Why is the MBP so heavy?

Given that Sony can do a Z coming in at 3 lbs, why is the 13" MBP with almost identical specs so heavy?

Not trying to start a flame war, just interested in the answer...

 

Three reasons:

Carbon fiber versus aluminum.
A somewhat flexible case design versus a more solid, flex-free design.
No onboard optical drive versus an onboard optical drive.

 

Ok, so it's really all about the case. Thanks!

 

Apple's batteries also tend to be more dense to push the systems beyond the typical batteries lives observed in many Windows notebooks. I was able to handle the battery from a 13" unibody MBP and it was definitely heavier (yet taking up a small volume) than the removable battery from a 14" HP with similar specs (that would get about 3 hours on a single charge while the MBP is still pushing 5 hours).

 

Notebookcheck.net recorded 9 hours at idle and 6 hours of web surfing for the Vaio Z2. Compare that to NBC's recorded numbers of 10.3 hours at idle and 6 hours of web surfing for the MacBook Pro 13. Pretty comparable battery life for the two laptops mentioned in the original post.

 

I have the older version with the optical drive and it still much lighter than my 15 inches. I have yet to do a side by side 13 inch MBP vs. Vaio Z, but I am pretty sure Vaio Z would be lighter in that match up. It has its pros and cons in that carbon fiber is very susceptible to scratches compared to the mac. I have developed scratches on the palm rest and discoloration on the panel that houses the keyboard when i treat it like a queen with a sleeve and only taking notes on powerpoint some days. It takes much more to scratch a Mac, though with aluminum, I believe my Mac would be dented right now compared to occasional bumps that I have made on my Vaio Z (no dents).

 

I wasn't comparing the battery lives of the two notebooks in question but rather adding a general statement regarding battery life density for the MBP line. I still wouldn't be surprised if the battery in the MBP is heavier than in the Sony.

 

I doubt it's a huge difference for just the battery. When you compare the MBP 13 to the Vaio S13 (a better comparison in my opinion, since they both have optical drives), the weight difference is less than a pound--easily explained by the sturdier MBP case (the Vaio S is notoriously insubstantial-feeling). The Vaio Z, an ultraportable with no optical drive, is better to compare to the MBA 13 weight-wise, not the MBP. Their weights are nearly equal.

 

I only read the topic. I didn't read the post. Can the op tell me a few 17" laptops that weigh less than the 6.6lb MacBook Pro 17" at the same power specs?

 

*facepalm*

HAD YOU READ the original post, you'd realize he was talking about the MBP 13, not the MBP 17.

 

The sony Z has a 13.1" screen, no optical drive, and weighs 2.57 lbs.

The MBA has a 13.3" screen, no optical drive, and weighs just 2.96 lbs. The MBA 11.6" weighs 2.3x lbs.

The MBP has a 13.3" screen and an optical drive, so it's necessarily much thicker than any of the other laptops mentioned. It weighs 4.5 lbs, but it's a totally different size category of computer than the MBA 13 / Sony Z. As mentioned, the MBA is the one you should have compared against.

The actual difference is small. The .4 lbs comes from the fact that the MBA is a larger format device than the Sony Z. The MBA 11.6" < Sony Z 13.1" < MBA 13.3"

 

Thanks Masterchef. I see where you're coming from, but I think the counter is that the Air uses a ULV processor (right?), which therefore requires less battery and lower requirement for heat evacuation. In terms of actual specs, the Z and the 13" MBP are pretty close.

I agree that the slightly larger display on the MBP and the ODD are relevant differences, of course, but I find it hard to understand why they would lead to a full 2 lb difference in weight. I do buy the earlier contention that the aluminum case of the MBP is simply more robust and heavier.

 

Combine the optical drive, metal casing and frame, larger battery in the MBP, and the extra .2" screen size along with 150% larger volume of the 13" MBP (108.5 in^3 for the MBP compared to the 71 in^3 volume of the Sony) and those all equal a heavier machine. You are comparing two different machines for two different classes. Although the Vaio Z has similar processor configurations to the 13" MBP, it isn't meant to go up against it. The Vaio Z is a cross between an ultraportable and a full notebook. The MBA would be an ultraportable while the MBP would be a full notebook. It doesn't really matter what the internal specs are as the form factor for each categories (and the few models in-between) are very different.

