Figured I'd share my private message response here publicly in case it may help anyone:
I don't have the nTB model so I can't speak about the differences between the two CPU wise. But from what I've read it does tend to throttle a lot faster because of the single fan and lack of ventilation underneath. So sure, you can do most of what I do with mine, but I'd imagine it'll choke a lot quicker which would be frustrating.
I was in the same position you are in and at first was planning to get a NTB model purely because it was cheaper and I did read it has better battery life. At first I thought the NTB was just the same as the TB model without the touch bar (which in all fairness I could live without after having not used it much on my 15" 2016 TB MBP. TouchID would be missed though
)..
But my mind was flipped as I did more research into the differences. The NTB obviously:
- Has a much lower clocked CPU (2.3ghz) which CAN turboboost up to 3.6 or something. As opposed to 3.1ghz base and 3.5ghz turbo on the TB model.
- Has a weaker GPU which would inevitably hurt Photoshop/FCP rendering.
- Has a single fan = smaller heatsink and to make matters worse no side ventilation on the bottom. And I don't need to tell you, long periods of heat will shorten the life of the hardware and potentially have side effects like affecting the temperamental keyboards that these new machines have.
- Has only 2 TB3 ports... which in fairness shouldn't be a huge issue. I only ever use 2 at most anyways, but it's nice having 2 ports on BOTH sides. These type-c ports on the MBP's are another point of failure because they are soldered onto the motherboard... and they are prone to being loose over time or damaging the motherboard/port if it is bent in a certain way which could potentially happen. So having extra ports is always nice.
- Has No touch-bar or touch id. The touch bar isn't life changing and you could live without it just fine, but it's nice to have it nonetheless. And just touching the power button and having it log me in is a pretty neat feature.
That's what skewed me towards the TB baseline model, and I also found a new one on eBay for £1199 as opposed to £1749 it would have cost me from Apple! So I did get mine for a bargain and made the decision much easier.
Also threads like this didn't do the nTB any favors, not just the OP but others around the forums have aired similar complaints with regards to overheating/throttling and the side effects that came with that:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-macbook-pro-13-non-tb-review.2056971/
Naturally I am a little biased as the TB model is what I have and I have no complaints aside from the fact the new keyboards don't have as much depth as the old ones did
I also noticed High Sierra eliminated a lot of the UI lag I'd experienced with Sierra on down on these retina 13" MBP's so that's also made this thing a joy to use. On my baseline 2015 13" it seemed to choke when I was in a hangouts/skype call (or both simutaneously which I did often) and the UI would get insanely laggy with CPU usage at 100% which led me to sell it immediately... whether it was a bottleneck of the CPU trying to run these high res displays or what I don't know. But since then I understood the importance of getting the best CPU/GPU that's on offer. But thankfully I've had none of those issues with this TB model.
As for 'future-proofing' you have to understand that technology moves so fast. I don't know if anyone can guarantee one of these machines will last you 5+ years. If components don't fail, the battery will certainly degrade. And you must remember, these 13" MBP's use dual-core processors... as larger machines and desktops are already on quad-cores moving towards 12 cores and beyond.
Also 8GB ram should be fine, as long as you aren't producing feature films in 4k/8k. I can't say I have ran into issues related to low ram but I am not saying it's not possible... depending on your workload. If you anticipate RAM being an issue in something you are working on, you can always be conservative and close out other apps. But I've never needed to with my workload.
Oh and I know it's not too important but just to stress... it is nice that the TB model runs at a much higher base clock (3.1ghz as opposed to 2.3 on the nTB) so it'll handle more demanding tasks right off the bat without needing to break a sweat.
Hope I could help.
