New MBP 13"

silvagti · 9 May 2020 at 15:56

martink said:
Yeah, getting the 1800 quid one; it ticks all the boxes for me. I was dangerously close to getting an Air though.

Me too. I think a lot of folk are having a hard time deciding between the 13" Air and the 13" Pro.

For anyone trying to decide whether to get the base spec 8th generation or top spec 10th generation this guy has a good video comparing them :-

There's actually a surprising number of differences between them even beyond just the CPU.

martink · 9 May 2020 at 19:52

Not seen that one, very useful thanks.

The_One · 9 May 2020 at 21:05

that's a great video. 10th gen for me

martink · 9 May 2020 at 21:14

Speakers sound quite different and the extra fan provides a certain amount of comfort

Hades · 11 May 2020 at 16:47

Useful video, thanks.

silvagti · 12 May 2020 at 22:19

MacRS4 said:
I've an i5 and an i7 13" 2020 turning up on the 12th

Did your 2020 13" MacBook Pro's arrive?

MacRS4 · 12 May 2020 at 22:43

yup - review up in a couple of hours

MacRS4 · 12 May 2020 at 22:44

It exports video fast than my iMac Pro.

silvagti · 12 May 2020 at 22:51

MacRS4 said:
yup - review up in a couple of hours

Cool, keen to hear how it goes and what you think. Was going to order one (10th Gen i5 2.0Ghz / 16Gb / 1Tb SSD) today actually but thought I'd wait to hear what your thoughts were!

I notice there's a two week lead time according to the Apple website. I'm assuming that's a "waiting for UK stock" lead time rather than a regular "ordering" lead time?

How'd you manage to get your hands on one so quickly!

GMac11 · 12 May 2020 at 23:13

Been going to and fro in my head with what to do. I currently have a 2017 13" however it's the base model (dual core, 128gb, 8gb ram etc) and it's beginning to show it's limitations slightly when it comes to photo editing.
I'm going to say it but I actually quite like the butterfly keyboard. Mine has the first gen (the really clicky keys) but it hasn't missed a beat in 3 years of ownership. My brother had 2018 with second gen keyboard and had 2 replacements.
Anyhow, I was thinking of buying the 2020 base model but upgrading to 16 RAM - that combined with the (albeit 8th gen) CPU should be a marked improvement shouldn't it? I should also say I can get it on the student programme so it would cost £1258 for that configuration.
Then the devil on my shoulder tells me just buy a 16 from the refurb store! I'm in two minds, well three really as I could also just stick with what I have.

MacRS4 · 12 May 2020 at 23:43

Well, this unit handles my 120MB RAW files from my A7R 4 just fine. Bit gobsmacked tbh. Seriously questioning whether I should cancel *my* i7 that's due - this one isn't for me.

manic111 · 13 May 2020 at 09:32

MacRS4 said:
yup - review up in a couple of hours

What was your YouTube channel again? I know you've posted it previously but I've had a flick through this thread and the MBA one and couldn't find it - thanks!

MacRS4 · 13 May 2020 at 09:53

Here you go.

I now want this instead of my XPS. Dammit.

manic111 · 13 May 2020 at 09:56

MacRS4 said:
Here you go.

I now want this instead of my XPS. Dammit.

Thanks! Haha I think that's what my choice has boiled down to, unless the new Zephyrus G14 actually releases soon and reviews really well, in which case I'll probably save myself £500 and go with that.

My biggest concern on the MBP is that it lacks WiFi 6, and I tend to keep my laptops for 5 years plus...

MacRS4 · 13 May 2020 at 09:59

It's weird how they must have turned that off isn't it? With the 10th gen I mean?

manic111 · 13 May 2020 at 10:20

MacRS4 said:
It's weird how they must have turned that off isn't it? With the 10th gen I mean?

Yeah very, that (and the price tag, but I'm learning to deal with that!) are the last things putting me off. I'm half considering getting the £1299 model, keeping it for 2-3 years and then upgrading again

silvagti · 13 May 2020 at 10:45

MacRS4 said:
It's weird how they must have turned WIFI6 off isn't it? With the 10th gen I mean?

That's the one omission on this laptop that really puzzles me as every other laptop with the same Intel 10th gen chipset supports WiFi6? Do Apple not have driver/firmware support for it in MacOS yet? Is it something they could enable in future or is the WiFi card and/or antennae hardware in the Macbook not capable enough to meet the Wifi6 standard? It was something the Macbook 16" lacked which struck me as odd but I'd put it down to the older chipset in that model not supporting it natively. As far as I can see they have no excuse for missing it out on the 10th gen 13" Pro though.