Factor all that in with the use of different construction materials and you are going to find drastic weight differences. I'm not really sure why you are finding it hard to understand that a small, plastic, almost ultrabook weighs less than a full size 13" notebook that has a much larger volume and is made out of metal.

 

The main difference with the display is the taller height of a 16:10 panel on the MBP vs. a 16:9 on the Z. The two laptops are about the same width, but the MBP looks like it's 2-3cm deeper than the Z. The taller screen aspect also provides greater room on the base for a larger trackpad.

I think the "glass" coating on the MBP display also adds some weight.

And in addition to the optical drive already mentioned, the MBP also has a mechanical HDD while the Z has a bare SSD board like the MBA.

You said the MBP 13 and VAIO Z have almost identical specs, but they really don't. The only specs they're close on is CPU and memory, which aren't major determinants of weight. The higher rated CPU requires a larger heat pipe and wider, dual fan heat sink. They take up more space but aren't very heavy.

EDIT: kornchild2002 is right about the battery. The MBP 13 has a 58WHr battery while the VAIO Z has a 45WHr battery (without the slice).

 

You might as well compare the Vaio Z for weight against a 17" laptop with similar CPU specs. It's no mystery that the larger laptop is going to weigh more. The fact is that the MBP is just over 1.5 times the physical size of the Vaio Z. The MBP weighs 1.75 times the weight of the Vaio Z. Part of that is due to material selection, but a large part is due to the fact that it's simply a lot bigger, mostly because it's designed to fit an optical drive. You can't just make it bigger and not use more material.

But we should figure out whatever it is that you are trying to get at. Are you trying to make a valuation of the Vaio Z and the MBP based on performance / weight? The only advice I can give you in that matter is that they are quite different form factor devices, particularly because the MBP has an optical drive. The optical drive dictates the design of the device because it's far and away the thickest component, and it takes up a lot of lateral space as well. If you don't need or want an optical drive, you probably should not get a MBP 13". If you do need or want an optical drive, you probably shouldn't consider the Vaio Z.

 

Came in late, but did anyone mention cost? The Z comes in at double the cost. Look how much thinner things are in the tablet/smartphone world given twice the cost.

 

At least in the US, the Vaio Z starts at $1549 and for that price includes an external optical drive/external GPU and 1080p resolution.

Compared to a MacBook Pro 13 with a 128-GB SSD, the Vaio Z2 is 10% more expensive than the MBP 13, not 100%.

EDIT: this appears to be a Memorial Day sale, not Sony's regular pricing. Regardless, Sony runs sales like this from time to time and Apple rarely does.

 

Oh, nothing terribly complicated. I currently own a Z. I want to move to OS X for a range of reasons. The 13" MBP is the obvious model for me (to get the full voltage processor). But I was shocked by the weight difference. The various replies here have clarified where the difference comes from, so I am now educated.

(I commute on foot, so the weight actually matters a lot to me.)

I hold out some hope that the next version of the MBP is rumoured to be thinner, so perhaps will be lighter. That would make sense if the physical size of the case is indeed the issue (as many here have said.)

Thanks!

 

The next generation is thinner and lighter because it lacks an optical drive. It's more like a MBA with a full-power CPU. And it certainly will have a big upgrade on resolution. I'd wait for that since weight matters to you.

 

We'll just be nice and say these were typos, corrected. Since nothing has been announced yet, anything we know about Apple's future laptops is purely speculative.

 

Is there anything in particular that you need a full voltage processor for? Have you looked at the benchmark specs of Intel's ULV series (such as what is found in the MBA)? They really aren't that different and the 13" MBP pretty much only pulls ahead when its CPU over clocks. Other than that, the 13" MBA (with the Core i5) performs about the same and is even all around more powerful than the 2010 17" MBP (minus the GPU). Either way, I think you are selling Intel's ULV processors short by relying solely on the full voltage versions.

 

Way to be condescending. There's a big grey area between "announced by Apple" and "pure speculation," and we're living in that grey area right now.

New MacBook Pro rumored for summer with Retina display, ultrathin design, USB 3.0 | The Verge

MacBook Pro rumor rollup: thinner, better, faster, stronger | Ars Technica

There have been plenty of other leaks, including if I recall correctly a leak from a parts supplier working on an optical-drive-less case. It's these same sort of parts supplier leaks that told us that the iPad 3 would quadruple its pixel count before Apple officially announced the new display.

 

Both of those articles have the word "rumor" in the title. You should recognize the error if you have something which is not certain, but it is described as if it were certain.

