mid 2012 MBP or late 2012 (r)

[adam9c1]

I am in need of a new 13" (to me MBP) as I'm moving away from 2010 MBP.

I like the idea of upgradability of the non-retina model and already have drives I can use in one.
Please help me understand arguments of going with the retina model instead.
Both devices have the same graphics card and CPU bump is minimal. Is the (r) SSD that much faster?
I looked at mactracker and the benchmarks are slightly faster for the unibody/non retina model.

Thanks

 

[cruisin]

The 2012 retina uses SATA for the SSD. So if you get a 3rd party SSD with equal or better performance to the official one, you should have similar performance as the retina model. Late 2013 models and later use PCIExpress instead of SATA, so the performance improves a bit.

Does the mid 2012 model have USB 3? I'm fairly sure the retina models have USB 3 but I'm not sure when they moved over from USB 2. The performance bump is useful.

The retina model has a HDMI port and two DisplayPort/Thunderbolt ports but it removes the Ethernet and FireWire ports. So dual external screens is much easier, but you need dongles for the Ethernet and FireWire ports.

The retina screen has to render 4x as many pixels, so it is not surprising that the benchmark might be lower. Although I assume this is for GPU benchmarks as CPU benchmarks shouldn't be affected.

It depends on how you value the removable ram, a DVD drive (which can become secondary storage), external ports, and the retina screen.

Mostly it depends on how you like the retina screen, in my opinion. It is sharper and has better colours, but not everyone can see or cares about the sharpness. Plus some mid 2012 models came with a matte option that the retina models stopped offering (with the included anti-reflective coating it was supposedly unnecessary).

 

[adam9c1]

Mid 2012 does have USB 3 ports.
I think I'll watch the keynote from back then, lol, to get familiar with all the new features.
Retina introduces power nap.
I think the mid 2012 is like a cMP Frankenstein.

I'm strongly leaning towards that.

My wife has a 2011 15" and fairly new 15" for work. I'll compare those two screens side-by-side to look at the differences to give me some ideas comparing gamut etc.

 

[cruisin]

The retina model also introduces near silent fans that are near silent at low speeds and are quieter at higher speeds compared to the older models. It was very impressive for me, as I moved from a HP that had a audible fan at all times.

 

[Audit13]

The fan on my early 2011 13" MBP is quiet most of the time. The odd time when I am performing cpu-intensive tasks, the fan is definitely audible, although it still seems quieter than fans I've heard on some Windows laptops.

For the late 2013 13 MBP, the fan noise is virtually non-existent at most times.

 

[adam9c1]

Won auction for Mid-2012 13" MBP. Waiting for it to arrive.

waiting and waiting....
now shipper tells me the package is lost.

So no MBP for me.