13" vs 15" which should I pick?

[nph]

I have a macbook Air 2013 which I will give to my son.
here is what I will be using my portable mac for:
- Office, lots of apps in parallel, Safari, Firefox office package.
- VM, Virtual box or other to run Windows 7 or 10 whenever my work place decide to upgrade to 10.
- Games, only Civ 6 and World of Warcraft. plus of course Civ 7 if it ever comes out.
- photo editing. Mostly using photos i would expect.
- video some 1080P and also some 4k but we are not talking feature movies etc but rather 5-10 minutes ones

What do you think? I am thinking about the 2015 base version but I also like the small size of the 13".
Suggestions?

Thanks

 

[913479]

I came from a 2013 MBA as well and updated to the 2016 MBP 15" originally, then returned it for the 2016 MBP 13", then return-swapped for a 2017 MBP 13". 13" is the perfect size for me and I would recommend it to you 100% but since you play a few games it might be worth it to check out the 15" with dGPU.

 

[Izzy1752]

I came from a 2013 MBA as well and updated to the 2016 MBP 15" originally, then returned it for the 2016 MBP 13", then return-swapped for a 2017 MBP 13". 13" is the perfect size for me and I would recommend it to you 100% but since you play a few games it might be worth it to check out the 15" with dGPU.

Have you noticed much of a difference in battery or performance from the 2016 to the 2017? I am still within my return window for my 2016 13" MPB but I just don't know if its worth it seeing as I use it a lot everyday.

 

[Fishrrman]

Is "size and portability" a big issue?
You have to decide how much it really matters to you.

The 15" -is- larger to tote around, no doubt about it.
But you may be willing to put up with that, given its extra power and larger display.

If a good portion of the MBPro's life is going to be "sitting on a desk", then you might consider the 13" model -and- a 4k standalone display. Even the 15" won't come close to that...

 

[maflynn]

VM, Virtual box or other to run Windows 7 or 10 whenever my work place decide to upgrade to 10.
- Games, only Civ 6 and World of Warcraft. plus of course Civ 7 if it ever comes out.
- photo editing. Mostly using photos i would expect.
- video some 1080P and also some 4k but we are not talking feature movies etc but rather 5-10 minutes ones

You'll really see the benefits of the the dGPU and quad core processors given your usage.I'd recommend the 15" MBP over the 13" given this list.

 

[913479]

Have you noticed much of a difference in battery or performance from the 2016 to the 2017? I am still within my return window for my 2016 13" MPB but I just don't know if its worth it seeing as I use it a lot everyday.

If you're within your return window, it's a no brainer to update to a newer 2017 model. The $100/$200 savings you might get from a 2016 isn't worth it in the long-run in my opinion.

To answer your question, performance and battery upgrades aren't dramatically noticeable. CPU/GPU has obviously been upgraded but its hard for a casual user to see. Battery seems to be more consistent but I've only had it for less than a week.

 

[Merackon]

As maflynn says, given your use case, I would definitely recommend the 15" model. When you start doing video and photo editing the extra processing power definitely helps, but especially when it comes to games the difference in performance between the dGPU and the iGPU of the 15" and 13" respectively really shows. I do a lot of Photoshop and 3D modelling, which stands in for games in my case, and I have had to upgrade from a 13" to a 15" because of the differences in performance and usability.

 

[nph]

I am guessing it will also last me longer which should compensate for the extra $300 given I upgrade memory only and not processor...