So you’re looking to buy a MacBook Pro, but you’re faced with the question: Do I want the portability of a 13-inch OR the power of a 15-inch?
Now for reference, I’ll compare the higher quality 13-inch MacBook Pro to the smaller 15-inch one. What I mean by stock is that there are no adjustments or customization. You can go to Apple Store, BestBuy or even go to Amazon and choose these two models.
So, as I mentioned, the most attractive thing about the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the form factor. It is lighter, more compact and therefore easier to move. Then you have the 15-inch one, which is heavier and maybe a little less portable, but you get Desktop as Power.
So performance wise, this 13-inch MacBook Pro has a 2.9GHz dual-core i5 CPU that boosts the turbo up to 3.3GHz. On the other hand, the 15-inch has a 2.2GHz Quad Core i7 CPU that boosts the turbo to 3.4GHz.
As far as RAM and storage go, the 13-inch has 8GB of RAM, 512GB flash storage, as the 15-inch has twice the RAM, but half the storage which means obviously is can configure. However, what cannot be configured are the graphics. The 13-inch has Intel Iris Graphics 6100, then you have Intel Iris Pro Graphics on the 15-inch.
Now in terms of those cores and graphics and how they make a difference in performance, we’ll get to that in a second, but I think we need to focus on the display first. Its size, resolution and overall screen space.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro has a 2560 x 1600 resolution, while the 15-inch MacBook Pro has a 2880 x 1800 resolution. And in terms of what these numbers actually mean, everything is scaled, and if it weren’t Text And everything would be so small, it would be a nightmare to look at. So the 13-inch MacBook visually looks like 1280 x 800 while the 15-inch looks like 1440 x 900. Now, beyond that, each of these can be configured to give you more screen real estate. .
Next, what I did was move each MacBook Pro to the next scaling option, which gave us more screen space. And what I had on my laptop was a Full 1080p window playing in Final Cut Pro 10, and I could see how much more screen real estate I got on the 15-inch screen compared to the 13-inch screen.
The next step, let’s get into performance. On Geek-Bench 3, the 13-inch MacBook Pro had a single-core score of 3475 and a multi-core score of 7439. The 15-inch MacBook Pro was very close in terms of this single-core score and that It was to be expected with the layer speed, but where you will see the BIG difference is the multicore score, which was 13138.
When it comes to flash storage, they were both blazingly fast. And I’ll note, though, that the speeds actually depend on how much storage is on your MacBook Pro. In this case, the 13-inch was consistently around 13-1400MB per second read and write, while the 15-inch MacBook Pro had slightly slower write speeds, compared to the 13-inch.
The next step in Final Cut Pro 10, I had a 3 minute 1080p project. What I did was integrate the compressor into a multi-pass H.264 where I saw 1 minute and 55 seconds on the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 15-inch one did it in one minute and 40 seconds.
The next step was a 1080p rendering test. This really focuses on the graphics. And here the 13-inch MacBook completed that task in 2 minutes 27 seconds, while the 15-inch did the same in 1 minute and 41 seconds. So you can see a big difference here.
So, staying in the graphics department, running Tomb Raider at 1440 x 900, the 13-inch MacBook averaged 21.4 fps, while the 15-inch was more than double, an average 45.9 fps.
Moving on to the After Effects CC render. The 13-inch MacBook took 3 minutes and 4 seconds and then the 15-inch one took 2 minutes and 25 seconds. So again, this is where you can see a BIG difference between the two.
So by now you should hopefully be able to see the difference in performance and how the 15-inch type separates from the 13-inch ones. Now I’m not saying the 13-inch is SUPER slow OR that you shouldn’t get it. Because I definitely think it has its place, especially for its portability.
