Too much expectation or too slow for my usage?

[Glmnet1]

I received my new 13" MBP 16 512 3 days ago and I'm impressed by the small form factor and enjoy the beautiful retina display as well as the possibility of being able to run a 4k external display. I'm starting to find some useful things to do with the touchbar even though it's a lot less useful when I'm on an external keyboard.

My only concern, and it's a fairly big one, is that I'm kind of disappointed by the performance. I'm coming from an old 2011 15" with a broken GPU so evidently the performance is better but I was expecting much more. As soon as I use it even for some basic tasks the fans start running and it starts to feel sluggish for no apparent reason.

I'm using it for web development most of the time and some light photo editing, all of it I was able to do on my old MBP even though it struggled a little so I was expecting this one to handle those same tasks without a sweat. Looking at benchmarks and specs this computer is supposedly at least twice as fast on every aspects and sometimes up to 10 times.

At least memory pressure is much better now that I have 16gb instead of 4.

So, what should I do? Is this normal and as good as I'm going to get in 2018? Would an eGPU make it feel much faster? Would I see a difference if I went with an iMac instead? What about a beefy desktop PC?

I attached graphs of a few minutes of photo editing from the built in GPU History and from Intel Power Gadget hoping it can shed some light on the slow downs.

 

[Ma2k5]

I'd be more interested to see your activity monitor to see what you are using. Web development is not a very taxing task - most people are more than managing to do that on far weaker machines all the time.

 

[Cavman]

I'd be more interested to see your activity monitor to see what you are using. Web development is not a very taxing task - most people are more than managing to do that on far weaker machines all the time.

Those frequency and temperature charts look like most MacBook Pros did BEFORE the updated High Sierra 10.13.16 patch. Have you checked for software updates? Are you updated to 10.13.16? If so, then please post some information about your Activity Monitor.

FWIW, I have found that Chrome + java/flash on webpages really spin up the fans.

 

[Glmnet1]

I'd be more interested to see your activity monitor to see what you are using. Web development is not a very taxing task - most people are more than managing to do that on far weaker machines all the time.

Here it is. Docker is usually not that high, I think it was still initializing. It's currently at 5%. The rest is my typical workload. It wasn't particularly slow when I took the screenshot.

This is with my photo software. When I took this one it felt quite slow.

In any case, it's not extremely slow. I'm "managing" just fine, it's just that when paying such a big amount for a laptop I was expecting it to feel very fast all the time on such tasks. Currently it doesn't feel as if I'm going to be keeping it for as long as I kept my last one but I'm not sure what could help, this already felt overkill when I bought it.
[doublepost=1534862888][/doublepost]

Those frequency and temperature charts look like most MacBook Pros did BEFORE the updated High Sierra 10.13.16 patch. Have you checked for software updates? Are you updated to 10.13.16? If so, then please post some information about your Activity Monitor.

FWIW, I have found that Chrome + java/flash on webpages really spin up the fans.

Yes I did and it's up to date.

Yes, it definitely feels better with Safari instead of Chrome but I need Chrome for my work and this is exactly the kind of things I thought I wouldn't have to worry about with a new computer.

 

[Ma2k5]

Here it is. Docker is usually not that high, I think it was still initializing. It's currently at 5%. The rest is my typical workload. It wasn't particularly slow when I took the screenshot.


View attachment 777040

This is with my photo software. When I took this one it felt quite slow.

View attachment 777041

In any case, it's not extremely slow. I'm "managing" just fine, it's just that when paying such a big amount for a laptop I was expecting it to feel very fast all the time on such tasks. Currently it doesn't feel as if I'm going to be keeping it for as long as I kept my last one but I'm not sure what could help, this already felt overkill when I bought it.

A lot of the times slowness isn't down to the hardware, but how well the software is optimised for macOS. Eg I have heard noise about docker being slow on macOS (may need to use caching). Even popular programmes like Chrome somtimes don't play well with macOS.

 

[Glmnet1]

A lot of the times slowness isn't down to the hardware, but how well the software is optimised for macOS. Eg I have heard noise about docker being slow on macOS (may need to use caching). Even popular programmes like Chrome somtimes don't play well with macOS.

That might be it Even though I'm not a big fan of Windows, I'll try to work from a bootcamp partition for a while before the end of my 14 days to see if it's better.
[doublepost=1534863929][/doublepost]Actually, since I'll already be spending time on setting up a new environment, do you guys think I should try another device? I'm tempted by the price tag of the MateBook Pro X for instance. If it feels better on Windows on that machine then I would really have no reason to spend the extra grand on the MBP. I think I could use VMs the few times I need to compile apps for iOS.

I'm just a bit worried about not being able to return one or the other to the Apple or Microsoft store.

 

[Ma2k5]

That might be it Even though I'm not a big fan of Windows, I'll try to work from a bootcamp partition for a while before the end of my 14 days to see if it's better.
[doublepost=1534863929][/doublepost]Actually, since I'll already be spending time on setting up a new environment, do you guys think I should try another device? I'm tempted by the price tag of the MateBook Pro X for instance. If it feels better on Windows on that machine then I would really have no reason to spend the extra grand on the MBP. I think I could use VMs the few times I need to compile apps for iOS.

I'm just a bit worried about not being able to return one or the other to the Apple or Microsoft store.

Depending on your toolset/workflow, Windows might perform better. From personal experience I found my MacBook to do things great on what I would say is a limited set of tools - where Windows would otherwise excel (and usually have a bit more capabilities).