MBP 8th Gen. & 10th Gen. Compared

[Dhock_Holiday]

I have both the 2020 MBP 10 Gen. and the 2020 MBP 8th Gen. side by side with me these past few days and I figured I would post a comparison for those considering either or. Both are base specs in their repective categories without any upgrades, the only difference being the colors. It's for my GF's as her old MacBook Air has a screen that's about to die.

8th Gen Space Grey (i5, 8GB, 256GB SSD) compared to my 10th Gen. Silver (i5, 16GB, 512GB)

• To my surprise even though both have the same keyboards, the keys on the 8th Gen. are much stiffer that my 13 inch. They also don't have any play or wobble in them like mine does. This will of course depend on your personal preference but as a touch typist I prefer the lighter keys on my computer. Still, I was surprised by the vastly different feel and actuation force.
• Fan noise is noticeable on the 8th Gen. it comes on more often then with my 10th Gen. The noise itself is also much more 'pronounced' even at slow speeds. The 10 Gen. operates much quieter and has a 'smoother' fan noise when its being thermally pushed. Which is to be expected due to the twin fans and by extension greater heat fin density.
• I thought 8GB would not be enough for me but macOS does an amazing job of utilizing the RAM, I had to really push it with some crazy Excel tables to get that RAM to finally give up. Very impressed with how 'only' 8GB performed.
• Raw performance wise, I won't lie. They both feel identical in day to day tasks, unless you're really pushing the 8th Gen. you won't notice a difference between the two. I only started to see performance degradation once I started maxing out the RAM, otherwise they performed about the same.
• For some reason my multi-port USB dongle worked great with the 8th Gen. but wasn't recognized by my 10th Gen. Don't know why.
• I found the display of the 8th Gen. to be slightly brighter than mine, again this falls within manufacturing variances
• Just 2 thunderbolt ports is unfortunate, even worse is that they are both on the same side. Why didn't Apple put one on each side? Its asinine because it makes it difficult to plug in two things at once because of the limited space. Incredibly annoying and frustrating.

I'll add to the list as I transition back to my own computer tomorrow.

Cheers.

 

[tthomson]

I have the 8th-gen with 16 GB and I love it. Unlike your experience I rarely hear the fans. The handful of times I have heard the fans they've been barely audible and usually turn off quickly. Performance and battery life are excellent, and I use Chrome with multiple tabs! Also my keyboard feels great, not stiff or uncomfortable at all.

 

[Supra Mac]

I know you asked about the WIFI, did you confirm the theoretical transmission rates of the two? Thanks.

 

[jabbr]

so you're the second person I've seen report that the 8th gen and 10th gen have different keyboards. Now I'm really wanting to go to the store and check that out.

 

[citivolus]

I know you asked about the WIFI, did you confirm the theoretical transmission rates of the two? Thanks.

I had both of them and compared the WiFi performance. The 8th Gen has a theoretical transmission rate of 866Mbps and the 10th Gen has a theoretical transmission rate of 1300 Mbps. In reality, the 10th Gen was about 10% faster.

 

[Dhock_Holiday]

I know you asked about the WIFI, did you confirm the theoretical transmission rates of the two? Thanks.

I wasn't able to test this conclusively as my home network is limited and the speed fluctuates on even an wired ethernet connection. I do wish someone with the right equipment would benchmark both as I would be curious to know as well.