Hi everyone,
I am a more than happy Apple user: I've owned many of their devices and today my workflow is still very much centred around Apple. I currently have an iPhone XR, an iPad Pro 10.5" (+Apple Pencil), a 2018 MBP 13" and a pair of AirPods.
Recently, I bought a 32" 4K BenQ display to be able to work more comfortably with my MBP from home (a 13" screen is somewhat tiny on a big desk). I am student so always switching between my family house and my student room near my university. Right now, I'm spending most of my time in my student room (from Mon to Fri) and I come back home during weekends and holidays; that's why I moved the BenQ display to my student room.
However, I discovered that my setup with the external display was not working without hiccups as I thought it would have been: my laptop starts spinning its fans very quickly when I'm doing some photo-editing on Lightroom or Affinity and even during lighter tasks such as working with multiple windows, escaping from YT videos,... it does show some slowdowns. I've got 16GB of RAM so more than enough for what I do. As it was already discussed here (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2018-mbp-13-slow-with-an-external-monitor.2196613/), my system is bottlenecked by the GPU which is integrated on the CPU (Iris Plus Graphics, 1,5GB of VRAM), not enough for driving so many pixels on a 4K display.
As other things drive me crazy on this particular MBP (the problematic and uncomfortable keyboard which has been already replaced once and the lack of ports are probably the main issues), I was thinking about selling it to buy a new, even less powerful laptop to do my work while being away the week and a powerful desktop to work from home and still enjoy MacOS which I, honestly, don't want to abandon. A combo of a ThinkPad and a 2019 iMac seems to be a great option because I won't miss a central element in my Apple ecosystem (the iMac will allow me to gather my notes, my reminders, my Notability graphs,... from my mobile devices) and I would carry a durable laptop with a solid keyboard and a great selection of ports during the week.
You might wonder then: why don't you simply buy a 15" MBP to solve the problem? Well, because that would mean buying another external display for my home (+ a dock) and the GPU won't be as powerful as the one in the iMac (except if I pick a 2019 model with the Vega 20...but then the price skyrockets). Having two machines is also interesting because I'll be able to keep all my student life (except for my Notability notes which are visible on the iPad anyway) on a laptop.
As for the ThinkPad model, I don't really need that much power, I want a small, light and durable laptop: I narrowed down my selection on a couple of models: X1 Carbon, T480, T490 or even T490s.
My biggest fear is the gap the lack of a MBP would create in my workflow: no more sync between my notes, no more iMessage on my laptop,... but I think W10 has improved a lot and some apps are even better on Windows like the Office suite. I'll keep using Google Drive as my main storage though, so nothing to fear for my "general" files. Working with the iPad only during the week is not an option as some softwares I use run only on a Windows/MacOS (like Stata e.g.).
Last question: I imagine a ThinkPad laptop without a dGPU would perform equally as my current MBP once connected to the 4K external display. But, how does W10 scale on an external display? I heard the X1 Carbon had a TB3 port so I guess it will perform well. For heavier tasks, I'll do them on the iMac once home then.
Thanks for your reading! What do you think about that option? 😃
tl;dr: selling my 2018 13" MBP which does not perform well with a 4K display to buy a 2019 iMac (heavy tasks) and a ThinkPad laptop (light tasks) => good option?
I am a more than happy Apple user: I've owned many of their devices and today my workflow is still very much centred around Apple. I currently have an iPhone XR, an iPad Pro 10.5" (+Apple Pencil), a 2018 MBP 13" and a pair of AirPods.
Recently, I bought a 32" 4K BenQ display to be able to work more comfortably with my MBP from home (a 13" screen is somewhat tiny on a big desk). I am student so always switching between my family house and my student room near my university. Right now, I'm spending most of my time in my student room (from Mon to Fri) and I come back home during weekends and holidays; that's why I moved the BenQ display to my student room.
However, I discovered that my setup with the external display was not working without hiccups as I thought it would have been: my laptop starts spinning its fans very quickly when I'm doing some photo-editing on Lightroom or Affinity and even during lighter tasks such as working with multiple windows, escaping from YT videos,... it does show some slowdowns. I've got 16GB of RAM so more than enough for what I do. As it was already discussed here (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2018-mbp-13-slow-with-an-external-monitor.2196613/), my system is bottlenecked by the GPU which is integrated on the CPU (Iris Plus Graphics, 1,5GB of VRAM), not enough for driving so many pixels on a 4K display.
As other things drive me crazy on this particular MBP (the problematic and uncomfortable keyboard which has been already replaced once and the lack of ports are probably the main issues), I was thinking about selling it to buy a new, even less powerful laptop to do my work while being away the week and a powerful desktop to work from home and still enjoy MacOS which I, honestly, don't want to abandon. A combo of a ThinkPad and a 2019 iMac seems to be a great option because I won't miss a central element in my Apple ecosystem (the iMac will allow me to gather my notes, my reminders, my Notability graphs,... from my mobile devices) and I would carry a durable laptop with a solid keyboard and a great selection of ports during the week.
You might wonder then: why don't you simply buy a 15" MBP to solve the problem? Well, because that would mean buying another external display for my home (+ a dock) and the GPU won't be as powerful as the one in the iMac (except if I pick a 2019 model with the Vega 20...but then the price skyrockets). Having two machines is also interesting because I'll be able to keep all my student life (except for my Notability notes which are visible on the iPad anyway) on a laptop.
As for the ThinkPad model, I don't really need that much power, I want a small, light and durable laptop: I narrowed down my selection on a couple of models: X1 Carbon, T480, T490 or even T490s.
My biggest fear is the gap the lack of a MBP would create in my workflow: no more sync between my notes, no more iMessage on my laptop,... but I think W10 has improved a lot and some apps are even better on Windows like the Office suite. I'll keep using Google Drive as my main storage though, so nothing to fear for my "general" files. Working with the iPad only during the week is not an option as some softwares I use run only on a Windows/MacOS (like Stata e.g.).
Last question: I imagine a ThinkPad laptop without a dGPU would perform equally as my current MBP once connected to the 4K external display. But, how does W10 scale on an external display? I heard the X1 Carbon had a TB3 port so I guess it will perform well. For heavier tasks, I'll do them on the iMac once home then.
Thanks for your reading! What do you think about that option? 😃
tl;dr: selling my 2018 13" MBP which does not perform well with a 4K display to buy a 2019 iMac (heavy tasks) and a ThinkPad laptop (light tasks) => good option?