New rMBP 13 vs. Current rMBP 15

[caddison]

Advice, please...

I've been ready to pull the trigger on a fully loaded rMBP 15 for a few weeks. I knew the Broadwell wasn't ready for the 15 for today's special event, but I waited to order anyway in case there might have been some other spiffy little upgrades.

Well, as we know now, the rMBP 15 received no love of any kind.

That puts me in a bit of a quandary and I could use some advice...

1.) Do I take the gamble waiting for a new Broadwell 15? Or even wait for a possible Skylake release, knowing that it might not even happen at all this year? The Broadwell quad-core processors are supposed to be ready by end of July, so maybe they'll be ready to ship by October? Ugh... I hate gambling.

2.) Do I get one of the new fully loaded Broadwell 13's and save myself a few hundred bucks over a current rMBP 15?

3.) Or... Do I do what I was going to do a month ago and buy a fully decked out 15" that is available now and forget today ever happened.

The Force Touch trackpad, faster flash storage, and longer battery life of the new 13 are all appealing, but, as a designer who is often on-the-go, I'm worried about the loss of display real estate.

Any advice anyone could give would be fantastic...

Also... does anyone know how the new Broadwell 3.1GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7 in the new rMBP 13 stacks up against the Haswell 2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 that you can get in the 15?

(My apologies if I don't have all the terminology right, here... I'm trying to keep up with y'all. Heh...)

Thanks!

 

[jjfcpa]

Same quandary as you. Need the real estate, but love the specs of the 13 rMBP.

 

[uptempos]

I bought the 15 inch a week ago at best buy when they had the 200$ off and another 10% off which brought it down to 1619 before tax...im debating if the extra 300$ right now is worth the quad core..real estate for the new tech. I am leaning towards just keeping the 15inch right now..

 

[mkasu]

I just bought a 15" MBP (the 2499$ version) last Friday with the option to exchange it if something fun is getting released today.

While the new 13" MBP looks decent, I've been using a 15" MBP for the last 7 year and I've really grown close to this form factor. I won't exchange it to something 13". Obviously, a 15" refresh would have been great, but the quad core Broadwell processors haven't been released yet, so there wasn't really an option for a refresh.

I am very satisfied with my purchase from Friday. If you can wait for June, you could probably wait for Broadwell at WWDC, but I myself dislike to play the specs-waiting-game.
There will always be some kind of upgrade on the horizon and you need to decide the point in time when you need a new laptop to work with, rather than some upgrades, which in the end probably won't even be as noticeable as expected (compared to not having a decent laptop for half a year or whatever time of waiting).

 

[xiwong]

Advice, please...
1.) Do I take the gamble waiting for a new Broadwell 15? Or even wait for a possible Skylake release, knowing that it might not even happen at all this year? The Broadwell quad-core processors are supposed to be ready by end of July, so maybe they'll be ready to ship by October? Ugh... I hate gambling.

2.) Do I get one of the new fully loaded Broadwell 13's and save myself a few hundred bucks over a current rMBP 15?

3.) Or... Do I do what I was going to do a month ago and buy a fully decked out 15" that is available now and forget today ever happened.

Also... does anyone know how the new Broadwell 3.1GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7 in the new rMBP 13 stacks up against the Haswell 2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 that you can get in the 15?

Thanks!

I'm in the same boat as you. My 2012 cMBP is on its last legs and I've been ready to buy a replacement, Mac or PC, for a few weeks.

1. While recent reports say that Skylake S (quad core) is supposed to be on track for a late 2015 launch, I don't see how its possible unless they skip Broadwell H (quad core). With Broadwell H launching in H2 2015, it will have maybe a month of mainstream availability before Skylake. But at this point Haswell is so old it is hard for me to buy another Haswell system with the opportunity of something new in a few months. Skylake S though, whenever it launches, will be an upgrade worth waiting for.

2. I would get a rMBP 13 Broadwell if it suits your needs. After using 15, 14, and 13" computers, I don't think switching between the form factors is challenging if size is your only concern.

3. The 750M is a rebranded 650M, which came out in Q1 2012. Now, there are small, light 14" gaming systems with GTX 970Ms for around $1.5k; I don't expect apple to put in something that good but the 9xx series is a huge improvement. I can't bring myself to spend ~$2.5k on a computer with such a bad dGPU. And I can't bring myself to spend $2k computer this large without a dGPU.

The Haswell quad will blow away the Broadwell i7 dual. The older Ivy Bridge quad will as well. Single threads should be around equal, but in this day I can't think of many applications favoring single-thread performance.