. At home she has an Apple but day-to-day she uses the Windows machine. I've had a good look around and for the same money you can get a significantly superior (in terms of components) machine from what I can see. For example the Asus PX13 comes with 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and an RTX 4050 Graphics card. Would you believe it you don't even have to pay for a power cable :cry:.

But I have to say the build and feel of the Mac is very nice, but I guess really it's about what's under the hood.

Would you still go for an M4 or M5 Mac if it had 16GB of RAM, 512GB of Storage and no dedicated graphics?
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100% i would - honestly the Macbook will smoke that laptop in terms of general productivity, while being whisper silent, have insane battery life - the M chips are a completely different ball game for laptop use, and mac os is built to take advantage of them.
 
blairw said:
honestly the Macbook will smoke that laptop in terms of general productivity, while being whisper silent, have insane battery life - the M chips are a completely different ball game for laptop use, and mac os is built to take advantage of them.
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Would it though? I mean depends on her usage but as someone using the Adobe suite for graphics having the ability to flip it and around and use it with a pen may make this far more productive, again whether something is better one way or another is relative to your use case.

It's a strong machine that PX13 with a breadth of abilities. The sticking point for me would be the 2230 SSD but if you are considering Macs you are used to storage limitations.
 
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sandys said:
Would it though? I mean depends on her usage but as someone using the Adobe suite for graphics having the ability to flip it and around and use it with a pen may make this far more productive, again whether something is better one way or another is relative to your use case.

It's a strong machine that PX13 with a breadth of abilities. The sticking point for me would be the 2230 SSD but if you are considering Macs you are used to storage limitations.
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The windows / intel ultra series 2 laptops with Arrow Lake (H suffix) are closer in performance this year but compromise on battery life especially with a 3k or 4k screen. They also drop off performance quite sharply on battery.

The Lunar Lake (V suffix) are more considered in performance but notably more power efficient. However, again on battery have a fairly sharp performance drop off.

In normal productivity M365 use or cloud gaming (GeforceNow or GamePass Cloud) then no noticeable difference between the M4/5 or intel especially unplugged.

The moment you start creative production though then apple really does highlight the gap in their favour.

Having tried a few options this year to purchase my devices for the next 12-18 months, a lot of the you tube reviews, especially Andrew Marc David and Just Josh do seem to give legitimate analysis esp on battery life, noise and performance.

I need productivity performance and genuine all day battery but like a 3k screen and working at a decent brightness which is still a heavy battery drain over the 2k screens and low brightness levels used in the tests on intel / windows devices.

Apple do this element much better but I want windows so gone HP elitebook ultra with a 258v as main d2d. I have a MBP 16 M4 Max to use for any creative work but it's a heavy carry.
 
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Really the only x86 competitor to M5-based laptops is Strix Halo, which given current/predicted memory prices doesn't look nearly as expensive as it did earlier in the year (while stocks last obv).
 
The Strix Halo doesn't come in the best form factors or many good laptops yet, though the RoG Z13 might be useful to a digital artist as you can use it with a Pen perhaps being a tablet.

For the weight, size and price of the HP G1a Strix Halo laptop you'd be nudging into 5070Ti series laptops which would be superior to Strix Halo in many areas outside of LLMs.

Needs to hit more laptops and for me drop some CPU cores for battery life, 8/16 would be just fine, these chips are apparently coming if the AI parts consumption hasn't killed it dead.
 
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EdF_uk said:
Good evening everyone,

My wife currently has a 10 year old MacBook Pro which has held up well as it was top the range with all the addons at the time she bought it. However she can no longer upgrade photoshop or illustrator so we are looking for a replacement.

I've seen the MacBook Pro M5, 16GB RAM, 512 GB SSD
Macbook Pro M5

which is £1599.

I may be able to get this a bit cheaper in the US.

My wife is a graphic designer and although she doesn't use the laptop for day to day work every now and then she does use it. Adobe illustrator and Photoshop are her goto software and does have to process large files so a decent amount of RAM is a bonus.

My question is can anyone recommend a laptop that be better for the same price?

Many thanks,

Ed
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Not quite the question you are asking - but see if you can get the educational discount if you go for an Apple. If you have kids (16+) they will be eligable.
 
sandys said:
The Strix Halo doesn't come in the best form factors or many good laptops yet, though the RoG Z13 might be useful to a digital artist as you can use it with a Pen perhaps being a tablet.

For the weight, size and price of the HP G1a Strix Halo laptop you'd be nudging into 5070Ti series laptops which would be superior to Strix Halo in many areas outside of LLMs.

Needs to hit more laptops and for me drop some CPU cores for battery life, 8/16 would be just fine, these chips are apparently coming if the AI parts consumption hasn't killed it dead.
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The power consumption of Strix Halo is pretty similar to M4/M5. There is a 8 x Zen5 core version (AI Max 385) which has 32GB of RAM and that's been widely sold in mini PCs. There's also 12 core versions but I haven't seen anyone use those.

Anything which uses a discrete GPU can't compete with Strix Halo or Apple M4/M5 for battery life - you're using the entire power budget of both of those APUs on the discrete GPU. A Ryzen AI Max+ 395 board will max out at around 140W in "performance" mode which is less than the 5070Ti mobile uses on its own. Go to integrated graphics on the 5070Ti laptop to match the battery life/power budget and both the Apple and Strix Halo parts just blow it away.

Horses for courses and there's bugger all choice in laptops with Strix Halo which isn't helpful.
 
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