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Macbook Pro with 1TB SSD.. options that aren't £2,000+?..

alexjholland

alexjholland

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 3, 2011
854
862
Bali, Cambridge, Sydney.. anywhere.
Hey, I held off getting a new Macbook Pro, in part because I disliked how Apple forced anyone who wanted an entry-level model at £1,000 (UK) with a 1TB SSD to spend £2,000 on a model with a higher-spec processor too.

I was hoping this might change with the refresh. How naive.

As background, I produce music, edit photos and occasionally edit some video, which - according to this forum - doesn't necessitate a processor above the base-level i5?

Honestly, the £1,000-ish 2015 Macbook Pro my girlfriend has seems fine for me, albeit I need 1TB SSD.

I have a top-spec 2010 iMac, but am about to move to Australia and need to sell this and buy a Macbook Pro for my music production and GoPro editing.

Lo and behold, the pricing seems even worse with the Macbook refresh, with higher starting prices (especially in the UK) and the base Touch Bar model not allowing any SSD upgrades at point of purchase.

I have to START with the high-spec model at £1,949 to choose a bigger hard drive and am looking at £2,489 for the 1TB SSD and obligatory 16GB RAM.

In fairness, I can pick the non-Touch Bar model and add the 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM, totalling £2,169.

I'm then looking at £320 to gain a Touch Bar and bump from the 2.0Ghz i5 to the 2.9Ghz i5, which would be tempting, if I'm over £2,000 in already.

But the fact remains, my girlfriend bought a £1,000 Macbook Pro earlier this year, which is fine for everything I need, except for a 1TB SSD that has a market value of around £300!

So how and why am I looking at over £2,000, whichever option I go with?!

I'm happy spending cash when required and don't want to purchase an under-powered model, but can't see why I'm looking at a model more than double the cost of my girlfriend's, when the only real different in my requirements is a £300 hard drive.

I'm wondering if an Apple-refurbished model and upgrading the SSD myself could be a sensible option?

- Can I get a decent Macbook Pro with a 1TB SSD fitted, for not much over £1,000?

- Are the new processors/graphics worth spending another £1,000 on?

Thoughts and strategies appreciated, cheers.
 
A 1tb apple ssd in the 2015 does not have a market price of 300.

If you want to get a non-retina mbp go ahead they are under 1000 and you can put your slower 300 euro ssd in there.

EBay has 1tb used Apple ssds for close to 800. So you could buy the base and upgrade yourself, may not be as fast as the 2015 ssd but decent. It's up to you if you think better processors are worth it to you.
 
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Kudos6612 said:
A 1tb apple ssd in the 2015 does not have a market price of 300.

If you want to get a non-retina mbp go ahead they are under 1000 and you can put your slower 300 euro ssd in there.

EBay has 1tb used Apple ssds for close to 800. So you could buy the base and upgrade yourself, may not be as fast as the 2015 ssd but decent. It's up to you if you think better processors are worth it to you.
Click to expand...

Do Apple make SSD hard drives? I thought they'd use SSDs made by companies like Samsung - and a good Samsung 1TB SSD is only £300.

I looked at Apple's non-Retina Macbook Pro, but it's famously slow and outdated. Therefore I'm thinking along the lines of the recently-replaced Retina model, either refurbished or NOS and my own - fast - hard drive.
 
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The only way to upgrade the SSD in a 2015 rMBP (and I bet the non-base 2016 MBP) is to buy one from eBay that someone scavenged from a MacBook Pro or from a repair shop that can order them from Apple. The SSD is unique to Apple, so 3rd party drives will not work.
 
Could you get by with smaller on board storage and a NAS drive?

I have a 256 internally and 2TB on the NAS. I work on my files locally and then move them to the NAS when done. So for photos I'll import them to my SSD, edit and tweak them locally, then move them to the NAS when they're finished. I keep my iTunes on the NAS.

The downside is that if I'm out and about and need to access files on the NAS and have not planned ahead and taken local copies, I then need to VPN into my home network to get to them, either over a public wifi or through my phone. Hasn't been a problem to date, but it's a part of the compromise.
 
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Howard2k said:
Could you get by with smaller on board storage and a NAS drive?

I have a 256 internally and 2TB on the NAS. I work on my files locally and then move them to the NAS when done. So for photos I'll import them to my SSD, edit and tweak them locally, then move them to the NAS when they're finished. I keep my iTunes on the NAS.

The downside is that if I'm out and about and need to access files on the NAS and have not planned ahead and taken local copies, I then need to VPN into my home network to get to them, either over a public wifi or through my phone. Hasn't been a problem to date, but it's a part of the compromise.
Click to expand...

Of the 800-900GB on my hard drive, about 60-80GB must be ISO for programs I use, that can go online.

My iTunes is around 150-200GB, so possibly moving that onto an external drive could work.

I have a LOT of programs installed, I could thin some down.. I also have 60-80GB of samples I use for music.

I've looked at NAS, but am off travelling soon and don't have the spare cash to setup a NAS in my apartment, although plan to do that later. I could use Amazon Drive?
 
tubeexperience said:
Apparently, the SSD in the new MacBook Pro is made by SanDisk, not Samsung.
Click to expand...

