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Macbok Pro Retina 13'' vs 15'' vs something else

L

laurnicolae

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 27, 2015
4
0
My working machine is an Asus Q501LA laptop (i5, full hd IPS screen, 128Gb SSD, 8Gb RAM). I would like to switch to a mac. I am doing mainly web development, using Sublime text editor. Do you think a retina 13'' would work for me? I don't think I want to spend the $2000 required by a 15''. I love the full hd resolution on my laptop but I like more the OSX (unix style, will not have to run Linux in a virtual machine). What's your advice: go with 13'', wait until I'm physically ready to spend more money on 15'' or keep the actual laptop?

Thank you.
 
laurnicolae said:
My working machine is an Asus Q501LA laptop (i5, full hd IPS screen, 128Gb SSD, 8Gb RAM). I would like to switch to a mac. I am doing mainly web development, using Sublime text editor. Do you think a retina 13'' would work for me? I don't think I want to spend the $2000 required by a 15''. I love the full hd resolution on my laptop but I like more the OSX (unix style, will not have to run Linux in a virtual machine). What's your advice: go with 13'', wait until I'm physically ready to spend more money on 15'' or keep the actual laptop?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

The 13inch also uses a core i5 equivalent specs to your current asus so it would run everything your doing just fine so I say go ahead and get the 13’ rMBP besides the 15” hasn’t been updated for a while most likely won’t see a change until late this year early 2016
 
Thank you.
What about resolution? Now I have full hd on 15" and I love it. What resolution is on rMBP 13?
 
From Apple.com:

Retina display: 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2560-by-1600 resolution at 227 pixels per inch with support for millions of colors
 
LittleLuth said:
From Apple.com:

Retina display: 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2560-by-1600 resolution at 227 pixels per inch with support for millions of colors
Click to expand...

Thank you @LittleLuth. But I've seen one in a mac store these days and it had 1200x800 or something like this. It was possible to increase the resolution but the recommended one was smaller than 2560/1600. I'm curious what is the ideal resolution - the best ratio between screen real estate and readability.
 
go to a mac shop and try one out and see how it looks.

the screen resolution/UI/Text size are all scalable to preference so drag some bars around and see what you think.

If your old laptop is an i5 with intel graphics you may not see a big speedup.

(im not a big fan of small displays, always think it's a good idea to get full size display for home use, used to get lots of back pain from over using laptops)
 
Last edited:
Native resolution: 2560 by 1600 pixels means you have to chose between small text by running on native, and a smaller real estate by running 1280 x 800 with a 2x multiplication factor.

I would suggest the later.

It's the same for iPads, the native resolution is 2048 x 1536, but the browser sees the display as being only half ( 1024 x 768 ) with a 2.0 retina factor.

As you said you're working into web development, developing websites which are retina-compatible ( deliver higher-resolution pictures and multimedia for devices with retina factors > 1 ) should be a must these days so i'd say 1280 x 800 is the resolution you should be working on.

For the 15" model, the resolution is a bit higher but the screen is also larger.

For both products, you can hook up your laptop to an external monitor + keyboard + mouse when you are at the office and use whatever resolution you like.
I currently run a 4k 60Hz display in Full-HD resolution with a 2.0 retina factor and couldn't be happier.
 
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