How much is 2020 better than 2012

[CallMyBookie]

I have a 2012 13" I use for everything. Looking at the long-awaited 2020 13".

Pro: 50%ish faster CPU
Equal: screen, keyboard, OS, weight
Con: no magsafe, need dongles for everything

Why am I supposed to upgrade? There's no advances. I mean sure I'd enjoy getting a cleaner one, but for a whole paycheck? This is two generations, eight years apart. What happened?

 

[KPOM]

I have a 2012 13" I use for everything. Looking at the long-awaited 2020 13".

Pro: 50%ish faster CPU
Equal: screen, keyboard, OS, weight
Con: no magsafe, need dongles for everything

Why am I supposed to upgrade? There's no advances. I mean sure I'd enjoy getting a cleaner one, but for a whole paycheck? This is two generations, eight years apart. What happened?

The CPU is far more than 50% faster. Don’t be fooled by GHz. The screen has also improved (it’s P3). And third parties have introduced MagSafe-like adapters, and you no longer need to buy Apple-branded chargers, cables, etc. The world is moving on to USB-C. And your 2012 weighs more than the 2020.

Battery life is better. As are the speakers. And the GPU (the 2012 GPU was a joke and barely adequate with 1080p, much less 4K).

 

[CallMyBookie]

I was going by Geekbench, single core on mine is 3200, new one is 4600 per ars review today. Multicore's faster yeah so a big job would complete in a few less sips of coffee. My screen feels too bright when it's 100% already. I could buy a magsafe dongle but that's mitigation, not a reason to buy this. I'd be using the same bluetooth speaker. And I'm going to watch movies on my TV, not my laptop. I'm just a little nonplussed at how little forward motion there's been.

 

[KPOM]

I was going by Geekbench, single core on mine is 3200, new one is 4600 per ars review today. Multicore's faster yeah so a big job would complete in a few less sips of coffee. My screen feels too bright when it's 100% already. I could buy a magsafe dongle but that's mitigation, not a reason to buy this. I'd be using the same bluetooth speaker. And I'm going to watch movies on my TV, not my laptop. I'm just a little nonplussed at how little forward motion there's been.

Download Geekbench 5 and get back to us.

 

[magbarn]

I have a 2012 13" I use for everything. Looking at the long-awaited 2020 13".

Pro: 50%ish faster CPU
50% is big for me. When I can wait for over a hour per job on processing photos, I'll take the extra 30 min thank you. You're also conveniently forgetting that the 2012 Ivy Bridge HD4000 iGPU barely has the power to drive the Retina screen, one of the reasons I upgraded to the Haswell 2013. The 2012 rMBP 13 WAS the iPad 3 of the rMBP line.
Equal: screen, keyboard, OS, weight
I have the 2013 rMBP 13 and it's notably heavier and thicker than my 2020 MBP 13.
Con: no magsafe, need dongles for everything
I do miss MagSafe, and I wish it did have at least one USB-A slot
At least TB3 has enough bandwidth to do a eGPU, the older TB on the 2012 would not do it well with half bandwidth

Why am I supposed to upgrade? There's no advances. I mean sure I'd enjoy getting a cleaner one, but for a whole paycheck? This is two generations, eight years apart. What happened?

See bolded above
I had the 2012 MBP 13 and couldn't wait to get rid of it to get the 2013, and my 2020 MBP 13 10th gen smacks my 2013 around

 

[glintoz]

I was going by Geekbench, single core on mine is 3200, new one is 4600 per ars review today. Multicore's faster yeah so a big job would complete in a few less sips of coffee. My screen feels too bright when it's 100% already. I could buy a magsafe dongle but that's mitigation, not a reason to buy this. I'd be using the same bluetooth speaker. And I'm going to watch movies on my TV, not my laptop. I'm just a little nonplussed at how little forward motion there's been.

I think you will find that the Geekbench score for your 2012 machine is an earlier version of Geekbench and the baseline scores have changed. I have a 2015 i5 MBP13 and the 2020 MBP i5 is 2.5x the performance based on GB 5 scores.

As the other poster suggested download GB5 and run it on your machine, you will get a very different perspective on the bump in CPU performance.

you are right about having to buy dongles and docks though that will add a few more $’s to the upgrade.

 

[throAU]

I was going by Geekbench, single core on mine is 3200, new one is 4600 per ars review today. Multicore's faster yeah so a big job would complete in a few less sips of coffee. My screen feels too bright when it's 100% already. I could buy a magsafe dongle but that's mitigation, not a reason to buy this. I'd be using the same bluetooth speaker. And I'm going to watch movies on my TV, not my laptop. I'm just a little nonplussed at how little forward motion there's been.

It depends on the application but in some things the modern CPUs/GPUs will be orders of magnitude (e.g., 10x) faster, per core and there are 2x as many cores. The SSD is 3-4x faster. The wifi will be 3x faster. The new keyboards are better. The display is better (TrueTone). TouchID. etc.

It depends if you do those things. Sounds like you're happy with your 2012. Keep it til it dies.

 

[DesmoPilot]

About eight years.

 

[mtneer]

I have a 2012 13" I use for everything. Looking at the long-awaited 2020 13".

Pro: 50%ish faster CPU
Equal: screen, keyboard, OS, weight
Con: no magsafe, need dongles for everything

Why am I supposed to upgrade? There's no advances. I mean sure I'd enjoy getting a cleaner one, but for a whole paycheck? This is two generations, eight years apart. What happened?

Why do you want to buy the new machine? That can shape whether you want to upgrade or not - if you are just light browsing vs. using as a video production rig where seconds matter in productivity.

 

[Grandesigns]

Speaking as a fellow 2012 MBP user, I would say that the only reason to upgrade is if you want better battery life, have a use for better graphics, or if you're doing video processing or similar work that would really benefit from the processor bump. None of which applies to my workload (web development, light creative suite work), hence why I'm still in the same boat as you.