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Anyone upgraded their 2016 TB to the newer 2017 TB?

U

Uplift

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 1, 2011
465
187
UK
Has anyone upgraded their 2016 15" Touch Bar to the 2017 TB? Was it worth it?

I have an opportunity to upgrade at very little cost to me, other than time reinstalling, shifting old machine, etc...

Currently, I have the
2.6GHz Skylake
Radeon Pro 460
512GB SSD


The upgrade would be
2.9GHz Kaby Lake
Radeon Pro 560
512GB SSD



The obvious difference is the slight performance improvement in clock speed and Kaby Lake... I've read the SSDs are a little faster and the R 560 is just a rebranded 450 and offers little to no performance improvements.

Any improvement is nice, but is it worth the upgrade? I guess it will only be noticeable in benchmarks as 2016 is quite a capable machine.

My biggest issue with late 2016 is the battery life seems to suck. Is 2017 any better?
 
The only difference for battery life would be if you watch A LOT of 4k videos, as kaby lake chips are a lot more efficient at decoding it, so you might get a couple of extra hours of battery life.

For everything else, the difference would be minimal, at around 5% or so.

So to sum it up - most likely not worth it.
 
Pangalactic said:
The only difference for battery life would be if you watch A LOT of 4k videos, as kaby lake chips are a lot more efficient at decoding it, so you might get a couple of extra hours of battery life.

For everything else, the difference would be minimal, at around 5% or so.

So to sum it up - most likely not worth it.
Click to expand...

Thanks

I don't watch 4K much at all, in fact, I don't watch anything on my Macbook, I generally consume media on my iPad.

I do find the battery drains quickly if I have lots of powerful apps open when working... I'd be surprised if it gets anywhere near 10 hours even under normal conditions (basic web browsing, etc..)
 
How little cost to you would it be? I think that would be the likely key question - if it's $30 or something, perhaps it is, if $150 or more, maybe not?
 
Agree with bending above.
Unless the "upgrade" is going to cost you less than $100, not worth it...
 
If it's very little cost to you, I say do it.

You get +20% CPU performance, +50% SSD performance, and more efficient hevc/4k decoding. Seems like a no brainer.
 
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Those who have the 2017 models saw the biggest performance upgrade in recent memory.

The base nTB with the i5 and Kaby Lake is more powerful than the i7 cpu in the 2016 TB.

Heres a video from Apple Insider:

Idk where you draw the line, but if the difference is under $300 it's a no brainer. If it's over that, it's up to your discretion. Just my 2¢
 
There is no much different if u upgrading from 2016 to 2017.
If i were u i will save the money for 2018/2019 model.
 
abaloney said:
If it's very little cost to you, I say do it.

You get +20% CPU performance, +50% SSD performance, and more efficient hevc/4k decoding. Seems like a no brainer.
Click to expand...

It's more +10% CPU power (Effects top end use, not day to day), it's more efficient 10bit 4K, other 4K is the same, and there's no SSD increase; that was the rMB's not the MacBook Pros, they clearly said this during the event but some people remain confused.

Upgrade only because you feel upset that someone else has something newer than yourself, and you absolutely must have the newest things to feel complete.
 
New_Mac_Smell said:
Upgrade only because you feel upset that someone else has something newer than yourself, and you absolutely must have the newest things to feel complete.
Click to expand...

OP already said it's little cost to him if at all. Perhaps it's his employer that is providing the upgrade, so why not.

It sounds like YOU'RE the one who's upset that someone else may have something newer and shinier than you. I sense a bit of jealousy here.
 
abaloney said:
OP already said it's little cost to him if at all. Perhaps it's his employer that is providing the upgrade, so why not.

It sounds like YOU'RE the one who's upset that someone else may have something newer and shinier than you. I sense a bit of jealousy here.
Click to expand...

I think you're reading far too much into the OPs message. Statement was "Is it worth an upgrade", the answer is always "No, unless you're THAT person".

