MacBook Pro alternatives

[maratus]

People who aren't even aware of thunderbolt eGPU on Macbooks are hardly qualified to compare specs of different laptops and enforce their opinion as facts about what's better (Dell XPS, Latitude, Lenovo Thinkpad, MS Surface, MacBook Pro retina, Razer Blade, Alienware, VAIO Z - all have advantages and disadvantages, but if you don't consider the whole package it's just pointless). I'm sorry, but most just have no idea. And then there're fanboys and anti-fanboys, so trust me - most of the info you'd read here is useless.

 

[leman]

The Yoga, after sales tax, ended up being over $500 less than the base Macbook Pro. That is quite a bit difference considering the Yoga 910 is more powerful and has has more ports. Sure the Macbook has the better screen and faster SSD but that's it.. In every other regard the Yoga demolishes the Macbook..

I don't doubt that the Yoga is a great purchase for casual use at that price point, but being more powerful than the MBP? It has a weaker CPU/GPU, slower RAM, worse battery and a slower SSD. Its ports are a mess: it doesn't support USB 3.1, and of its USB-C ports is for some weird reason USB 2.0. In fact, port-wise it might be worse off than the MBP with its 2 TB3 ports - can't connect multiple monitors, can't connect high-speed storage.

 

[raqball]

I don't doubt that the Yoga is a great purchase for casual use at that price point, but being more powerful than the MBP? It has a weaker CPU/GPU, slower RAM, worse battery and a slower SSD. Its ports are a mess: it doesn't support USB 3.1, and of its USB-C ports is for some weird reason USB 2.0. In fact, port-wise it might be worse off than the MBP with its 2 TB3 ports - can't connect multiple monitors, can't connect high-speed storage.

Nope... You might want to spec check. Faster ram, faster CPU, battery life about the same...

Spec and performance test here (Macbook Pro -v- Yoga 910)

http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/macbook-pro-13-inch

The 910 pretty much demolishes the Pro and it's $500 less...

 

[leman]

Nope... You might want to spec check. Faster ram, faster CPU, battery life about the same...

Maybe I looked at the wrong model? The Yoga 910 uses Kaby Lake CPUs and DDR4 2133 RAM, right? If thats the correct one, than its slower than the Skylakes and LPDDR3 used in the base 13" MBP.

Edit: my bad, forgot that the 13" base is using 1866MHz LPDDR3, so you are right, 2133 DDR4 might end up slightly faster.

 

[raqball]

Yeah, the 910 is pretty impressive but NOT for a power user.. I'm a home and base model user and for someone like me, the Yoga easily wins all things considered..

 

[mrex]

yes, I digitally sign PDFs on my Macbook and I don't take hand written notes because I type faster than I write.

A touchscreen is in no way a good replacement for a good trackpad. Kind of crazy to even suggest it.

i dont write equations or chemical formulas faster with a keyboard and touchpad than a pen. also sketches.. trying to sketch something related to the text i just wrote would be horrible to do with a touchpad. it would look like as a two year old kid tried to draw something rather than being informative. there are things that are done faster with a real pen. just saying...

anyway.. i would consider also asus zenbook (ux310uq and ux390ua), both can be got with differend combinations (ram/ssd/screen).

https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ASUS-Zenbook-UX310UQ/

royal blue looks so good https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ASUS-ZenBook-3-UX390UA/

these are rated as ultrabooks, so the performance is also similar than any other ultrabook. if you want to have a laptop and decent overall performance, i would rather get a 15" laptop.

People who aren't even aware of thunderbolt eGPU on Macbooks are hardly qualified to compare specs of different laptops and enforce their opinion as facts about what's better (Dell XPS, Latitude, Lenovo Thinkpad, MS Surface, MacBook Pro retina, Razer Blade, Alienware, VAIO Z - all have advantages and disadvantages, but if you don't consider the whole package it's just pointless). I'm sorry, but most just have no idea. And then there're fanboys and anti-fanboys, so trust me - most of the info you'd read here is useless.

1) overal support for egpus
2) the price you have to pay to get an egpu. (those are not free, but quite pricey.)

 

[leman]

i dont write equations or chemical formulas faster with a keyboard and touchpad than a pen.

Then maybe you should look into learning proper tools? Anyone with sufficient practice in TeX/LaTeX is able to write a formula as quick as writing it per hand, and in addition it will be editable, so you can easily fix your mistakes and reuse formula components.

 

[PhoneI]

i dont write equations or chemical formulas faster with a keyboard and touchpad than a pen.

I don't write chemical formulas at all. I guess then I will just stay with the superior laptop.

 

[mrex]

Then maybe you should look into learning proper tools? Anyone with sufficient practice in TeX/LaTeX is able to write a formula as quick as writing it per hand, and in addition it will be editable, so you can easily fix your mistakes and reuse formula components.

to me, latex is still slow way to write from the speech, i cant follow and write at the same time especially if i need to check commands (i cant remember them all), then drawing chemical compounds utilizing another software takes just too much time...

when the A4 is only for equations or compounds and reaction mechanism, i rather use a pen than even try to use latex or a software like chemdraw.

for example writing something simple like this one
https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/155e62081303ce9bfb295d5b1c70a9168e391d98

takes few seconds with a pen, lot more with a keyboard
\[ f(n) =
\begin{cases}
n/2 & \quad \text{if } n \text{ is even}\\
-(n+1)/2 & \quad \text{if } n \text{ is odd}\\
\end{cases}
\]

and add it there when you want use the cancel package for over drawings and commands for it.

atleast, im not able to follow and write at the same time, and im fast in typing.

 

[stockscalper]

Maybe I looked at the wrong model? The Yoga 910 uses Kaby Lake CPUs and DDR4 2133 RAM, right? If thats the correct one, than its slower than the Skylakes and LPDDR3 used in the base 13" MBP.

Edit: my bad, forgot that the 13" base is using 1866MHz LPDDR3, so you are right, 2133 DDR4 might end up slightly faster.

Here are some tests by Laptop Mag that show the old Skylake used in the Pro is not faster than the new Kabylakes used in the Lenovo or HP Spectre's. Geek bench 4 Score Speed:

Apple MacBook Pro 7053
HP Spectre x360 8147
Lenovo Yoga 910 8102

Still, comparing Apples to other Apples (existing Macbook Air and old Macbook Pro), 7053 is pretty fast.

The tests from that review also showed the MBP's SSD drive was much faster than the competition.

 

[leman]

Here are some tests by Laptop Mag that show the old Skylake used in the Pro is not faster than the new Kabylakes used in the Lenovo or HP Spectre's. Geek bench 4 Score Speed:

Apple MacBook Pro 7053
HP Spectre x360 8147
Lenovo Yoga 910 8102

Still, comparing Apples to other Apples (existing Macbook Air and old Macbook Pro), 7053 is pretty fast.

The tests from that review also showed the MBP's SSD drive was much faster than the competition.

I have to say that I am slightly surprised at those results. Here are the links to Geekbench4 results for both CPUs:

https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=6360U&sort=multicore_score
https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=7200U&sort=multicore_score

Unfortunately, I don't know of an easy way to download all available results from geek bench browser, or I could make some graphs. Anyway, it seems that benchmark scores between those CPUs are far from being as dramatic as what Laptop Mag reports. As to HP Spectre and Yoga results — no wonder, they are using the i7 CPU. Anyway, I suppose that they ran the benchmarks on different platform, which is more then certain to mess up the results.

But what really surprised me are the graphical results. I suppose they ran game benchmarks Windows vs OS X? No wonder the MacBook appears so much slower...