Mid 2012 13" pro vs mid 2012 15" pro

If you do not mind the weight, the 15 is considerably better. If you do mind the weight, the air is powerful enough to replace the 13 pro. Overall, the 15 is the best notebook Apple provides if you don't care about portability.

Personally, I can't stand a 13 in screen running most things. I think most people have the 13 in because they can get it fairly cheap and they think "pro" = powerful.

My 13" is fine, and frankly, I got it because of cost over the 15". However, 15" is normally better--the bigger screen is nice. Both computers are good, though.

Dual core vs. Quad core. 4 Threads vs. 8. Intel HD 4000 at 512MB or 1024MB Nvidia GT 650m. BIG BIG differences. The screen size is the last to consider.

We (the wife and I) own one of each of the 2011 models.

She uses the 13" because its more portable and its plenty powerful enough to do everything that she needs, which amounts to web surfing, word processing, light spreadsheet tasks, playing music and videos, light photo and video editing, and general family business management. The MBA would have been plenty powerful enough for her too, and more portable, but she needed a big hard drive and wanted to have everything on board.

Even though I actually port the 15" much more than she does the 13", I was willing to sacrifice the portability (and add half a pound of weight over my old Macbook 13") to get more screen real estate and more power to run decently large financial models in a VM and game a bit. To claw back some of the portability I'll upgrade to the rMBP-15 as soon as it gets 802.11ac and reasonable flash storage pricing for 320GB or 512GB, which is all I'll need.

The rMBP-13 makes no sense for either of us (nor anyone else IMHO) as currently configured.

Personally I believe the 13" is more than powerful enough for the average users needs and I could not justify the price increase for the 15" but then again I do not need a discrete GPU or quad core power. The most intensive program I use is Logic.

As far as screen size goes I would just buy an external screen for my 13".

I think the 13" MBP is the most perfect form factor ever - just the right admixture of size and weight and performance. That said, I have a 15" MBP for the reasons derbothaus listed, although I could live happily with a 13" MBP and an external display.

rmcguinness9894 said:

Why would you buy an external screen and spend that extra money when you could just spend that extra few hundred dollars getting a screen that's 2 inches bigger along with a huge improvement in specs and performance? That doesn't make any sense to me.

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When they make a 27 inch laptop then your comment makes sense. However I would have to find a new carrying bag.

rmcguinness9894 said:

Where do you guys stand on this, mostly pertaining to college students? I'm a freshman in college and i have a 15" pro which I purchased over the summer when the update came out along with the 15" retina model. I'm just curious as to what people think because i've noticed that almost every student has a 13" pro while few have a 15".

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You have to remember that the 15" is $600 more. Most have the 13" not for portability but because it is the cheapest "pro" they can get. Personally I find the 15" is large but it isn't heavy at all so if you can afford it I don't see why you wouldn't go for the 15"

Each model has its own uses, the 13 is for web browsing, email and simple stuff.
The 15' is more for graphic apps, multimedia. I had a late 11 13' stock and it could barely handle flash videos on youtube or netflix.

fleawannabe said:

Personally I believe the 13" is more than powerful enough for the average users needs and I could not justify the price increase for the 15" but then again I do not need a discrete GPU or quad core power. The most intensive program I use is Logic.

As far as screen size goes I would just buy an external screen for my 13".

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That only makes sense if you need a notebook for portability reasons and a portion of what you do requires something larger than 15". You can't buy a 24" or 27" notebook. The 15" isn't even heavy or difficult to transport. I guess you could save some money that way, but a nice external display still costs a few hundred, and it still requires dedicated space. These are things that must be considered prior to purchase.

rmcguinness9894 said:

Why would you buy an external screen and spend that extra money when you could just spend that extra few hundred dollars getting a screen that's 2 inches bigger along with a huge improvement in specs and performance? That doesn't make any sense to me.

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To upgrade to the 15" is 600 dollars more and I would not benefit from the upgraded specs. I do not need that much power. Yes the screen size is nice but for a little over 200 dollars I was able to buy a 24" monitor that works great for me and still have better portability than the 15". So I still have a fast machine that does everything I need and I also have a 24" monitor and saved almost 400 dollars. How does that not make any sense to you?

Binomio said:

Each model has its own uses, the 13 is for web browsing, email and simple stuff.
The 15' is more for graphic apps, multimedia. I had a late 11 13' stock and it could barely handle flash videos on youtube or netflix.

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Then you had a defective one. Ours does fine with both.

rmcguinness9894 said:

Because you spent the extra money for a display for a computer that isn't even powerful. And, if you got a 24" display for $200 then you got yourself a pretty crappy display. Not to mention that when i started the thread, I said that this was supposed to be containing to a person in college using it. I don't know many people in college that have external displays for their laptops just sitting in their dorm room do you?

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I do.

I would go for the 15" more space on the screen to see more and do more!

I had the 13' i7 2.9 Ghz. and sold it and got the 15" i7 2.7 Ghz.
Both computers are great. The 13" It's still capable of delivering a very good performance I upgrade it myself with a SSD and 16 GB. of RAM. And it's versatile and up to the task for everyday use.

I now have the 15" with 1 Tb SSD Raid 0 and 16 Gb of RAM and all I can say is that on heavy tasks such as video editing and serious graphic design the quad-core CPU + dedicated GPU really make a difference.

If money's not an issue I would definitely get the 15.

If money is an issue but storage is not then I would get the 13 air over the 13 pro (check the refurb). They are basically the same but the 13 air is lighter and I suspect faster for day to day use thanks to the SSD. (Lion with no SSD is no walk in the park in my experience.)

If both money and storage are issues then get the 13 pro.