What should I get? 15" MBP? or 21.5" iMac + 13" MBP?

I'm waiting for the refresh, but currently, the base 21.5" iMac and 15" MBP are pretty similar in specs. only difference is the $600 price difference. assuming the refresh maintains the similarities, i'm thinking about putting that $600 i wouldn't have spent on the 15" MBP + all the accessories i would have gotten to make it a desktop replacement (stand, keyboard, displayport to hdmi, etc) and getting a base 13" MBP when it comes out. all in all, would be maybe an additional $400 i would have spent.

I'm going to be using the computer for photo editing, light gaming, and a little bit of movie editing (probably iMovie). Should i just get the 15" mbp when the refresh comes out? or should i get the 21.5" iMac first and then wait for the 13" to come out?

also, getting a 15" and a separate display really isnt much of an option because im limited on space. the 13" wouldnt be on the desk at all. Thanks in advance for your advice/opinions!

 

If you have the desk space for a 21.5" iMac, you have the space for a 15" MBP and an external monitor. There are stands for the MBP that make it take up very little horizontal space so you can essentially put it anywhere. You can pick up a 22" secondary display for a really low price (Best Buy is having a sale on a Dell 21.5" LED LCD 1080p monitor for $160). Add the cost of the stand (~$70) and you are still spending less than if you were to go the iMac and 13" MBP route. The 15" MBP is actually really light as-is and can easily be taken out for portable work. It would essentially give you the same performance as the iMac and you wouldn't have to worry about transferring your work from one system to another.

Additionally, if you ever did decide to work on video editing while on the go, the 13" MBP's display resolution (assuming Apple keeps it the same) is pretty low and things can get cramped after a while. I owned a 13" MBP for about a year before I sold it for a 13" MBA. I wasn't using the optical drive, the 13" MBP seems priced way too high for what it is (especially compared to the competition), and the display resolution eventually got to me. The 13" MBA has the same resolution as a non-cutomized 15" MBP.

All-in-all, I think going with a 15" MBP and secondary monitor for home use would be the best route. The space wouldn't be any much more than an iMac, it would be ~150-$200 more than you were originally planning on spending for the 15" MBP, it would still be less than going the iMac and 13" MBP route, and you wouldn't have to worry about constantly transferring files across multiple PC's by keeping everything on one system.

 

certainly the best route especially for imovie and FCP-X, gaming on the imac will be very little different than the big MBP 15" ( both use mobile GPU's ) but the portability is handy for small on the go edits

 

Vouching for either 15" + external, or iMac + Macbook Air.

I really don't think the MBP 13 is all that small given the current dimensions of "true" portability.

Or eff it and go iMac + iPad + bluetooth keyboard... but that's really pushing it if you're one of the MANY that require desktop applications to function (e.g. photoshop, any of the many IDEs).

 

As Bill Nye said, iMac + either MacBook Air or iPad. You get so much more for your money by doing that instead of buying a MacBook Pro 15 or 17.

The last thing I'd spend my money on is a MBP 13. Worst value in Apple's current lineup in my opinion. $1200 for a machine that's neither particularly powerful (dual-core CPU, no GPU) nor particularly portable (somewhat heavy for its class) and with unremarkable screen resolution (both the Vaio SA and the ThinkPad T420 offer 1600x900; the MBP13 only has 1280x800).

 

so you guys would get a 13" mba over say...a 13" mbp + SSD?
i can't do ipad + bluetooth keyboard. tried using ipad with daily tasks...just didnt work well for me

 

The MBA has a higher resolution, is actually priced competitively, is able to perform tasks at about the same speed at a 13" MBP, and is really portable. I had a 13" MBP and sold it down the line for a 13" MBA as I wasn't using the optical drive, the lower resolution was problematic in MATLAB, and the 13" MBA is a lot thinner and lighter than the 13" MBP. I'm now kind of the mindset that if you are going to get a MBP, go for the 15" model. It offers the same overall power as the 17" one and isn't that much heavier than the 13" MBP.