I will admit I should have written "rumor or speculation" and left everything else the same. But rumors aren't any better than speculation, and perhaps worse, and it doesn't make much of a difference.

At least speculation can be an intellectual exercise. Rumors tend to appeal to some part of us which is much baser.

Think about what just happened. Your evidence and support for the statements you made about the future and with certainty, are rumors. Is that proper or not?

 

There's a huge difference between rumors coming out of credible industry sources and speculation of internet forum members. In this case, we've got the former all pointing at an optical-drive-free MBP.

The idea that everything is either "confirmed" or "a guess"--that there's no middle ground--is the same argument people use to attack evolution because it's "just a theory." These things aren't light switches, they're spectrums. And the evidence pointing to an ODD-free MBP is pretty darned credible and overwhelmingly likely, even if there's been no official announcement.

 

Obviously, we should be allowed to have some type of certainty spectrum when we are considering things which are completely certain, only somewhat uncertain, and totally uncertain.

On the one extreme, you have things which are certain. These things are rare, but for our purposes, "announced" can be called "certainty" when dealing with Apple product releases. When we have this type of situation, we use a particular type of language that indicates certainty. We use our normal verb tenses for this (present, future, past).

Now, on the totally opposite end of the spectrum (which is not where we are, we're in the gray area, just like you said) we have things which are completely uncertain. These are things we have no idea about. We shouldn't have ANY confidence at all in our ability to guess what these things should be. In terms of Apple's product releases, I can't even come up with an example, except maybe product releases so far into the future that we have no ability to form expectations (but even then, you could form some basic expectations, most likely). Let's just say that we're not confident at all about product releases more than 50 years in the future, or perhaps this limit isn't reachable, but just continues to infinity and approaches zero. Nevertheless, we could speculate about these types of things. If we did, we would use a particular language to do so (the conditional tense).

Now, for things in the middle of the spectrum, between certainty and total uncertainty, which tense should we use to communicate the fact that we're in-between total uncertainty and total certainty? In English, we still use the conditional tense. If you want to pinpoint where in the spectrum you fall, you can explain it with additional words and context, but you use the conditional tense. Otherwise, you're implying (incorrectly) that you have total certainty, which you don't. So the meaning is lost. In terms of Apple's product releases, all rumors and speculation would fall into this gray area. Therefore, we would use the conditional tenses with our verbs when describing these things.

That's enough English for today. Hope that helped.

 

Do you believe there's a real chance that the next-gen MBP will have an onboard optical drive? If not, you're just nitpicking over semantics. I mean, I could say "Apple is not bringing back the 3.5" floppy disk in the next MBP," and even though that hasn't been officially announced one way or another, we all know it's true.

I could write every single dang forum post with the same numbers of disclaimers and annoyingly-precise terminology that I use when practicing law. But trust me, a forum where people all talk like lawyers so that everything they write can be is expected to be taken 100% literally and broken down word-by-word would be profoundly unpleasant.

 

Let's try to stay on topic and avoid the personal attacks. I don't want to remove posts or give any warnings. Being condescending doesn't help get your point across any more effectively, and if you aren't able to post without insulting others, don't post.

 

Interesting. I will take another look at the Air. I do programming, video editing and gaming, so do tend to enjoy whatever horsepower is available, though. I am also not thrilled about the 4 GB max memory, the max 256 GB HD and the low-travel keyboard on the Air.

I'm still leaning to a MBP, but of course will be waiting until the refresh as I am not in any great panic to upgrade.

 

Honestly for video editing you want the full volt CPU. 25-40% faster in cpu based renders, conversions and colorwork.
4 GB ram is a deal breaker IMO for video work especially HD or doing conversions. FCPX can easily eat 6-10 on basic to midrange work, Premier and AVID 12-16

 

Gaming is definitely going to be limited on the 13" MBP and won't really be that much better than the 13" MBA. Both rely on integrated graphics from Intel (and things may stay the same with the switch to Ivy Bridge) and will be limited to older titles or currently less complicated ones. You won't be playing Modern Warfare 3 on either of them.

You also won't be doing any serious video editing on either one. iMovie, when editing 1080p 60fps movies that I shoot, performs about the same for me. My MBA takes an extra few minutes when exporting a 720p 32fps version of the movies I edited but that isn't much of an issue. I can take an extra 3 minutes when it takes both systems over 30 minutes to export a video. That is comparing with my older early 2011 13" MBP with 8GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD too.

