Change my late 2013 Air for a late 2012 pro?

[Koalified]

Hi everyone!

It's been almost 2 years since I've bought my macbook air 13" late 2013 (i5 haswell, hd5000 and 4gb of ram) and I really love it, the battery life is still outstanding and everything runs pretty smooth.
I use my macbook with illustrator, photoshop, lightroom and some light editing with premire plus some basic stuff in AE...sometimes I have to do some work on my desktop pc beacuse the Air is just not powerful enough.
I now have the opportunity to change my Air for a late 2012 pro 13" retina (i5, hd 4000 and 8gb of ram), I don't have to add any money but I don't know what to do.
The pro has the retina display which is very nice and with all the graphic stuff that I do it will come handy BUT it's the late 2012 model so it's ivy bridge, no long battery life and HD4000 instead of the iris/hd5000...still, it has 8gb of ram (I regret not having bought the air with 8gb)

Help me decide...I really don't know what to do, I'm afraid that the pro will be slower than the air due to the large amount of pixels and old gpu

 

[Abbara]

Hi everyone!

It's been almost 2 years since I've bought my macbook air 13" late 2013 (i5 haswell, hd5000 and 4gb of ram) and I really love it, the battery life is still outstanding and everything runs pretty smooth.
I use my macbook with illustrator, photoshop, lightroom and some light editing with premire plus some basic stuff in AE...sometimes I have to do some work on my desktop pc beacuse the Air is just not powerful enough.
I now have the opportunity to change my Air for a late 2012 pro 13" retina (i5, hd 4000 and 8gb of ram), I don't have to add any money but I don't know what to do.
The pro has the retina display which is very nice and with all the graphic stuff that I do it will come handy BUT it's the late 2012 model so it's ivy bridge, no long battery life and HD4000 instead of the iris/hd5000...still, it has 8gb of ram (I regret not having bought the air with 8gb)

Help me decide...I really don't know what to do, I'm afraid that the pro will be slower than the air due to the large amount of pixels and old gpu

I'd personally try and hold out, scrape some money together and buy a 2014 rMBP refurb from Apple / new from 3rd parties e.g. Best Buy if they're still in stock.

The extra memory is nice, but CPU and GPU won't be much faster. If you just use it docked then you might want to look for an older cheap Mac Pro for example, but if you use it as a mobile laptop a lot on the go then the 2012 rMBP's battery will really suck compared to your Air (the 2013 started to have excellent battery). Especially when it's a year older battery.

So I wouldn't do it... but I can see how it's not a crazy idea that's worth considering.

Definitely try to check out your memory pressure when you're doing work, if it's really maxing out all the time then it's worth going 8gb. But even then, buying a 2014 air 2nd hand with 8gb is probably better value than a 2012 rMBP.

How's your budget? Can you afford to get a 2014 rMBP if you sell your air? Or even a 2015? The 9-10h battery is really nice, and they're zippy machines.

 

[z31fanatic]

Sell your Air for $600-650 and buy a late 13 or early 13 Pro with 8/256 for around $900.