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Unfortunately I had the same experience and taste having recently moved from a refurbished 2012 15" to a refurbished 2018 15". It might be "faster" but it sure feels slower. Numerous things; it lags for 5 to 10 seconds whenever I try to even simply highlight an external HD or the trashcan, randomly disconnecting external HDs, random crashes when opening photoshop or premiere pro, etc. Problems I never had on my "old" machine. I only replaced it because I dropped it and bent a USB port pretty badly as well as cracked the screen. In hindsight, working on that was still a better experience.

II wish I wasn't on the fence about staying with Apple for my next computer, but here I am.

Exactly. My 16” loaded MBP is slowest fast computer I have ever used. Maybe it’s Catalina, but something is not right with the MBPs these days.
 
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