Is this trade worth it? Base M1 -> M3 Pro

[DerKauz]

Hello people,

I currently have the base 2020 MBP 13" with M1/8GB/256GB and found a deal for a MBP 14"/M3 Pro/18GB/512GB Refurbished by Apple.

My use cases are:

-Office work/remote work (MS Office, some specialized Windows software that I use via a remote connection to my companies server)

-I started studying AutoCad, so AutoCad/AutoCad LT for schematics and architectural drawings

-Hobbyist music production/making beats with Ableton (synth plugins, smaller sample libraries)

The problem with my current machine is that the RAM is kind of at the edge of usability. While it was a great machine over the last 4.5 years and the best laptop I ever had, I can see in the activity monitor that the RAM often fills up and the machine starts swapping; even when I have Outlook/Excel/Word/Chrome/Windows App open at the same time. In AutoCad I'm just meeting the minimum requirements of 8GB RAM, recommended is 16GB. In Ableton I sometimes have to export/freeze tracks because some libraries overfill the RAM by 1-4GB if I have them loaded at the same time. It's still usable for sure but I fear that it will continue to only get worse from here. On the other hand I don't just want to buy the shiny new thing if I can truck along a little bit longer haha

I can sell my current machine for around 450-500€ (570 US$) on the used market and the price for the new machine is 1300€ (1480 US$) with warranty, so the net cost will be around 800€ (915 US$). Is this a good deal and can I expect the new machine to last me 4-6 years with this use case?

Thanks!

 

[Bigwaff]

Is this a good deal and can I expect the new machine to last me 4-6 years with this use case?

If you can sell your current for that price, then yes.

 

[edubfromktown]

That is a solid upgrade if you are finding that your current system is lagging, processor "spiked" or memory "pressured" in Activity Monitor. If not, I'd let it ride for a while...

 

[DerKauz]

That is a solid upgrade if you are finding that your current system is lagging, processor "spiked" or memory "pressured" in Activity Monitor. If not, I'd let it ride for a while...

Well the activity monitor shows the RAM pressure graph in the yellow region always when I'm having CAD things open or projects loaded in Ableton and sometimes it spikes a bit up when I'm adding a sample library or adding a layer, which leads to lag for 0.5-1 second. As I said, usable (because the lag is not permanent) but will most probably not get better in the future.

The CPU however is not a problem for my work generally; I always have a good bit of headroom left. I looked into normal M4 MBPs as well (i.e. M4/16/512) but pretty much all of them are more expensive than the M3 Pro machine I'm eyeing so the M3P machine seems like the best deal I can get right now.