Last Intel Mac: MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) vs. iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)

[Yebubbleman]

I'm in the market for one final Intel Mac as most of my Mac needs still require Intel. For the most part, I had been planning and saving up accordingly for a specc'ed out MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) up until recently. Circumstances basically steered me towards a MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) instead for the Apple Silicon side of my tech arsenal which made the former 13-inch MacBook Pro option redundant enough.

My work discarded a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) with a 2.6GHz 6-core i7, 32GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD, and the Radeon 560X that had a defective display. I decided to take that, spend my own money (~$650ish) to pay to have it basically refurbished by the depot by way of the Genius Bar. The 512GB SSD, for my needs, isn't great; but, if push comes to shove, most of my power needs with the machine (namely, Virtual Machines, Blizzard games, Steam games, and video projects) could be accomplished with portable USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 SSDs. I worry about the butterfly keyboard inevitably failing, but I am also okay with just getting an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and just using that.

This only further made any desire for a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) all the more moot.

So, I'm now torn between:
(a) Selling the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018), and either breaking even or making a few extra bucks and buying a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)

Or

(b) Keeping the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) as it's still a rather nice and still portable Intel Mac and getting an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)



Right now, I'm leaning heavily towards option (b) as I wouldn't be forced to spend an outrageous amount to get 32GB on a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) and my default graphics choices are probably already better on the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020), more cores for VM stuff, and I anticipate that desktop 10th Gen Intel CPUs will be more powerful than H-series notebook 9th Gen Intel CPUs.

Given my scenario, which of these two would you go with?

I'm definitely more than aware of the tech specs and pricing between all of the aforementioned Mac models. This post is more of a "what would you do?" kind of question. Certainly, I'm aware of some of the tech gotchas between the MacBook Pro (16-inch), and the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020) (which is to say that I won't be hooking up the former to external displays), but if there are any that I might not be aware of (especially as they pertain to either CPUs or GPUs), please do let me know!

 

[Kung gu]

please go with option b the 2020 27" iMac is great machine much better than the 16" Intel as it has more powerful CPU and GPUs.

 

[Yebubbleman]

please go with option b the 2020 27" iMac is great machine much better than the 16" Intel as it has more powerful CPU and GPUs.

The 27-inch does seem to be the better Intel system overall. I think it boils down to how much will I feel hamstrung by the 512GB SSD on the 2018 15-inch that I have and how cumbersome will I find having (a) external SSDs and (b) an external keyboard to offset the awful butterfly keyboard (and whether or not having a whole 'nother iMac to offset all of that is worth it). I'm definitely leaning heavily toward the iMac though.

 

[Malus120]

As someone who's owned their fair share of Intel (PowerPC and now M1) Macs (both desktops and laptops), I'd say go with option B, assuming you're not willing to consider extra options.

As you've noticed the 16" MBP, while nice, really doesn't offer THAT much over the 15" you already have unless you're willing to spend a lot on BTO GPU and RAM upgrades (32GB alone is +$400, 5600M GPU is +$800!), and the CPU while more powerful will still be thermally constrained vs a similarly priced iMac.

With the iMac on the other hand, you can get an 8 core CPU, 32GB of ram and a powerful (ish) GPU (RX 5700) for just slightly more than the base 16" with 32GB of ram.

Unless you absolutely need as much *x86* power as you can get in a portable package the 16" doesn't really make sense IMHO.

That said, if you have that much cash saved up, and you want a desktop, I'd really encourage you to consider a hackintosh. They're not that hard to set up, they run really well, you can get a lot more bang for your buck, and when/if Apple drops support for new versions of MacOS on x86 you'll have more/better options.