I get at the moment most people, like myself, still don't have WiFi6 routers and most folks home broadband won't be quick enough to benefit noticeably from it anyway. Still annoying not having it though when basically every other laptop released this year does and I know it's something I'll likely migrate to over the lifespan of the laptop.

Loved the video by the way. Very comprehensive, informative and slickly produced! :cool:

manic111 said:
Thanks! Haha I think that's what my choice has boiled down to, unless the new Zephyrus G14 actually releases soon and reviews really well, in which case I'll probably save myself £500 and go with that.

The G14 did look very tempting but it's not quite on par in a lot of areas which I considered pretty important even if you're happy to switch between MacOS/Windows. The screen isn't as good, the trackpad won't be on a par with Apple's, slightly larger/heavier, slightly slower single core performance, no thunderbolt support, poorer battery life and it lacks a webcam completely which is annoying given how dependent everyone is on video calls just now!

However, if you're doing a lot of video editing, rendering, multi-core workloads, gaming or GPU accelerated tasks then with it having twice as many CPU cores and an RTX 2060 on board it's going to be orders of magnitude quicker than the MBP13 for those tasks. I can see why it would appeal to a lot of folk!

I considered the Dell XPS but, whilst the specs look good (OLED display, WiFI6, cheaper SSD/RAM upgrades) and are better than the Mac for the money, I've had issues in the past with Dell hardware failing after 4-5 years of ownership so it's put me off the brand honestly.

MacRS4 · 13 May 2020 at 11:12

Thanks. I was a bit surprised at the response to my y/t channel tbh, so started to put some actual effort into editing stuff.

The 13" 9300 XPS is a nice machine, but it's nowhere near the capability of this MBP. It's interesting the marketing on the i3/i5 and i7, I suspect a lot of people find them a bit misleading as obviously the TDP makes a TON of difference to the real-world performance. It's an i7/16Gb unit...and yet in reality it's replaced my 12" Macbook as a travel machine.

It's like comparing my iMac Pro to the 13" for example. I can export stuff on the 13" in FCPX faster than my iMac Pro (XEON processors & extension issues I'm guessing), but the difference is on the 'pro I can just minimise the window can carry on with everything else until its done. It's not so much single task faster, more wider - I can do a LOT more things with it before it starts to slow down.

It's the same on the 16" with its 45W (I think) i9.

Sometimes people are just comparing i5 vs i5 without considering WHICH i5 they're comparing.

manic111 · 13 May 2020 at 12:22

silvagti said:
The G14 did look very tempting but it's not quite on par in a lot of areas which I considered pretty important even if you're happy to switch between MacOS/Windows. The screen isn't as good, the trackpad won't be on a par with Apple's, slightly larger/heavier, slightly slower single core performance, no thunderbolt support, poorer battery life and it lacks a webcam completely which is annoying given how dependent everyone is on video calls just now!

However, if you're doing a lot of video editing, rendering, multi-core workloads, gaming or GPU accelerated tasks then with it having twice as many CPU cores and an RTX 2060 on board it's going to be orders of magnitude quicker than the MBP13 for those tasks. I can see why it would appeal to a lot of folk!

I considered the Dell XPS but, whilst the specs look good (OLED display, WiFI6, cheaper SSD/RAM upgrades) and are better than the Mac for the money, I've had issues in the past with Dell hardware failing after 4-5 years of ownership so it's put me off the brand honestly.

I completely agree with all of those points, but then the £1200 Zephyrus is as much power as I need, so it's a question of whether £600 is worth those things. The biggest pain for me will be Windows and the trackpad, which have always been the reasons I keep coming back to Macs. I think I'm going to wait until the Zephyrus is in the wild and see what people say before taking the plunge either way.

Realistically, the £1299 MBP probably ticks the most boxes for me but it just sticks in the throat spending that much on a laptop with an outdated processor, plus I'd probably want to upgrade the storage.

b0rn2sk8 · 13 May 2020 at 13:52

Apple uses Broadcom WiFi/Bluetooth models in its laptops and not Intel which is why it doesn’t have WiFi 6.

Unless there is something specific they are doing in their implementation then I assume it’s penny pinching because intel networking modules are normally very good.