Which MBP would you prefer

[sergiobaschi]

At home, I’ll have a docking station and an eGPU with a powerful video card (such as Vega 64 or Radeon VII).

Would you prefer the 13”, i7, 16 GB, 512 GB or the 15”, i7 2.2, 16 GB, 555X, 512 GB?

From what I’ve read, the 4c i7 in the 13” is actually faster in almost all scenarios than the 6c i7 in the 15”. The price difference (about $US 200) is negligible.

What would you chose?

 

[maflynn]

I personally like the larger form factor that the 15" laptop provides, so all things being equal, the 15" wins out.

The 15" laptop is faster in all metrics then the 13" You get more cores, and the GPU of course is superior. I've not seen any information stating that the 13" is a faster laptop then the 15"

 

[MengkeMary]

I would choose the 15" model. There are various reasons, such as the performance of 15" is much better, and the base model gets 16GB memory, etc. However, the main reason for me is the screen size. A 15 inches machine gives you much larger screen than the 13 inches one, which I personally think is the most importance if this machine is your workhorse. Whether you use it for programming, writing or other contents production, a larger screen would be so nice to have.

 

[chekie]

From benchmark database:

13" i7 single core performance is slighter faster than 15" i7 (5140 vs 4913). But its multiple core performance is a lot slower (17760 vs 21175). This is hardly surprising considering 15" i7 has two more cores and higher TDP. (In addition, 15" has DDR4 RAM while 13" only has DDR3 RAM)

If price difference is negligible to you, go with 15". Otherwise I would choose 13", because if you are going to use it with docking station and eGPU, the discrete GPU and larger screen of 15" would be a waste. And 13" is more portable if you need to use it on the go.

 

[ascender]

I've recently picked up a second hand 15" and this is the longest I've used a 15 for, it was always 13s I had. I'll be honest, I'd really struggle to go back to a smaller laptop screen - its such a difference when you can have a couple of apps open side by side and/or are working on it for any length of time.

Unless you need the portability of the 13, and by portability I mean if you literally have to get a small factor laptop because of your inability to carry it, you're always working on tiny tables or have to run with your laptop on your back to work, I'd be tempted to recommend the 15 every time now.

 

[currahee2100]

In order to meet power requires, the 6 core... or any cpus with more cores will have less clock speed than their lesser core counterparts. Single core performance wise, the less cores you have the faster they can be in some applications. There are some exceptions to this.

6+ cores become incredibly useful for video editing and if you're mass editing photos.

 

[jerryk]

I would also go with the 15". I am not sure why the 13" would be faster, except perhaps on a single core benchmark. But any application that can take advantage of multiple cores should be able to use the 6 core processor to be faster.