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FINALLY upgrading, but can’t decide between 14/16” (sorry)
- Thread starter bboyce2009
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- m1 pro macbook pro mbp 14" mbp 16"
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Not worth sacrificing the portability of the 14". I'll build a water-cooled pedestal if I have to.
This is a valid concern.
I am hoping Apple introduces a 5K at a third of the price of the XDR. If not, I'll have to carry on with the two HP Z27 I have until someone makes something better.
I am currently using a 5K iMac, and a 16" screen will simply not work for me, regardless of how much better it is.
It is not a stupid question at all. I had the 14" on pre order and exchanged it for the 16" and weight is a big difference.
So the 16" is heavy BUT so is the 14" and it is because the build quality is insane on these and they have huge batteries.
I liked the weight of the 14" and although it is noticeable I didn't feel it was too much but the screen did feel too small to me. Even though compared to the 13.3" pro it has a much larger screen. The notch on the 14" feels bigger to me than the 16" as on the 16" it disappears most of the time while on the 14" you notice it more.
The battery life is significantly better on the 16". Performance on Geekbench 5 is marginally better on the 16" if you care. The speakers are significantly louder than the 14" both sound great.
So I really think the 16" is better and the screen is just amazing but it is heavy although I can use it on my lap just fine.
The last thing is the charger on the 16" is faster by a significant margin. 70 watt hour vs. 100 watt hour.
I am not trying to say the 16" is better. All the things I said should be expected because of the size and weight. If size and weight are most important to you than the 14" is an amazing machine! I would recommend the $2499 config at least and you should be very happy!
No matter what you get these are both amazing machines and you will be happy either way! Also from what I have learned the ram is shared with the gpu but differently than in Intel machine which means its high speed bandwidth can utilize ram more efficiently. So although if you need X amount of ram then you still need X amount of ram but rather because the speed of the ram and unified storage it can dynamically scale gpu or cpu depending on the needs. I don't know if that makes sense but basically less ram should actually perform very well unless you have specific requirements for ram.
So the 16" is heavy BUT so is the 14" and it is because the build quality is insane on these and they have huge batteries.
I liked the weight of the 14" and although it is noticeable I didn't feel it was too much but the screen did feel too small to me. Even though compared to the 13.3" pro it has a much larger screen. The notch on the 14" feels bigger to me than the 16" as on the 16" it disappears most of the time while on the 14" you notice it more.
The battery life is significantly better on the 16". Performance on Geekbench 5 is marginally better on the 16" if you care. The speakers are significantly louder than the 14" both sound great.
So I really think the 16" is better and the screen is just amazing but it is heavy although I can use it on my lap just fine.
The last thing is the charger on the 16" is faster by a significant margin. 70 watt hour vs. 100 watt hour.
I am not trying to say the 16" is better. All the things I said should be expected because of the size and weight. If size and weight are most important to you than the 14" is an amazing machine! I would recommend the $2499 config at least and you should be very happy!
No matter what you get these are both amazing machines and you will be happy either way! Also from what I have learned the ram is shared with the gpu but differently than in Intel machine which means its high speed bandwidth can utilize ram more efficiently. So although if you need X amount of ram then you still need X amount of ram but rather because the speed of the ram and unified storage it can dynamically scale gpu or cpu depending on the needs. I don't know if that makes sense but basically less ram should actually perform very well unless you have specific requirements for ram.
I really like the larger display, and the 16" runs cooler (so it's a little quieter, if fan noise bothers you) and to my ears sounds a little better than the 14" (which sounds great, btw). But it also takes up more space on a desk or table, and I find myself unconsciously holding it with two hands when I carry it around, which I never did with 12" or 13" machines and don't with the 14", either. Both are great machines, and overkill for many of us, so it's actually a hard choice unless you're a bleeding edge user.
I have the same challenge as you have.
I am going to Apple Store in Trafford Centre at some point in the next week, to see both side-by-side. As the MBP will be my desk unit, I am more inclined to lean towards the 16inch and pay the different, esp. as there are (I understand) more inbuilt speakers.
I have gone through this dilemma as well. My background is that I own an 11 inch MacBook Pro which I replaced after briefly buying the 12.9 inch and finding while it was very good as a laptop sized replacement it was not very comfortable to use being too cumbersome as a tablet I did buy the extra magic keyboard with it and in a pinch it can be used for productivity as a very mini laptop. As far as owning laptops are concerned, I did on the 2012 retina MacBook Pro which still works and other than poor battery life the fans going all the time and processing power not being anywhere close to current specs is still a remarkable machine for its design it's screen quality and everything else. In the interim in 2018 I had decided to switch to Windows and bought a surface book 2. This was a 13 1/2 inch machine and 3 1/2 pounds in size. It has a 3 x 2 screen configuration which probably puts it similar in overall size to the 14 inch MacBook Pro which uses a 16 x 10 resolution dimension. Overall I really did enjoy this as a laptop it had a lot of great things about it but I find I was missing some performance some battery life and while the screen was really good it did have a fair bit of backlight bleed which was evident when doing some video watching at night time as the shape of the screen leads to more black bars at the top and bottom then a 16 x 9 or 10.