I'm not 100% sure why you would get more for your money by purchasing two machines when you can buy a single 15" MBP that is just as powerful as the iMac and at least 4 times as powerful as a MBA while not having to worry about constantly transferring files though. To me it would make a lot more sense to have one machine and then when you come home, you essentially plug it into everything transforming it into a desktop. If I had your budget, I would go with a 15" MBP with an external monitor along with a bunch of accessories instead of spending the extra money on two systems while having to setup some type of cloud/NAS configuration to easily move files (unless you like constantly having to use a thumb drive) especially when the 15" MBP is going to be just as powerful as the iMac and more powerful than the MBA.

Things would be different if you already had a desktop, then I would wholeheartedly recommend the MBA. That isn't the case though.

 

All the power is not very useful if you're not a gamer (which the OP says he is so this post might be entirely irrelevant). Cloud storage is in full swing as of now so syncing files across system won't be a huge issue, but of course nothing beats having a single device on that regard.

Don't get me wrong, the MBP 15 is incredibly powerful and on another level when compared to MBAs, but apart from gaming you're not really going to be "hindered" by the speeds of the MBA. Faster compile times, faster computation times, faster formatting, faster decoding/encoding, faster execution, yadda yadda yadda are all true. But they're merely seconds/minutes saved in an hours/days job. I'd consider myself a heavy user, but I've never even begun to push my quad-core even a fraction of a percent of the time. I'm sure in those precious seconds I'd be like "whoa look at it go!", but the other 99.283% of the time it's literally sitting there idling.

In any case, I own a MBP 15 and there's no question I'm going to spring for something more portable with my next purchase. My gaming years are really behind me now. And hopefully by then the IGPs are mature enough to run games on its own? Portability's just plain awesome.

 

The machine on the road is significantly smaller and half the weight, and the machine at home offers about double the screen area. You get two specialized machines instead of one machine that's a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none.

Also, the MBP doesn't have the same performance hardware as the iMac. The iMac has a desktop-class CPU (quad-core i5); the MBP has a laptop-class CPU. Since Apple doesn't publish the exact model numbers, I can't look up benchmarking to know if the iMac's desktop-class i5 outperforms the MBP's laptop-class i7, but my understanding was that desktop-class CPUs normally blow laptop-class CPUs out of the water.

 

Although the MBA is significantly more portable than the 15" MBP, you still have to deal with two systems. The screen real-estate of the MBP can easily be doubled with the purchase of a secondary monitor for home usage. I also wouldn't say that the MBP isn't a master of any trade either. It still remains to be Apple's flagship MacBook Pro and it can get some serious work done.

Now, when I was talking about performance (as I almost always do), I am talking about what the OP wants to do. They are going to notice little to zero difference between the desktop class CPU (but mobile GPU) in the iMac compared to the 15" MBP. iMovie and photo editing are to things/tasks that will run identically on both systems. The CPU benchmarks may say one thing or another but we all know that they don't directly transfer over to real world experiences. Either way, I really do think those are moot points and it all really depends on what type of portable usage the OP is looking for.

If they want to game while on the go (or at a desk away from home), plan on editing movies away from home, and want to work in Photoshop away from home, the 15" MBP would be the way to go. You can still do those things on the 13" MBA but they take a little longer. Also, if the OP has a bunch of files that they will be working with (let's not forget that movies can easily take up multiple GB thus negating any cloud storage capabilities without extremely annoying upload and download times), they would be better off with a single machine.

Well, the OP did say light gaming. That is definitely something that the MBP can do and maybe even the MBA. It all depends on their definition of what light gaming is. To some people, that means being able to play one or two titles but they are kind of recent (like Max Payne 3 or Crysis 2 but those are the only games they will play). To others, it means maybe being able to handle WoW or Diablo III.

 

a 13" mbp or mba will probably just barely get you by if you're trying to play Diablo 3. the 15" mbp / imac will be fine.

