Low End Macbook Pro has an MBA Processor (and battery life)

[Boyd01]

Seems like a fine replacement for the Air.

Not very impressed by comparing it to my 2013 11" 8gb/512gb i7 MBA. I paid $1800 for the MBA, the new 2ghz/8gb/512gb 13" MBP is $1700 - at least it isn't more expensive. But compared to my 2013 MBA, it's bigger, heavier, has less ports, a questionable keyboard and it's actually slower than my MBA.

On the plus side, it has a the retina screen but frankly that doesn't interest me all that much. I use a big monitor at home already and can accept a compromise on the screen when I travel.

If I was going to upgrade today, I'd want to max out the function key version of the MBP (like I did with my MBA) with 2.4ghz/16gb/1TB and that is a huge jump in price to $2600. But I'm content with my MBA and have no plans to upgrade anytime soon.

 

[mattopotamus]

Not very impressed by comparing it to my 2013 11" 8gb/512gb i7 MBA. I paid $1800 for the MBA, the new 2ghz/8gb/512gb 13" MBP is $1700 - at least it isn't more expensive. But compared to my 2013 MBA, it's bigger, heavier, has less ports, a questionable keyboard and it's actually slower than my MBA.

On the plus side, it has a the retina screen but frankly that doesn't interest me all that much. I use a big monitor at home already and can accept a compromise on the screen when I travel.

If I was going to upgrade today, I'd want to max out the function key version of the MBP (like I did with my MBA) with 2.4ghz/16gb/1TB and that is a huge jump in price to $2600. But I'm content with my MBA and have no plans to upgrade anytime soon.

is it really slower? It is nearly as fast as the high end 13" pro from last year based on the front page story.

 

[Boyd01]

is it really slower? It is nearly as fast as the high end 13" pro from last year based on the front page story.

See my earlier post: The new MBP is 6970 and my 2013 i7 MBA is 7241 (according to MacTracker). It is even a bigger gap for the most recent (2015) 11" i7 MBA which has a geekbench of 8070.

Just saw this front page story: https://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/31/2016-vs-2015-base-13-inch-mbp-benchmarks/

The new 13" i5 MBP has a geekbench score of 6970. That's right between 2013 MBA (7241) and 2012 base Mini (6773) Kind of underwhelming…

 

[mattopotamus]

See my earlier post: The new MBP is 6970 and my 2013 i7 MBA is 7241 (according to MacTracker). It is even a bigger gap for the most recent (2015) 11" i7 MBA which has a geekbench of 8070.

I did not realize last year pros were slower than the Airs too. I guess that is just the nature of the beast when it has to push a Retina display.

 

[Pugly]

Not very impressed by comparing it to my 2013 11" 8gb/512gb i7 MBA. I paid $1800 for the MBA, the new 2ghz/8gb/512gb 13" MBP is $1700 - at least it isn't more expensive. But compared to my 2013 MBA, it's bigger, heavier, has less ports, a questionable keyboard and it's actually slower than my MBA.

On the plus side, it has a the retina screen but frankly that doesn't interest me all that much. I use a big monitor at home already and can accept a compromise on the screen when I travel.

If I was going to upgrade today, I'd want to max out the function key version of the MBP (like I did with my MBA) with 2.4ghz/16gb/1TB and that is a huge jump in price to $2600. But I'm content with my MBA and have no plans to upgrade anytime soon.

Yeah the MBA with i7 really was a sweet spot in terms of price/performance. If you just need a good CPU+macOS+portability there was no better option than the 11". I don't think the performance of the 13" or smaller will get much better until they can put a quad core in one. It'll be interesting to see what the touchbar versions get performance wise.

 

[Boyd01]

Maybe I'm just expecting too much. But I remember replacing my 2008 15" MBP with a 13" MBA in 2011. Compared to the old MBP, the MBA had a CPU that was about twice as fast, a disk almost 10 times faster and over 50% larger (my MBP had the 160gb HD), a smaller screen but the exact same pixel count and it was much thinner and lighter. It ran twice as long on a battery charge… and it cost almost $1000 less. The only minuses were the lack of a DVD drive and a couple less ports. But it was quite an impressive upgrade to a three year old laptop.

Today in 2016, there is nothing remotely resembling this kind of upgrade for my 2013 MBA. To get a performance increase approaching this level I would need to spend $1,000 more than my last computer and settle for a bigger, heavier computer.

 

[venom600]

See my earlier post: The new MBP is 6970 and my 2013 i7 MBA is 7241 (according to MacTracker). It is even a bigger gap for the most recent (2015) 11" i7 MBA which has a geekbench of 8070.

Your numbers are off because you're comparing Geekbench 2 scores to Geekbench 3 scores, and they use a different scale. Your machine scores a GB3 64bit score of 6091 according to Everymac. The 6970 of the new Macbook Pro is about 15% faster than yours. In fact, even the Core m7 Macbook is faster than yours with a score of 6518.