Need advice between two used 2015 MBPs with AppleCare

[decisionfatigue]

Experiencing some indecisiveness here.. Both Macbook Pros are the 15.4" mid-2015 model with 16GB of RAM.

Option A: 2.8GHz, AppleCare until May 2020
Option B: 2.2GHz, AppleCare until Oct 2018

The difference between the two laptops is $600. I know AppleCare is only $349 and that in general the speed bump from 2.2 to 2.8 is negligible. I do use Photoshop and Lightroom, but it's for vacation photos, no work.

My concern is moreso what are the prices for repairs outside of AppleCare? Will something break that will be more than $400? I'm wondering if the $600 is worth me not having to worry about my laptop until 2020, and hopefully by then Apple will have fixed the keyboards and USB-C will be everywhere.

I've been fairly lucky with my laptops, but I was one of the unfortunate folks with the 2011 MBP with the GPU failure (Apple did fix it, but it broke again in 8 months).

 

[macjunk(ie)]

I've been fairly lucky with my laptops, but I was one of the unfortunate folks with the 2011 MBP with the GPU failure (Apple did fix it, but it broke again in 8 months).

You have your answer then. If the laptop has a GPU, get the AppleCare. I lost 3 damned MBPs to GPU failure.
Right now I got the 2015 15". But I made sure I bought the one without the GPU. 3 years and still going strong.

 

[jerryk]

My 2015 15" with dGPU is working fine. Use it almost every day. It is not like the early 15" rMBP suffered from Raedongate.

 

[macjunk(ie)]

My 2015 15" with dGPU is working fine. Use it almost every day. It is not like the early 15" rMBP suffered from Raedongate.

I am tempted to say give it time but that is the pessimist in me speaking. Maybe Apple has done good work in the 2015

 

[jerryk]

I am tempted to say give it time but that is the pessimist in me speaking. Maybe Apple has done good work in the 2015

The did switch from NVidia to AMD so that may be why.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'd take the one with AppleCare through 2020.
One never knows when things could go wrong.... (sigh)