 

well...if the 13" mbp had an SSD, wouldnt hte performance and battery life be better than the MBA? only difference is the screen. im kind of curious what the refresh will bring in terms of screen quality.

if i go the imac/mbp 13 route, i'll be using the 13" for mainly web browsing, word processing, and some video streaming. nothing too graphic intensive. anything graphic intensive will be done on the imac. i dont really like gaming on smaller laptops, so...that shouldnt be much of a problem. and i limit my gaming to home.

after considering all the opinions, i'm still pretty split between the two options, but im leaning more towards the imac route at the moment.

 

I don't think the battery life will be much different between the MBA 13 and MBP 13. The MBP has a bigger battery but less efficient processor, and Apple rates both for 7 hours. I've upgraded from a HDD to SSD on 3 different notebooks (all Windows though..) and the biggest difference I saw in battery life was about 15 minutes.

For the kind of notebook usage you mentioned, the MBA 13 makes more sense and I suggest you look at the MBA 11 as well (128GB model).

The MBP 13 offers an optical drive, options for a large capacity HDD, options for more memory, a modest increase in CPU performance, Firewire and Ethernet ports, and slightly greater key travel. The MBA 13 offers a higher resolution display with less reflective coating, standard SSD, faster sleep/wake, thinner size, and a lot less weight. It doesn't sound like any of the MBP 13 advantages are relevant to you, except maybe the key travel.

The MBP 13 is for somebody who needs their notebook to be a primary computer and can't live within the storage and memory limits of the MBA 13, but can't/won't spend the premium $$ for the MBP 15.

 

You haven't described anything for portable use that even a baseline 11" MBA can't do with ease. Battery life of a 13" MBP is not going to change with the use of an SSD. As previously pointed out, you might see a few minutes difference but that isn't anything that can't be handled by turning the brightness down on the MBA by one notch.

I do disagree with the MBP offering modest CPU performance over the MBA. That may technically be true and the MBP is much better in turbo boost mode. However, I highly doubt you would notice any of those differences when performing the tasks you just described. In fact, I would be willing to bet on it.

Either way, for portable use, you haven't stated anything that a MBA cannot do (even an older 11" 2010 model) and that likely won't change with the introduction of Ivy Bridge models. If anything, they will offer 10-15% better CPU performance over current models (for both the MBP and MBA) and the Intel HD 4000 has been benchmarked to be much better than the current HD 3000. I think real world tests reflect those benchmarks too.

 

I'd say, if money isn't a major factor, you'll have an overall better experience getting specialized hardware.

At a desk, you'll simply have a better experience with an iMac than a laptop. On the go, you'll probably have a better experience with a MBA than with a MBP 13/15 just because of the size and weight, which alter usability much more than you probably expect at this point.

If money is a factor, you might want to reconsider the actual net cost difference of getting a MBP + accessories. A nice desk keyboard + mouse shouldn't cost more than $30 each. Let's say $50 for a stand, and $10 for a displayport adapter. That's $120, which is quite a ways off from $600 and dramatically different than $1000.

A macbook pro with a docked setup for use at your desk, that you can optionally take away with you while mobile has it's advantages- I think it would be much cheaper and would actually work reasonably well for both objectives, and it would keep all of your stuff in one place.

 

Agreed. For what he's looking to do, two machines seems like a waste of money.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Go with the 15" MBP

Funny no one mentioned that the 15" MBP is faster than the 27" iMac.

mbp 15 vs imac 27 MacBook Pro 15" vs iMac 27" : Compare MBP 15 vs iMac 27 | MacBook Price

 

That's because it's not. "Macbookprice.com" missed the fact that the iMac's CPU is a desktop-class and the MBP's is a laptop-class. You can't just compare clock speeds and say that because this one is clocked higher, it'll do CPU-intensive processes faster. That's like saying that because a Ford F-150's V8 has 25% more displacement than a BMW M3's, the Ford F-150 is 25% faster. It's not.