MacBook Pro i5 or i7 for Grad School

[bill33445566]

Hello,

I've had MacBooks for a long time and I'm looking to purchase something new for school.

Looking at the MacBook Pro 13" 10th gen. Wondering whether I should get the i5 or i7.

Going to school for an MBA, so lots of zoom, slack, word, large excel files, lots of multitasking, and I have to run Virtual Machines to access some programs my school has for only windows computers.

Thanks for the help!

 

[velocityg4]

Not a big difference between the two. For your uses I'd put the money into more RAM first then more SSD. If you've got money left over. Sure, why not.

 

[casperes1996]

Agree with Velocityg4. If you have the budget for upgrades, it seems you're better served with RAM than CPU.

 

[Patcell]

Yeah... as others have said already, it's probably not worth it on the 13" Pro. It's 10% more money for (most of the time) less than 10% more performance. RAM is a more expensive upgrade, but would probably be money better spent in the multitasking department. That being said, the stock 16GB is likely just fine if money is tight.

 

[jerryk]

I would not spend the money on the i7. Especially on an 13" MBP. More heat, more fan noise, and small real-world performance increase. For most people the 10th gen 13" $1799 model is just fine. I even question having a very large drive on one for a student. Get old files you cannot afford to lose off the machine and into the cloud. On drop and machine and everything on it is gone.

 

[posguy99]

Get old files you cannot afford to lose off the machine and into the cloud. On drop and machine and everything on it is gone.

You still need to provide for backing those up, if they're important to you.

 

[coffeeplease]

i7 has less than 10% better performance. If you only consider the 512GB/1TB SSD versions, you can often get the i5 version on sale by $100-200, so it's not worth the $300-400 upgrade.