I was not interested in buying a Mac laptop with the terrible keyboard problems they had up until the MacBook M1 series of chips. And as such I have been sticking with my surface book. When using my MacBook Pro from time to time I did enjoy the larger screen for certain work and certainly the immersive affect a video watching on it. However as the screen technology has improved the 900 to 1 contrast ratio was certainly not as good for multimedia.
With the announcement of the new MacBook Pro in 14 and 16 inch and in particular with that spectacular mini LED monitor I decided it was finally time to make the leap and come back to Apple as my main laptop. I was quite indecisive and watched a ton of videos to help me make my decision between the 14 and the 16 knowing I have laptops at home of both sizes and weights. I still was having trouble deciding as they were significant pros and cons on each side of the balance sheet.
The price difference was not going to be that much in the sense that I would not get the most base spec bend 14 inch but would certainly go for the 10 core CPU 16 core GP 1 TB option. The 16 inch and 14 inch were in US dollars $200 different and the AppleCare was another $120 difference. This was not a factor in my decision making.
Basically from all I read and all the reviews it essentially came down to these two deciding factors:
In favour of the 14 inch was a lighter and smaller form factor. I suppose if you are a student or somebody who uses their laptop while commuting I can see these being big benefits as you can get more work done in tighter spaces such as plane or train seat tables. However partly due to Covid and partly due to a job that does not involve travelling most of my travel when it does occur is for vacation purposes where outside of perhaps watching some video on my computer I would not be using it for productivity. I also happen to own an 11 inch MacBook Pro and while that screen does not have the gorgeous mini LED, it is still more than sufficient for video watching on a plane.
In favour of the 16 inch:
1.Longer battery life- upward of 25 to 30% or in practical terms 3-5 hours use
2.Much bigger screen which would allow for more immersive video watching as well as more real estate to work on documents side-by-side or for light video or photo editing allowing more to be done with a bigger canvas
3. Improved speakers which while not getting used all the time would be good for media watching we're not using headphones or earbuds and with Dolby Atmos spatial audio it definitely gives a very good experience.
4. Better heat and thermals. This doesn't sound like very much but the truth of the matter is that the fans almost never have to come on and the rare instances where people have reported them coming on being that they are bigger and spinning at a lower speed they are nearly inaudible over the background noise in a room compared to the fans on the 14 inch.
So for my used case I opted for the 16 inch. My rationale is that I don't have a lot of circumstances that require me to do work away from home. And truth be told if I was to go to a coffee shop to surf the web and go through some emails I would probably just prefer to take an 11 inch MacBook Pro that I don't mind if it gets banged around a little bit rather than my machine that cost triple the price. If I really need to take it to work it is no different in size dimensionally than my 15 inch MacBook Pro from 2012 and only weighs .2 pounds more which is marginal. There is a savings benefit in that the battery life is so incredible that I do not need to take the charger with me where is perhaps if I needed the computer to work on for the whole day at work I might need to bring it with which does add weight and bulk.
I also currently don't own a second monitor. We do have a very old iMac from 2011 which these days is merely sufficient for some web browsing word processing an email but would not be used for heavier tasks and as such this would be my every day computer with only using the screen that I have. The screen is so fantastic I would not have any desire to hide it in a clamshell mode attaching it to a larger monitor. I think anybody who would consider doing that would be better off just waiting for a Mac mini with an M1 Pro chip in it and just get themselves a MacBook Eyre and they would still be a head pricewise.
So I apologize for this really long post but I think it basically highlights my thought process that could be helpful to you and anyone else reading this thread. In summary my TL
R if you need to commute and work on the road where form factor is the most important thing and get the 14 inch. However if this is going to be your main computer and used as much or more at home than anywhere else without external monitor use I would say the 16 inch is the better bang for the buck in terms of screen size overall battery life sound and performance and it's still a reasonable weight for what you get without incurring significant additional cost.Depending on your level of on-the-go vs on the go use, buy an external monitor, say 24”
It’ll give you far more space than even the 16”, and much better ergonomics for long term use. Plus you get the additional 14” space as another (!) monitor.
It’s few hundred extra dollars for a 4k. If money is no object, the lg 5k at 27” is amazing. All the screen real estate you could ever want and one cable to connect.
It’ll give you far more space than even the 16”, and much better ergonomics for long term use. Plus you get the additional 14” space as another (!) monitor.
It’s few hundred extra dollars for a 4k. If money is no object, the lg 5k at 27” is amazing. All the screen real estate you could ever want and one cable to connect.
That is an option. Just to me one of the appeals of this device is its unique class leading mini LED display. To hook it up to another monitor to be your primary viewing device might as well just get a mac mini when new model is out and then get another more portable air 2 for on the go which will be lighter and nearly as powerful.
Hopefully Apple releases mini-LED external displays this year to solve this issue.
That rather depends whether you want maximum power on the go as well as at your desk. The M2 MBA is probably still going to be less powerful than even the entry level MBP14 Pro (6+2 CPU, 14-GPU) apart from single core performance. The M2 is probably going to be the similar to the M1 (4+4 CPU, 8-10 core GPU), just slightly faster - maybe 20%? It will probably still be behind the MBP14 M1 Pro, but much closer than it is today. But then again, the M2 Pro/Max will probably be out in 2023, and the gap will widen again.
There will also certainly be other differentiators such as maximum RAM (MBA may stay at 16GB maximum), screen, ports etc.