A useful and interesting discussion, thanks everyone!
My reply is not directly responsive to your question, but here it is:
Just use your laptop and enjoy it.
Don't worry about everything. Don't spend the mental energy trying to pre-fix issues that may arise. Don't read posts on misery boards like MacRumors. Don't believe that you can *significantly* improve battery life by dancing under the full moon, or eating your vegetables, or charging using only electrons from wind energy. Don't put the computer and it's needs above you and your needs.
Free yourself.
Honestly, fair enough. Thinking things through thoroughly is my greatest strength but it's also sometimes my greatest weakness. Sometimes I just need to hear that! And usually I'll ignore it at first but then realise a week or two later that yeah, it's just a waste of energy.
Sorry I'm a bit unsure what you mean - did you paste the wrong link by mistake?
They don’t do anything, the case isn’t the heat sink for the device
That doesn't quite tally with the way the metal cases of Macbooks get hot under heavy load - I'm pretty certain that this is an integral part of the cooling mechanism and it's fairly self-evident that the case is effectively a massive heatsink complementing the internal heatsink and fans. If it's not then I'd like to understand the physics of why you think that.
If you want to game, consider a gaming laptop. There are various companies that produce lightweight units with good gaming performance.
I did consider one - but, all things considered, for a similar spec the price is similar and they're generally bigger and heavier. I also want a machine for work and for Lightroom etc. And having moved over to MacOS in 2014 and having an all Apple household for phones and tablets I really, really don't want to go back to Windows for anything other than games not supported by MacOS.
That’s the point really, the cooling in MBP16 is sufficient in most cases and slight lift will do the job to ensure proper airflow.
Key words there are "sufficient" and "in most cases". I'm not particularly fussed about the chips getting hot, I think people worry too much about that. I'm more fussed about keeping that heat away from the very expensive internal battery.
A lot of responses in this thread don't stem from experience at all, it seems.
If you are using a 16" for gaming, you'll want to perform the VRM thermal pad mod (just look it up), which does help quite a bit.
And once you have done that, the casing does act like a massive heat sink, so a cooling pad does work.
Anyone who says the 16" cooling is sufficient has not pushed it that far. The CPU is at least able to sustain stock clock speed when it's the only thing being stressed, but if you introduce load to the dGPU (such as gaming), it's a different matter entirely. The dGPU throttles very aggressively under high temps, so performance reduction is very significant when gaming. Especially if you have the 5500M model. I've heard the 5300M is a bit more stable, even though neither is truly good at keeping up over a long period of time. If you're getting the 5600M, that one seems to do better because its memory clocks don't have to run at higher frequencies.
If only eGPU was an option, but Microsoft botched eGPU for Bootcamp.
Bottom line, I'd say the 16" is "adequate" at gaming. It's not amazing. At worst, it matches or slightly exceeds the performance of an Xbox One S, and maybe the 5600M gets close to an Xbox One X. Thermal improvements help, but that's mostly to keep things stable.
Ah, I hadn't realised eGPU doesn't work with Bootcamp - as that was my plan if the dGPU isn't adequate. I was going to go for the 5600M but it's an eye-wateringly expensive upgrade, in theory £700 but more like £1000 because it's not available from Amazon in the UK so I'd have to order from Apple. I can get a very, very good eGPU for that price. I guess at least a lot of games these days run on MacOS, particularly strategy (I'm mostly into Civ 6 at the moment with a bit of Total War on the side).
Have you measured temps with and without an active cooling pad?
I’ve measured temps with a cooling pad and there’s zero difference.
Thanks, that's useful to know. It's odd how most of the reviews out there don't do this. One ridiculous Youtube review just measured rendering times, which is anyway a stupid test - but, mind-blowingly, the woman also thought the aluminium pad getting warm on one of the coolers was a *bad* thing.
I'm probably just going to get this, it's much more convenient for travel than other options and if nothing else it'd stop me hunching over the laptop and save my back when sat at hotel desks for a few hours in the evening.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08CVZVXKX/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A33CHG0SPYT21U&psc=1
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