14" Pro - 12/18 (c/gpu) & 1tb worth the upgrade?

[plek]

Hi all, I'd really like your advice please! In the new year, I'll need a laptop mainly for doing UX and Graphic Design work, learning web development and maybe some 3D modelling (Blender).

Will be purchasing with an education discount (around 8% off Apple RRP), but can only choose from off-the-shelf models. Not a configurable/custom order.

• £1932 for the 11/14c, 18gb RAM, 512gb.
• £2298 for 12/18c, 18gb RAM, 1tb.

Is the extra £366 worth the upgrade to the M3 Pro model with 1tb of storage, and the extra CPU & GPU cores?
Or should I just stick to the standard M3 Pro?

 

[TheRealAlex]

That's exactly what I have. 12 Cores, and a full 1TB. Apple has a bad history with anything less than 1TB of storage and the 512GB option is slower than the 1TB version. Also in Blender you are gonna want those extra 4 Cores.

I would go for the Pro Max but In 2 years They will have OLED, Thunderbolt 5, and WiFi 7, so those are all must haves.

 

[bradman83]

I have a 14" M1 Pro 14" MBP with 16 GB of RAM and I use various design apps (especially Photoshop and Lightroom) regularly, and the machine absolutely tears through them. With the M3 Pro being even faster the added core won't make much of a difference.

With regards to storage, how much of your design/UX work do you want readily available on your laptop? I have 1TB and most of my storage is taken up by a massive raw library, but I could easily get by with 512 if I offloaded photos I haven't touched in ages to external/cloud storage. Do you think that would work for you? If you think your project files will be large and don't want to fuss with external or cloud storage then get the 1TB.

 

[plek]

I have a 14" M1 Pro 14" MBP with 16 GB of RAM and I use various design apps (especially Photoshop and Lightroom) regularly, and the machine absolutely tears through them. With the M3 Pro being even faster the added core won't make much of a difference.

With regards to storage, how much of your design/UX work do you want readily available on your laptop? I have 1TB and most of my storage is taken up by a massive raw library, but I could easily get by with 512 if I offloaded photos I haven't touched in ages to external/cloud storage. Do you think that would work for you? If you think your project files will be large and don't want to fuss with external or cloud storage then get the 1TB.

I'll be leaving my job after many years so I won't have a work laptop anymore (which is also the only machine I have currently!).
Ideally I'd like to have all my work in one place, but don't work with large photo files like you or video.

With the storage options, I guess I'm deciding between shorter-term work needs vs. futureproofing as a do-everything machine.