looking for former 13inch owners who now switched to 15inch

[Khabbi]

I had a 15" back in 2012 and thought it as too big and heavy... so I bought a 2014 13" MBP and have been using that since. I've been very happy with it up until recently, I have been doing more work on my laptop than ever and the 13" just didn't seem like enough screen.

Last week went to the the Apple store and checked out the 15" MBP with touchbar, and there's a HUGE difference between it and my old 2012.. extremely light and thin and easy to carry around IMO. So I bought the 2016 15" and have been very happy! The screen is stunning and it's also very nice for streaming videos after work. I'm glad I made the move to the 15"!

That being said, I don't have to sell my 2014 13", so it will be my main travel computer. But then again, I have an 11" Air that does just about everything I need while traveling, so the main thing to me is the Retina screen.

 

[wheelhot]

Wish they made a 15-inch with the internals & price of the 13-inch, and just add extra battery in the extra space!

Call it the "Macbook 15-inch Starbucks Edition".

Starbucks edition. ROFL

 

[poorcody]

Interesting, what was your use case scenario?

I did an SMC reset (don't know if that helped or not), turned-off auto-brightness and set the brightness to ~55% (8 "ticks" from left). On the 11-hour day as an example I ran Airmail, Calendar, and Safari the whole time. Did about an hour of php-coding, two to three hours of writing (Scrivener), maybe 30-minutes of Flash game playing, about an hour of music in the background. I actually ran a timer in the menu bar to measure real usage so these are not battery "estimates."

 

[Kaylor]

Typing this from my new 15". Here are some pics of the difference in size from the 13" Air and the 15" Pro. View attachment 674321View attachment 674323 View attachment 674322

Pretty much confirms that I'll to upgrade to the 15" when my 13" 2012 Air calls it quits. Thanks for the comparison and pictures!

 

[aaron5566]

Pretty much confirms that I'll to upgrade to the 15" when my 13" 2012 Air calls it quits. Thanks for the comparison and pictures!

Don't mention it! Just finished a day of Black Friday shopping. Had my laptop in my backpack for about 6 hours, no breaks except when I put it down to try on clothes. I'll say that the weight is not noticeable for about 4 hours. After that, I could slowly feel my shoulders getting tired. It's either the weight of the laptop or the fact that I didn't eat lunch.

 

[Coasterfanryan]

After five years with the 2011 MacBook Pro 13" it was time for an upgrade. I was slightly worried about moving to a bigger laptop, but after trying out one of the models in-store I knew moving up would be worth it. Here are some comparison pics below:

Top view (open):

Depth Comparison:

Top View (closed):

Stacked View:

What I like:
Screen - WOW! I've been using computers with a 1280x800 resolution display for the past 8-9 years and this display blows me away. Bravo, Apple!
Trackpad - I didn't think I'd like a huge trackpad as I was fine with the size of the one of my MBP, but the extra room for gestures is nice. I don't notice any random clicking when suing the keyboard.
Touch Bar - I'm digging the integration with macOS, but I can't wait for more developers to make use of it. I already love the line comment button in Xcode and being able to quickly change my volume/brightness with a simple swipe. Is it a complete game change? No, but it has a lot of potential and I can see myself using it frequently.
Speakers - I'm not sure if someone's done a sound comparison between this and older MacBook models, but they are unbelievably good. They are clear, loud, and give a "full" sound.

What doesn't bother me:
No disk drive: I can probably count the number of time's I've used the disk drive on my MBP on a single hand, so I'm not that heartbroken. I'll take thinness over a drive I'll rarely use.
USB type-C only:I'm sure I'm not the only one to see this coming, so I can't say I've phased by it. I wanted to stick with a Mac and this was my choice.

What I'm not a fan of:
Three-finger drag: I found it odd that I had to go into the Accessibility menu to enable this option. Sometimes trying to use this gesture gets kind of wonky. Either it works flawlessly, or I have to try and grab a corner or window a couple times. It doesn't make me hate the machine, but I wish it worked constantly.
Side battery indicator: I don't remember if Apple got rid of this on the Retina MBP's years ago, but man I really miss this!

Overall, I'm very happy with this computer. I plan on keeping it for a good 5-6 years and I think I made a solid choice. If anyone has questions I'll be glad to try and answer them!