Apple has used multiple SSD manufacturers before. Typically the lower capacity models are more likely to be SanDisk and the higher capacity models are more likely to be Samsung.

Either way, I'd say that the Samsung 950/960 Pro is equivalent based on overall performance.
 
alexjholland said:
Of the 800-900GB on my hard drive, about 60-80GB must be ISO for programs I use, that can go online.

My iTunes is around 150-200GB, so possibly moving that onto an external drive could work.

I have a LOT of programs installed, I could thin some down.. I also have 60-80GB of samples I use for music.

I've looked at NAS, but am off travelling soon and don't have the spare cash to setup a NAS in my apartment, although plan to do that later. I could use Amazon Drive?
Click to expand...

If you have a network hub it may have a USB port, which might be sufficient for some of that stuff. Then you just need an external drive and the hub manual to 'build your own' NAS setup...
 
T5BRICK said:
Either way, I'd say that the Samsung 950/960 Pro is equivalent based on overall performance.
Click to expand...

Either way, it's irrelevant.
You can not buy a retail Sandisk or Samsung drive and put it in your MacBook.
The drives are proprietary and produced and sold only for Apples use.
You'll have to wait for a 3rd-party (like OWC) to reverse-engineer the connector and that usually takes a year or more. And if they don't see the demand they're not even likely to spend the resources trying.
 
I read you can use a m2 ssd inside 15" macbook with a cheap adaptor.
 
Could you get buy with a small external drive? The Samsung T3 is a small external SSD with USB-C connectivity, available in 256 GB, 1TB and 2TB. I use one for my photos when I am traveling. I shot large raw images and use the T3 to save all of the images and leave on my laptop only the best one that I will work on with Lightroom and Photoshop.
 
Gjwilly said:
Either way, it's irrelevant.
Click to expand...

Not really. The original post said that the 1TB SSD used in the rMBP had a market value of £300(approx. $360). The point I am making is that the drive that Apple is using is valued closer to the £510(approx $620) Samsung SSD.
 
alexjholland said:
I have to START with the high-spec model at £1,949 to choose a bigger hard drive and am looking at £2,489 for the 1TB SSD and obligatory 16GB RAM.
Click to expand...

Just a quick note - this 'top spec' model is only the base model with the SSD upgraded from 256GB to 512GB, as all the other specs are the same. So in actual fact, you can configure the base model with 512GB. The price difference is what Apple would have charged were it a BTO option.

I've gone for the stock 'top spec' 13" - I really wished 16GB RAM was standard, but I was already over budget and prefer more storage over more RAM, so 8GB will have to do.
 
jerryk said:
Until they get their replacement working better, it is not useful except for a few cases. Sure you get more storage, but at the cost of 2/3 of the throughput. The factory drives for 2015 and 2016 (non touch) seq traxnfer at up to 1.5 Gbps and the OWC up to 0.5 Gbps.
Click to expand...

Which is perfectly fine for sample libraries.
 
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Right, I think I've found my solution: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/produc...133-inch-macBook-pro-25ghz-dual-core-intel-i5

Refurbished 2012 Macbook Pro i5 for £759.

+ 1TB SSD for £300
+ 8GB RAM for £50

Total cost = £1,109.

It's half the cost/£1,000 cheaper than any new MacBook with a 1TB SSD and should make music and edit video files for a year or two, until I can afford to buy a maxed-out MacBook Pro.

I'm basically swapping my 2010 iMac (with a few hundred quid extra) for a perfectly-capable and slightly-newer Macbook Pro.

This seems the sensible option, no?
 
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alexjholland said:
Right, I think I've found my solution: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/produc...133-inch-macBook-pro-25ghz-dual-core-intel-i5

Refurbished 2012 Macbook Pro i5 for £759.

+ 1TB SSD for £300
+ 8GB RAM for £50

Total cost = £1,109.

It's half the cost/£1,000 cheaper than any new MacBook with a 1TB SSD and should make music and edit video files for a year or two, until I can afford to buy a maxed-out MacBook Pro.

I'm basically swapping my 2010 iMac (with a few hundred quid extra) for a perfectly-capable and slightly-newer Macbook Pro.

This seems the sensible option, no?
Click to expand...

Thats 2012 though - Id never go for a machine 4 years old, hell mines hit year 5 and I'm ready to upgrade :/
 
alexjholland said:
Right, I think I've found my solution: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/produc...133-inch-macBook-pro-25ghz-dual-core-intel-i5

Refurbished 2012 Macbook Pro i5 for £759.

+ 1TB SSD for £300
+ 8GB RAM for £50

Total cost = £1,109.

It's half the cost/£1,000 cheaper than any new MacBook with a 1TB SSD and should make music and edit video files for a year or two, until I can afford to buy a maxed-out MacBook Pro.

I'm basically swapping my 2010 iMac (with a few hundred quid extra) for a perfectly-capable and slightly-newer Macbook Pro.

This seems the sensible option, no?
Click to expand...

PM me if you are looking for an alternative.
 
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