As to your second point, mmkay? Bit of an unnecessary attack there, but for what it's worth I'm completely happy with my computer and could not for the life of me be bothered to undergo a transfer. All that hassle for what, faster geek bench results? It's already a blazingly fast machine that I'm nowhere near to maxing out, so I'm very happy thank you for asking.
 
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If the cost is not significant which you indicate I would say go for it. You're not going to be blown away by the performance difference. You would probably recoup some of the costs when it came time to sell or trade primarily because of the model year difference. If you were to try to weight out the cost/benefits between the two machines I doubt you could justify the upgrade. This is more of a personal choice. I did the upgrade and I'm glad I did.
 
abaloney said:
If it's very little cost to you, I say do it.

You get +20% CPU performance, +50% SSD performance, and more efficient hevc/4k decoding. Seems like a no brainer.
Click to expand...

Where are you getting these numbers from, especially the SSD improvements?
 
vjobs said:
I did upgrade. Mainly because I had many troubles I had with the 2016 keyboard. However if your MacBook Pro is totally fine, I would keep it definitely.
Click to expand...

I did the same thing.

My 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard has failure issue (couldn't work properly).
Heard that 2017 MacBook Pro keyboard has improved a lot.

So I upgraded.
 
New_Mac_Smell said:
It's more +10% CPU power (Effects top end use, not day to day), it's more efficient 10bit 4K, other 4K is the same, and there's no SSD increase; that was the rMB's not the MacBook Pros, they clearly said this during the event but some people remain confused.

Upgrade only because you feel upset that someone else has something newer than yourself, and you absolutely must have the newest things to feel complete.
Click to expand...

The only reason I asked is that the original TB took a lot of criticism about its power, lack of Kaby Lake or w/e and compromises on battery life/performance just to make it thinner... It is often said that early adopters of new designs are essentially beta testers... The 2017 model come round much quicker than I thought it would, which leads me to believe all previous statements were correct and this new revision is Apple's fix/refinement.

I tried looking for comparisons and couldn't really find anything.

Thanks for the replies.
 
Uplift said:
The only reason I asked is that the original TB took a lot of criticism about its power, lack of Kaby Lake or w/e and compromises on battery life/performance just to make it thinner... It is often said that early adopters of new designs are essentially beta testers... The 2017 model come round much quicker than I thought it would, which leads me to believe all previous statements were correct and this new revision is Apple's fix/refinement.

I tried looking for comparisons and couldn't really find anything.

Thanks for the replies.
Click to expand...

Those criticisms would still be present on the 2017 (Kabylake chips suitable didn't exist when the 2016 came out so an odd criticism). Kabylake is slightly more powerful but you're looking at a couple of hundred Mhz, nothing ground breaking. The main benefit is hardware 10bit decoding instructions, making the device more efficient at working with 10bit in regards to power consumption. If it's a free upgrade and you can get someone else to mirror the machines for you then of course it's worthwhile. Otherwise the only real benefit is 10bit efficiency.

Either way it's a hassle for a tiny benefit, unless you're specifically a video editor working with 10bit. The 2017 was a nice iteration for those who skipped the 2016, but it came out 7 months after it. The tech isn't groundbreaking or amazingly better in such a short space of time. In reality you'd notice zero difference between the machines as most people barely touch 50% of the processing power of their machines, only pushing it in very limited capacities. For that reason boosting the top end by 5% yields no difference to the users experience.

So depending on your circumstance, you could spend even $100 and go through the hassle of transferring (Increasing potential that something goes wrong, you miss something, or it takes valuable working hours away from you). And boot into a new machine, and see no difference at all. That's the key when it comes to the "Is it worth it?" question here, and why I categorically stated "No".

In short, it's never 'worth' upgrading something so soon, as CPU technology only develops meaningful upgrades about every 2 years. And if your current machine is fast enough and not suffering any slowdowns, then you'd never notice the difference in minimal gains beyond time and money spent.
 
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