First MacBook Pro, 13 vs 16 buying advice

[madejo]

Hi,

Didn't found a thread about this, so I started one.

For the first time I'm looking to buy a MacBook. Looking forward to a 14" version, I now have to choose between a 13" and 16" version. At first I thought to go for the 13. Portable and cheaper. But performance is important to me. So the last days I wonder whether the 16 might not be better after all.

One important thing, I will use Parallels daily. To run a number of applications to develop (for example Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server,...), occasionally play a (older) game and to run applications which aren't available on the MBP.

I have 2 configurations in mind:

• MBP 16 with 2.6 GHZ i7, 32GB RAM, AMD 5300M 4GB and 512 GB SSD (€ 3.199)
• MBP 13 with 2.3 GHZ i7, 32GB RAM and 1 TB SSD (€ 3.129)

Some questions that come to my mind:

• I may be mistaken but I think I will need the 32GB to virtualize Windows with Parallels, I suspect I will have to allocate 16GB to W10 anyway?
• With the 13 the SDD is doubled. As for the GPU, I don't have a clue if the Intel Iris can match the AMD Radeon. But much searching and reading taught me that a MBP isn't optimized for gaming. So for me it's not a determining factor.
• I also wonder if there can be throttling problems with the 13? If I am not mistaken, the 15 has been replaced by the 16. So I was expecting the same to happen to the 13. But there's no 14" model in the game, as for now.
• As for performance, with the 2 listed configurations above, is the 13 roughly on par with the 16?

If anyone could provide some buying advice, that would really be great!

 

[The_Joker13]

If performance is more important than portability then it’s the 16 hands down. The 16 is a beast both performance and size wise imo. I love mine but it’s a pain to take it on the go. Ymmv.

 

[SkiHound2]

I know nothing about using parallels so I have no idea about memory needs. The 16" uses a 6 core i7 with faster base and burst clock speeds. For tasks that make use of multi-threading it will almost certainly be faster than the 10th generation i7 used in the 13" which is a 4 core processor. The integrated graphics on the 10th cpu is reputed to be much improved vs older generation integrated graphics units. I've not seen any tests directly comparing to the discrete gpu on the 16". I'd expect the latter to perform better. Personally I think that the main reasons to chose the 13" are smaller size, lighter weight, and price. Again, I've seen no benchmarks but I'd expect there is not a dramatic performance gap between the 10th generation i5 and i7 cpus used in the higher end 13". Both are 4 core with hyper-threading. The i7 has a higher base and burst speed, and a larger cache, but otherwise they are very similar. Again, I'm speculating here, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are essentially the same chip but the i7s test better than the i5s. I think the 16" is simply a better platform for anyone who actually needs high performance. Most of us don't much of the time. The 13" is much better for anyone needing smaller size and portability.

 

[mpConroe]

I regret buying my 2016 13” so I advice to buy 16”. I would buy it myself, but because I have an iPad Pro and iMac I don‘t need powerful MBP. I would even say that I don’t need it at all. iPad and iMac is a great combo. But if you need a laptop, go with 16” but with 1TB SSD. 512GB might be not enough space for virtualisation.