MBA to MBP, advice please.

[slight32]

I'm using a late 2014 13" Air (4gb / 128gb) MBA, which up to now has been great at everything I've thrown at it. But now I'm throwing stuff at it that it doesn't like. I've started using FCP X and Pixelmator, which work reasonably well if they are the only applications running, but if I want to listen to music, run an external drive or do anything that requires power, it all slooooooows down. I will need to use FCP more and more, for more intensive projects than I am now, so I think I'll need to swap for an MBP.

My question is, if i want to run FCP, Pixelmator, Outlook, iTunes and Onedrive all at the same time am I going to need i5/8gb/128gb or i7/16gb/512gb or something in between. I'd prefer to keep to the least expensive option, so what is it?

 

[TheNotoriousMAZ]

All those apps should run just fine on any current MBP. If you are creating many large files, you may want to get a larger SSD. You'll get 8GB RAM standard (double and faster than your Air), so I'll leave it up to you if you think upgrading to 16GB would be overkill.

If 4K video is something you will be working with regularly, then you may need to consider more extensive upgrades.

 

[EvilEvil]

Pick up a i7/16gb/512gb! Get an Apple refurb if you want to save some money.

 

[T5BRICK]

My question is, if i want to run FCP, Pixelmator, Outlook, iTunes and Onedrive all at the same time am I going to need i5/8gb/128gb or i7/16gb/512gb or something in between. I'd prefer to keep to the least expensive option, so what is it?

I'd go with the option in the middle with a 256GB or 512GB SSD. You probably don't need 16GB of RAM, but if you want to upgrade something, that isn't a bad choice. You definitely don't need the 3.1GHz i7 CPU; it's less than 5% performance increase over the 2.9GHz i5.