Hey guys, unable to decide on what to buy. Have any of you bought the pro and would've rather had the Air instead? I use iPhoto, surf the web, and gaming. For me its either a Pro or MacMini + an Air.
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Pro vs. Air
- Thread starter JeffNewland
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I have always lusted after the Air but needed the extra ports. Never had any regrets, but the second Apple releases a 13" Retina I'm all over it. If you are OK with the minimal ports on the Air go for it. It's a great machine.
there are only two deciding factors between the MBP and the MBA.
1. How high of a priority is portability?
2. How high of a priority are the ports?
for me i needed the portability of the 11" Air more than anything else. if you need the connectivity go for the MBP. both are powerful machines and even overkill for everyday tasks. if you're going to do some very heavy lifting that might tip the scales towards the MBP but it wasn't a factor for me.
1. How high of a priority is portability?
2. How high of a priority are the ports?
for me i needed the portability of the 11" Air more than anything else. if you need the connectivity go for the MBP. both are powerful machines and even overkill for everyday tasks. if you're going to do some very heavy lifting that might tip the scales towards the MBP but it wasn't a factor for me.
If you are even remotely serious about gaming I recommend the pro. The MBA only has intel GPU which doesn't perform very well. The pro has a 650m that is overclocked to run like a 660m and should be fine for gaming. If you can live with playing games for the next however long you plan on having this laptop on low settings (not sure how long the intel GPU will be able to actually play current games) then go for the air.
I would not even attempt to play any games on an Air! You really need a discrete gpu for most modern games.
You should take into consideration that the mini is not that powerful. You can either have a dual chip with mediocre/tolerable graphics (may or may not be important to you) or you can have the server model with a quad laptop cpu and discrete graphics. Overall you could have a more powerful machine buying a refurb 2011 pro than the mini for less money spent overall. The Air has been updated this year. Geekbench isn't a perfect reference, but 64 bit geekbench quad/server mini = 9448 and i7 air says 7575 (weird number, I wonder about that). The 13" pro is listed at 8585 or 7717 for the cheaper one. Unless refurb pricing or third party retailers offer a better deal on the mini, this basically makes that a waste of money for your purposes. The 13" pro isn't even remotely heavy. I'm not sure how the HD4000 compares to the discrete mini, but the HD4000 is clocked higher in the 13" pro than the Air.
I'm trying to say that going for 2 machines here is going to cost you more for very little benefit if you're buying today. Also not everyone knows that the HD4000 is clocked differently between the two machines. In case anyone is going to mention the HDD vs SSD point, the mini would have an HDD by default.
Edit: I'm not saying the 13" pro is an amazing gaming system either. I'm merely saying that the others look pointless to me here. If you're trying to save money a refurb 2011 15" is not a bad deal at current pricing, and most of them have better graphics cards than any option in the mini paired with a quad cpu. Keep in mind ANY of these machines listed will get very hot while gaming.
I'm trying to say that going for 2 machines here is going to cost you more for very little benefit if you're buying today. Also not everyone knows that the HD4000 is clocked differently between the two machines. In case anyone is going to mention the HDD vs SSD point, the mini would have an HDD by default.
Edit: I'm not saying the 13" pro is an amazing gaming system either. I'm merely saying that the others look pointless to me here. If you're trying to save money a refurb 2011 15" is not a bad deal at current pricing, and most of them have better graphics cards than any option in the mini paired with a quad cpu. Keep in mind ANY of these machines listed will get very hot while gaming.