I did a big mistake...

[Alexx90]

Thought I will share my story and maybe it could help someone to avoid making the same mistake as me.

I owned a beautiful 2017 MBP 15 until a few weeks ago.

then I decided to sell it and switch to the 13 one as I always liked the design (I think it looks more complete) and the portability of the 13" , and once the quad core 13" hit the market I thought ok.. it is time.

I sold for 15" for a decent amount of money and made the switch.

and it was honestly a big mistake..

so far I spent 5 days with the 13" and while it's a great machine and can handle all the tasks I throw at it with ease (honestly I'm not a such a power user so it's not a big deal) .. I just can't stress enough how much I MISS MISS MISS the extra screen real estate of the 15".

I miss it so much that I will be returning the 13" and will have to buy a new 2018 15".

the price difference is not that huge anyway. I probably wasted a few hundred bucks as I could easily just kept my 2017 15" as it was in great shape.. well at least I will get a better one I guess...

so my advice to anyone who is thinking of making the 15" to 13" switch. don't sell your 15" till you get to spend at least at least a few days with the 13" screen size and see that you are comfortable with it.

 

[iMacDragon]

This, whilst in principle I would like the idea of a 13", it could not be my 'main' machine, for lack of screen space.

 

[maflynn]

I MISS MISS MISS the extra screen real estate of the 15".

Yep, the lack of screen real estate can be a major factor, it was for me.

 

[Mr. Dee]

I have been using a 2015 13 in MBP and honestly, its not that bad. Sure, I would the extra screen real estate, but it doesn't limit me. I use it sometimes with a Dell monitor; I have the global menu bar and dock hidden. Sure, that extra 15 inch would give you more screen. In fact, I plan to get that when I upgrade either next year or after.

My brother has the 2017 13 inch and I haven't heard him complain about it. So, it varies I guess, especially if you have been coming from large screen Macs. I can imagine someone who uses a 27 inch iMac switching to a 13 inch MBP and feeling weird. It usually takes some time to adjust.

Apart from that, it has not limited me in being able to type word documents, look at my pictures, edit them in Photoshop, watch videos at all.

 

[SDColorado]

Thought I will share my story and maybe it could help someone to avoid making the same mistake as me.

I owned a beautiful 2017 MBP 15 until a few weeks ago.

then I decided to sell it and switch to the 13 one as I always liked the design (I think it looks more complete) and the portability of the 13" , and once the quad core 13" hit the market I thought ok.. it is time.

I sold for 15" for a decent amount of money and made the switch.

and it was honestly a big mistake..

so far I spent 5 days with the 13" and while it's a great machine and can handle all the tasks I throw at it with ease (honestly I'm not a such a power user so it's not a big deal) .. I just can't stress enough how much I MISS MISS MISS the extra screen real estate of the 15".

I miss it so much that I will be returning the 13" and will have to buy a new 2018 15".

the price difference is not that huge anyway. I probably wasted a few hundred bucks as I could easily just kept my 2017 15" as it was in great shape.. well at least I will get a better one I guess...

so my advice to anyone who is thinking of making the 15" to 13" switch. don't sell your 15" till you get to spend at least at least a few days with the 13" screen size and see that you are comfortable with it.

Been there, done that. Made the same mistake of falling in love with a 13", only to later find i was really only in love with the idea of one. In practice and use, not so much.

 

[haruhiko]

I have been buying the 15-inch exclusively save for the one year that I used a 2011 MBA.

From the 2016 model onwards the 15-inch is even not that heavy anymore.

 

[Dovahkiing]

Just switched my 15" i9 to a i5 13" and had owned 15" for prior two generations. If this is your main computer then I can see a case for the 15", but I also have a workstation for my heavy compute loads - I was a little apprehensive before the switch but a week in and I have no regrets yet.

It's easy to convince yourself you need more and the Apple upgrade pricing structure of these machines is designed to get you to keep thinking "well I might as well...". That's how I ended up with the i9

For my case, the 13" machine seems plenty powerful for what I'm doing with it - mainly image processing in the field.

 

[Sterkenburg]

I can understand that. The 13" has a lovely design, but every time I try a computer of that size I immensely miss the larger display. It's not a matter of performance at all, I just feel much more productive with a larger screen estate, to the point that even on the 15" I switch to the scaled "1920x1200-like" resolution to fit more stuff.

I used to lug around a non-retina 17" back in the day, so the TouchBar 15" feels as light as a feather to me