Will the 2017/2018 MacBook Pro satisfy my needs?

[james010101]

Hi there! I'm currently in the market for a new 13"/15" laptop, which I hope will be able to handle my needs:

1. General web browsing - youtube, social media etc.
2. Office work - MS office suite and the mac os equivalent (pages / numbers / keynote)
3. Light graphical work - Final cut, photoshop etc.
4. Gaming - Dota 2 / LoL (at least high 720p high settings, would be great if its 1080p medium-high settings)(hoping that the laptop can handle other future games as well)
5. Portability - I travel quite a bit, and I hope that the new laptop will not be too heavy that makes carrying it around a massive burden.
6. Battery life - more than 10 hours
7. VM - may run Windows via vmware

I'm currently on a late 2013 13" MacBook pro (i5 dual core + 8gb ram), and its starting to be too slow for my needs. I hate the fact that it's lagging even when running final cut, and that I can't even run Dota 2 at 720p (very low settings) smoothly.

I understand that the 2018 MacBook pro isn't released yet, but based on speculation/rumors, it seems like the 15" (potentially the 13" as well) will have a vega gpu / significantly upgraded igpu.

So my questions are: Will the 2018 MacBook pro satisfy my needs? Should I get the 13" or 15"?

 

[Sterkenburg]

It will. But as for battery life, even in case it's improved, you'd need a very light workload to reach 10 hours. I wouldn't expect to get anywhere near that amount doing photo/video work, let alone gaming.

As for the second question: since your workload will include Final Cut and some gaming, the 15" is an easy recommendation because of the more powerful discrete GPU. If you didn't need a good GPU I'd say you should get the 13" for portability (especially in case it gains 2 additional CPU cores as rumored, which would be great). But I personally think the 15" is still very portable compared to earlier models.

 

[smallcoffee]

So my questions are: Will the 2018 MacBook pro satisfy my needs? Should I get the 13" or 15"?

1. Yes (obviously)
2. Yes
3. Yes easily
4. Yes - mostly. DOTA2 should be able to run at ultra settings.
5. Well, it weighs like two pounds.
6. Depends on usage. You're obviously not getting anywhere near 10 hours playing DOTA2, but display brightness at half will get you around 9-11 hours depending on usage - activities like web/email etc.
8. Yeah definitely. I run VMs all the time.

Definitely get the 15" based on what you described here - and my responses are based on the 15" model.

 

[Fishrrman]

Question:
"Will the 2017/2018 MacBook Pro satisfy my needs?"

No way possible to answer that question, because no one in this forum (who is at liberty to say) can tell you what the 2018 MBPro will be like yet.

Let's rephrase your original question:
"Will the 2017 MBPro satisfy your needs"?

That's better.
But even so, we can't provide the answer.
Only YOU can.