Macbook Pro or XPS 15?

chrismscotland

chrismscotland

chrismscotland

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Folks, ok this is a laptop query but with a major photographic tilt.
I'm looking to replace an older Windows laptop however I don't really do any gaming now on it and my main use is photo editing.

I'm very attracted to a Macbook Pro, partly because the screen looks awesome and partly for the great performance and battery life, it also looks like the top spec Mac Pro 15" with the Nvidia Card would still run most of my Steam stuff (thats Mac Compatible).

The £2000 is a consideration but most of what I've read suggests its a great machine and I don't have any real "need" for Windows now.

However the 15" Dell XPS also looks great, much cheaper however the battery life looks pretty woeful.

I'm looking for a little advice from anyone who has had a look at both machines maybe, or really anyone who's bought a high end laptop for photography recently!
 
Both of them will likely be as good as each other. Just depends on which operating system you like best in reality. You'll be running Lightroom/Photoshop on either one almost certainly and they are practically identical on both systems.

I use a macbook air and have a desktop windows device and prefer File explorer on Windows and the way windows handles and views photos, but others will say different.

Also are you looking for something portable or a desktop replacement? If the latter battery life probably won't matter, if the former then it's probably a major consideration.
 
I got a MacBook Pro for the same reason last year, one of my better purchases, love it :)

The screen is perfect, the battery life is excellent, it's slim and has great build quality.
 
Went with the xps 15 last spring. (I could not justify the extra £800 for the equivalent fruit machine) Been great for working on photos whilst out & about. I got the i7 4702 quad core model with the full size battery and igzo screen. It's certainly been up to the task of handling all that I've thrown at it. Battery life is reasonable and can vary from roughly 2 hours when hammering it up to about 8 hours of very light use. The average for me is about 4-5 hours as my usage is moderate. Still it's better than my old 17" toshiba which could barely manage 1.5 hours of light use. The screen is great as expected, certainly adequate for my photo editing needs, though as yet I've not tried to calibrate it.

Game wise, the gt 750m is capable of running most games at reasonable settings, just don't expect to run at native resolution. Toughest I've tried is tomb raider which needed mostly low settings and 1366x768 to run at 60 fps. Borderlands runs nicely with moderate settings at 1600x900 and games like portal and half life run fine maxed out at 1920x1080.
 
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What about a surface pro? Previous surface pro 3 has an i7 processor , admiteddly not a quad core rather dual hyper threaded but still fairly nippy, comes with 8gb ram too. Screen is fairly tidy too as it has a good resolution!

Worth a consideration.
 
Own both, XPS 15 is my work laptop and the 15'' late 2013 MPBr.
Personally, I prefer the MPB. Whilst the XPS is a very nice laptop there are a few things that let's it down.

The trackpad is aweful. Omg I hate that damn thing
The high res screen is nice, but then you have Windows OS. For the scaling to work you need to log off/log back in again. Get's tiresome when switching between home and work. It just isn't as slick as OSX.

My work colleague has basically had a whole new XPS as the fan's kept failing and clicking, it was fixed for about 3 months and it started again. That's when they replaced the mobo etc.

Otherwise, it's fast, has goodish battery life and it's nicely built
 
Do you like a GUI or command line?

The file explorer 'Finder" on OSX is utter junk, in general if you use a mouse a click through windows to manage your files then wWindows is much beter, I also find it faster and more stable.

Hwoeve,r i'ma comamnd line person as it is just way faster and easier than any kind fo ex;orer and windows is dead to me really. I mostly work in linux but since there is no LR for linux (stupid Adobe) I tend to use OSX. The general GUI is terrible but that is fine because I work with a bash terminal and I'm golden.

The Imac hardware has a lot to be desired though. I'm constantly getting hardware issues. Right now the computer shutoff the screen every 20 minutes due to overheating unless I put the screen brightness right down. Will never buy an Imac again, you want the CPU and the monitor separated.

My experience with mac laptops is also pretty bad. The failure rate is really high compared to thinkpads.
 
XPS would get my vote, I'm forced to use a macbook retina at work and my hatred for it grows daily, particularly from a productivity angle. I can do just about everything faster and better in Windows which includes photo editing.
 
traveyb said:
Hardware aside, I think the main decision is going to be Windows or OSX.
Click to expand...

This ^^

Having said that I was all set to buy the 15" mbp last December without the dedicated graphics, and just couldn't justify the cost of getting the dedicated nvidia gpu when the XPS with the same card cost the same as the mbp without dedicated graphics - worth mentioning Dell had 2 seperate promotions on at the time which helped :)

If you look at the XPS, there is a 9 cell battery version that forces you to choose an SSD, but the battery life is excellent on it after this (I get about 7 hours easy)

I am definitely pleased with the XPS, it probably comes a very close 2nd to the mbp in a lot of areas, but the price jump was just too much for me to justify.
 
I'm wavering away from the 15" MBP actually, £2000 is a lot of money when you consider the GPU isn't even that good.... I've actually been half looking at a gaming laptop instead, trade battery life for raw power (and price!).
 
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