14 inch vs 16 inch which is more ideal?

[UnifiedMelody]

Testing my friends 14" M4 Pro MBP [base 24/512 and base chip]... Preview/rendered 700 images 1:1 [extreme i know but wanted to test] (Nikon Zf, 24.5MP, not too intense). Completed that in 9 minutes, however battery dropped 18-20% during that period of rendering. That seemed a lot of drop... and now prompted me to save up for 16" M4 Max MBP with 64/1TB

Most likely 16" is the way to go for productive workflow... unless you really need portability, I still think the 14" is semi-lacking unless one is a casual browsing user. For productive workflow the 16" is king. Even Lightroom I found 14" too small, had to scroll more to get to certain windows. Not so much with the 16"

then again above is personal preference. if portability is important you can't trounce a 14" lol for that matter.
all about your priorities... for me i like wouldnt take my laptop out 5 days a week so a 16" is fine. maybe once a fortnight or so depending on how many meetings I have

 

[chars1ub0w]

Looking at the iFixIt teardowns, it's hard to see how Apple can make the squarish current generation more portable. The Intel 15" did have rounded edges as someone mentioned, so as I recall, it made it a bit easier to carry. But then I see super light laptops on the Windows/Intel side. For example, the Fujitsu carbon-fiber 14" screen FMV Zero is just 634g and can come with 64GB RAM and 2TB SSD, HDMI port, Ethernet port, 2 USB-C, 2 USB-A, running an Intel Core Ultra 7 155U (12 core) CPU for 413,800円 ($2,681). But then Apple's strategy is to make MacBook Air the low end laptop, not a high-end one.

 

[DeepSix]

16" is way too heavy. I carry around 4 16" M1 Pros for work, each in it's own hard plastic case that weighs about 10lbs each. Total load is about 60lbs, very heavy to carry around even by car.

 

[Miles Fu]

Looking at the iFixIt teardowns, it's hard to see how Apple can make the squarish current generation more portable. The Intel 15" did have rounded edges as someone mentioned, so as I recall, it made it a bit easier to carry. But then I see super light laptops on the Windows/Intel side. For example, the Fujitsu carbon-fiber 14" screen FMV Zero is just 634g and can come with 64GB RAM and 2TB SSD, HDMI port, Ethernet port, 2 USB-C, 2 USB-A, running an Intel Core Ultra 7 155U (12 core) CPU for 413,800円 ($2,681). But then Apple's strategy is to make MacBook Air the low end laptop, not a high-end one.

No fan for MB air, so just limited performance.

 

[chars1ub0w]

No fan for MB air, so just limited performance.

Well, as iFixIt said, they can do a lot better for the heatsink.

 

[dmccloud]

I always find it funny in regards to weight. I remember taking my 2011 13" Pro with me everywhere and not really thinking it was a particularily heavy machine at the time. I was surprised to see that it weighed in at 4.5 lbs while the latest 16" weighs 4.7 lbs. Perhaps its the foot print that makes it seem so much heavier.

Packing 4.5 lbs into a 13" laptop frame means the device is much denser than the 16" MBP despite the latter's .2 lbs extra weight. Part of that has to do with the thermals of the older Intel CPUs and the cooling needed for those systems even under light usage.

How far apart are the thermals between the 14 and 16? We're just talking about the 16" being bigger and having a larger heat dissipating footprint, correct? Or is there more to it than just size?

The warmest I've ever seen my 14" MBP get was when running Cyberpunk 2077 under the Game Porting Toolkit just after it was announced last year. iStat showed the CPU reaching around 83 degrees C, but the only area where I noticed any warming was around the 6, T, and Y keys. I could hear the air being exhausted from the laptop, but I never heard any actual fan/mechanical noise at the time.

There is a term among PC builders called "heat soak", which is when the cooling system has absorbed the maximum amount of heat it can handle. For the M1 and M2 lineups, the smaller 14" MBP will reach that point slightly faster than the 16" Pro simply because the heat pipes drawing the heat from the SoC to the fans are shorter. Apple apparently switched to the larger heatsink assembly for M3, which is approximately 35% larger than the previous version. I would assume Apple has continued that with the M4 lineup, but I haven't seen any teardowns to confirm or deny that