I've got a 15" Retina MacBook Pro, personally I'd say yes as the screen is gorgeous. I also agree with keysofanxiety in regards to the hardware.
that is so parroted and completely wrong! It has all the updated Software "El Capitan" and hardware except the processor (2.5 & turbo'd to 3.1 Ghz) and ram, everything else has been updated, 3.0 USB, 4.4 Bluetooth etc. Mine was built in May 2016, I paid 899$, installed a SSD 240GB 59$ and 16gig ram 55$, plus without Retina you don't get "staingate" Retina is only good if you use the highest resolution which makes all the text small and the human eye cannot detect all the benefits of Retina it's useless unless you do photo-editing for a living IMO. I got 9hr on a full charge surfing the net, If you buy a new "Retina" MacBook make sure you get the ram you need because you cannot add it afterwards (soldered) minimum 16gig costs is 1600$, I have 1013$ in mine and the higher priced MacBooks cannot do anything this one can't and hardly any faster. The only reason it has "2012" in the discribtion is because the 2012 model is the last one with a DVD/RW installed.
Sorry but you are wrong on a few accounts here. It doesn't have all the same hardware.
The Retina has PCI-E NVME based SSD as opposed to SATA III AHCI SSD on the non Retina. So the storage on the current retina has quicker read and writes with much lower latency as NVME it doesn't require register reads to issue commands unlike AHCI.
Retina - Intel Iris 6100 Graphics vs non Retina Intel HD4000 graphics. This also means the retina MacBook Pro has a Broadwell CPU and the non Retina has a Ivy Bridge CPU so the Retina will have a more efficient processor built on a smaller nm scale and supports more instructions sets. There are a lot more factors than GHz when comparing CPUs.
Retina - LPDDR3 1866MHz RAM vs non Retina - DDR3 1600MHz RAM. So faster and more power efficient memory in the Retina.
Thunderbolt 2 (20Gbps), on the Retina and Thunderbolt (10Gbps), on the non Retina.
Wireless AC on the Retina and wireless N on the non Retina. If the OP has an Apple Watch and wants to make use of the auto unlock feature in macOS Sierra then they'll need AC.
So there is big difference between the two hardware wise.
The bit about Retina only being good at the highest resolution is nonsense. I went from a non Retina 15" MBP to a Retina 15" and due to the scaling the screen estate is the same however the Retina is so much sharper. Also photos are displayed at the higher resolution whilst the editor UI is still scaled.
About the only thing I can agree with you on is making sure the required amount of RAM is selected as it can't be upgraded later. The same goes for the SSD as they are also soldered in the newest Retinas.
