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Theasoukup

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 1, 2016
1
0
I'm a sophomore in high school and looking to buy a new laptop. I would use it mostly for school, watching Netflix, listening to music, and downloading photos from my iPhone. I'm currently looking at buying a refurbished MacBook Pro 13 retina 8gb ram from the apple website. I'm not sure if I should get 128 or 256gb SSD.
 

vatter69

macrumors 6502a
Feb 4, 2013
594
587
256g has almost double write speeds according to various benchmarks. Not that 128 is exactly slow but something to consider beside the obvious.
 

Samuelsan2001

macrumors 604
Oct 24, 2013
7,729
2,153
I'm a sophomore in high school and looking to buy a new laptop. I would use it mostly for school, watching Netflix, listening to music, and downloading photos from my iPhone. I'm currently looking at buying a refurbished MacBook Pro 13 retina 8gb ram from the apple website. I'm not sure if I should get 128 or 256gb SSD.

Well how much space do you use on your current computer??

Add a bit for future needs and judge from there.
 

BenTrovato

macrumors 68040
Jun 29, 2012
3,049
2,223
Canada
256 as someone said the write speeds are faster. I've had the 128, it fills up rather quickly even when you don't have anything on it. If money is really tight though, then you have to do what you have to do to keep things within your budget.
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,489
16,216
California
I'm a sophomore in high school and looking to buy a new laptop. I would use it mostly for school, watching Netflix, listening to music, and downloading photos from my iPhone. I'm currently looking at buying a refurbished MacBook Pro 13 retina 8gb ram from the apple website. I'm not sure if I should get 128 or 256gb SSD.
There is the drive transfer speed difference mentioned, but in normal usage, you will never notice this.

Nobody can really answer the drive size question for you. Out of the box a new Mac uses about 20GB of space for the OS and the iLife and iWorks apps, leaving you about 100GB for personal files. If you think 100GB of storage is enough for you, then there is your answer.
 

snaky69

macrumors 603
Mar 14, 2008
5,908
488
I'm a sophomore in high school and looking to buy a new laptop. I would use it mostly for school, watching Netflix, listening to music, and downloading photos from my iPhone. I'm currently looking at buying a refurbished MacBook Pro 13 retina 8gb ram from the apple website. I'm not sure if I should get 128 or 256gb SSD.
Only you can say how much storage you need.

Asking strangers on the internet will not change your storage needs. Either 128GB is enough, or it isn't. Check how much space you're using on whatever computer you're using now, add some room to spare, and see for yourself.
 

ajforbes20

macrumors regular
Oct 5, 2011
143
21
USA
Remember that 128 isn't really even 128. It's actually quite a bit less. Plus the storage the system uses. I'd guess you have less than 100 GB the day you open the thing. I would definetely get 256.
 

AFEPPL

macrumors 68030
Sep 30, 2014
2,644
1,571
England
I have a 128GB 3YO rMBP and its still got well over 50% of the space free on it.
All my data is kept external to the mac (on a NAS drive) but you could also use an external USB/TB drive.
You could also use cloud providers or a combination of all these things.

So depends what you want and why. No reason why the 128GB wont work, but you need to understand your data needs or how you will manage the data.
 

Aditya_S

macrumors 6502a
Jan 25, 2016
500
111
If you can afford the 256GB model, get it, but if not you can get the 128GB model and another 128GB SD card that other people recommended to me. It costs less than upgrading to the 256GB model, but the read and write speeds will be slower.
 
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