The limited RAM is really only an issue if you are going to really multi-task. I run a countless number of macros containing thousands of lines of code in MATLAB. Each macro references each other along with Excel files containing hundreds of thousands of data points. The performance I experience on my MBA is similar to that of my MBP. Things are a little slower mainly because I am relying on Parallels to run Wndows 7 and MATLAB in Wndows (I use some Windows only code) but that is due to the use of Parallels. MATLAB in OS X runs the same as before.

Lastly, the MBA does not have an HDD but rather SSD. That means you will get much better out of the box performance than the MBP. Even if you wanted to put an SSD drive in the MBP, you will essentially be limited to 256 GB unless you wanted to spend a butt load of money on a nice performing 512 GB SSD drive.

Either way, I think you are selling the MBA a little short as the 13" MBP doesn't have that much of a performance boost over the MBA unless you are using the MBP in turbo boost mode. Even then I doubt you would notice that much of a difference in real world usage.

 

Since neither the MBA nor the MBP have a dedicated GPU, both are pretty weak for gaming.

If you get a Sandy Bridge CPU, here's the framerates you can expect (with either): Intel HD Graphics 3000 - Notebookcheck.net Tech

If you get an Ivy Bridge CPU, here's the framerates you can expect (with either): Intel HD Graphics 4000 Benchmarked - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Is your gaming done at home? If so, the iMac will be perfectly sufficient. If you want to game on the go, and you need your laptop to be an Apple, I'd almost think about picking up a Playstation Vita instead of relying on any 13" Apple laptop. If you're willing to be flexible with your laptop OS, the Clevo W110ER seems like a winner: Eurocom Monster 1.0 (Clevo W110ERF) Review: Biggest Isn't Always Better (sold in the US through xoticpc.com as the Sager NP6110).

 

or you could jump up to 15", but that's even bigger (and heavier) - but they offer decent graphics cards in their 15"+ laptops.

 

wow.

the sony vaio Z was SPECIFICALLY made for people like you malgrave. a no-compromise option.

the only reasonable advice is for you to find out if you REALLY need to use OS X. if its just for fun, do you need to be able to have fun on a MBP AND do work at the same time?

tl;dr

best solution: don't get OS X and keep your Z
2nd best solution: keep your Z for work and get a cheap MBA for 'fun' (assuming you can afford to keep two laptops)
3rd best solution: wait for the new MBP 13" (it should be noticably better)
4th best solution: get the current MBA 13" or wait for the Ivy version (that hasn't arrived yet has it?)
5th best solution: get the current MBP 13", get an SSD, and replace the optical drive with a HDD (assuming you don't need the optical)

 

The Z's external GPU doesn't work well for gaming. Framerates tend to come in dips and surges. The best compact Sony for gaming is the S13, which packs a 640M and an optical drive despite weighing only 3.5 lbs. It's also a bit over half the price of the Z since it uses aluminum and more common materials instead of carbon fiber, and it's one inch thick instead of 2/3s of an inch.

 

Thanks guys. You both are absolutely correct of course.

I didn't really want to make this thread "all about me". But since you ask...

I do want to move to MacOS. The reasons that tied me to Windows have all but evaporated (gaming aside.) There are a few critical MacOS apps that I would love to have access to. And I really don't like the direction MS is going with Windows 8. (This is of course personal opinion. A lot of people love Windows 8.)

Also, my next computer will not be a Vaio Z, even if I do wind up sticking with Windows. The Z's keyboard has incredibly shallow travel that I have never been able to get used to, and I really want discrete graphics built in. The MBP is actually perfect for me, bar the weight. And the mac's 16:10 screen ratio is a big bonus.

 

I haven't tried the new Z, but the older VAIO Z keyboard feels a lot like the MBP keyboard. I don't think the key travel is much different. ThinkPads and EliteBooks are better in this regard.

 

the new z is quite worse in the kb travel, too shallow for me

 

So are you looking at the MBP 15 now? Because there's no discrete graphics in the MBP 13 (or MBA 13).

Although the price point is higher, I think the MBP 15 is much better value than the MBP 13. The MBP 13 just doesn't have the performance that justifies the "Pro" name in my mind...dual-core CPU, no GPU. The MBP 15 is 50% more expensive than the MBP 13, but in my opinion it's far more than 50% better. Not all that much heavier, much more screen real estate, more pixels, quad-core CPU, discrete GPU.