If you had $2400 in Apple gift cards which one would you buy?

[CSanchez]

I have a little over $2400 in Apple Gift Cards, I want to get one of the recently release retina pro's.

I'm stuck whether I should get the 13 inch and max out the ram and processor

or one of the 15 inch and do the same, obviously unitll I run out of money.

Not really trying to spend more then what I have in gift cards and the student discount is only like 150 I think?

BTW I want to max out the ram and processor and not worried about storage cause I plan on buying a external usb 2.0 hard drive for cheap, don't really see a problem with this.

I don't need to do anything crazy with the computer, just want a good laptop that's gonna last me a while.

Thanks

 

[Benk3350]

Thats quite a lot of dough in gift cards!

You're just going to get personal opinions here, but I'd say go for the 15"

For me, the extra power and bigger screen is worth it. You're getting a quad core and the retina screens look so good so having a bigger screen is bigger payoff. They're also now just as light as the 13" macbook pros from a few years ago.

By the way, the education discount is $200 off plus the upgrades are cheaper too. When I ordered my new 15", the difference between the 2.3 and 2.6 processor was 180 instead of 200, and the difference between the 512gb SSD and 1tb was 450 instead of 500. I started at the $2600 model and upgraded from there so I already had the 16gb of RAM, dont' know how much cheaper it is to upgrade from the base with the education discount. But if you max everything out, you're saving like 300 bucks. My new 15" retina ended up costing me 3 grand, and without the education discount would have costed me 3300.

15" all the way

 

[CSanchez]

Basically I am considering either:

A 13 inch model with
Specifications
2.8GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
128GB PCIe-based Flash Storage

for $1739

or

A 15 inch model with
Specifications
2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM

for $2349

----------

Thats quite a lot of dough in gift cards!

You're just going to get personal opinions here, but I'd say go for the 15"

For me, the extra power and bigger screen is worth it. You're getting a quad core and the retina screens look so good so having a bigger screen is bigger payoff. They're also now just as light as the 13" macbook pros from a few years ago.

15" all the way

That is basically what I was trying to figure out, it sounds like the Quadcore is just way more effective then the Dualcore that even a maxed out 13 inch wouldn't beat a 15 inch.

 

[Benk3350]

Basically I am considering either:

A 13 inch model with
Specifications
2.8GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
128GB PCIe-based Flash Storage

for $1739

or

A 15 inch model with
Specifications
2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM

for $2349

----------



That is basically what I was trying to figure out, it sounds like the Quadcore is just way more effective then the Dualcore that even a maxed out 13 inch wouldn't beat a 15 inch.

That is correct. The base quad core on the 15" is still going to be more powerful/effective than the highest maxed out dual core on the 13"

 

[Agent-P]

If I had a bunch of Apple store gift cards I'd choose the maxed out 15" mainly for the quad core processor, but also just because I could.

 

[simon48]

Picking a screen size is a lot about personal preference, if you can I'd go to an Apple store and play around on both and see what feels best for you.