13 inch Retina or 15 in Retina

Hi guys,
i'm looking to invest into a MacBook pro.
now the question is should I get a 13inch or 15inch macbook pro retina.

I travel a lot but I do watch movies most of the time on my current ipad, or desktop.
I would probably use the following software most of the time

-Microsoft Office - Word and Excel
-Internet
-Youtube
-Netflix
-Picture editing
-Adobe Acrobat
-Occasionally: AutoCad
-Occasionally: Microsoft Projects or P6 (apparently i can run it in parallels)
-Occasionally: play a game (Assassin's creed)

Ideally i'd like it to be able to carry it everywhere when I go around to the gym, coffee or GF.
I was hesitating on the 13inch but it seems that it wont' be enough space. I have not seen any of them in person. But I would like to have a decent Laptop with which I could do my CPD, watch movies and some work sometimes.

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10 Answers from the Community

  • Best Answer

    I just purchased the 13" for the fiancé based on the fact that her work boss has the 15" and she said that thing is a beast. So, I talked to him and he said, "I wish I had bought the 13" this one is just a bit to large to travel". With the retina display you can pack more onto the screen because everything is so darn clear. Go 13-retina for sure.

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  • Bhavesh,

    If you're just looking from a portability standpoint, the hands down winner would be the 13 inch Retina. One of your concerns with the 13" is that it doesn't have enough space. If I understand you correctly, you mean space on the hard drive to store all of your programs. Although the 13" comes with 128gb of flash storage, you can double the hard drive space to 256gb for $300 which is still less expensive than the 15 inch Retina. And if necessary, there are faster processors and larger hard drives available for the 13".

    And since you will be doing some picture editing, the retina are the clear choice over the non-retina Macbook Pros and the Macbook Air. And both the 13 and the 15 are super thin and light, so they are both quite portable, but the 13 would be easier to take with you everywhere. The 15" Retina does have a much larger screen which would be better for picture editing and would help with the viewing of movies and being on the internet. And the 15 has a quad-core processor to allow you to do more things at once as opposed to the 13"s dual-core.

    So the real question for you is, is portability most important or is the size of the screen you'd like and the ability to mutli-.task better the decided factor? Based on your question, the 13" Retina would suite your needs best. It is super fast, and thin and quite light. Yet is has the processing power to handle all of your tasks and the screen resolution that will make your pictures and movies pop off the screen. And at 4.5 lbs, over a full lb lighter than the 15" Retina, you'll almost forget your're carrying it. Both are great solutions; but which solution do you think would work best for you?
    Cheers,
    Craig

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  • I highly recommend 15". The additional 2" makes a big difference with only $200 more. With the 13", you'd always wished you should have bought the 15" cause it happened to me and many others that I know of. The 13" are both weight just the same and since they both have Retina displays, the quality is the same on both.

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  • If you want to play any games I would suggest the 15". The 13" Intel Graphics card is not good for gaming. In fact it is quite bad. Most games do not support it. Especially if you are running bootcamp for games. It will be a little better for you if you are only playing mac compatible games. Same with heavy photo editing with photoshop/illustrator etc.

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  • If you need to travel with the laptop on a daily bases then 13 inches MacBook Pro with Retina is the way to go. The two extra inches on the 15 inch model really does make a difference when carrying around everyday. For most of your everyday task with the exception of AutoCad and game playing the 13 inch MacBook Pro with Retina will be a good choice although the standard 128GB hard drive is a little small so I would recommend going for the 256 GB option.

    Game play and AutoCAD could benefit from the addition of the dedicated graphics card on the 15 inch MacBook Pro with Retina. Which ever MacBook Pro with Retina Screen you choose remember to purchase the USB SuperDrive and ThunderBolt to Ethernet connector as it looks like most of the time you will be using the laptop in a professional capacity and these two items will come in handy at some point although for the most part you will not need to carry them around with you.

    You may need to seriously consider buying a very large SD card or external storage to store music, videos, photos and personal file on, if you purchase the entry level 13 MacBook Pro with Retina due to the tiny hard drive (128GB). In this day and age we all have to wonder what Apple was thinking when they fitted anything less than 320GB hard drives to their laptops.

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  • Hi Bhavesh R,

    Depends on what you will do with your computer, and what screen size you prefer.
    If you're only gonna use: Office, Internet (and YouTube), Netflix, Picture editing (iPhoto or Aperture?) and Adobe Acrobat both are very good and you can use normally.
    If you want to take everywhere, you can buy a MacBook Air in the Online Store, and personalize that way you want. If you want a Pro Retina, I recommend the 13". Both sizes will work normally with all of these applications (maybe you should boy the 15" for AutoCad or Assassin's Creed). Both two models have Intel Core i7 and good graphics (and the amazing Retina Display), so it's going to depend of what you think is the most important thing that you're gonna do in the computer.

    Just trying to help,
    José A.

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  • I have been using a MacBook Pro 13" Retina for a couple of months now. I love it and am happy I chose the 13" over the 15". I'm sure the 15" is better for some people but I like the extra portability when traveling (or just schlepping it around town). I use an external monitor (an old, cheap one that reminds me how great the retina display is) once in a while when I want extra real estate (say, to view a spreadsheet while word processing) but I would have done that any way.

    I use my MacBook mostly for writing, spreadsheets, and web browsing. I don't do any gaming so I'm not sure if a larger display would be better for that.

    My only complaint is that Apple charges a lot for things like adapters (to hook the MBP up to a VGA monitor) and I already paid a premium for the MBP itself. Sigh.

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  • Last July I purchased a 15" Macbook pro retina. Going into the store I actually thought I would have preferred a 13" but was sure that I wanted the i7 quad core over the duel core chip because I tend to be a heavy user of graphics and usually have a lot of programs going at the same time.

    Looking back on it I am sorry I did. Although the machine may have a somewhat greater amount of processing capacity, it gets heavy after a while of carrying it around. I also find the ergonomics of the distance to the keyboard is not quite as comfortable for me because of where my wrists lean on the corners.

    I am sure that I am going to run into storage problems in a short time, 256 solid state drives may seem like a lot but they fill up fast but if you aren not a heavy Phoroshop user this might not be too big a deal.

    So you really should consider a 13", the 15" is a better desktop replacement.

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  • I just bought the 15" Retina and it is beautiful!! If portability is important, you may want to go with the 13" just for the weight reduction. If screen size is what you want, it's a no brainer.

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  • I'd get the 15" Retina with as much on-board RAM and solid state drive as you can afford. It will be a very worthwhile investment.

    Speed counts - we do a lot of work with 3D BIM models and 3D laser scan point cloud data. So bags of RAM and lots of solid state drive space really make a difference.

    However, if you need to install a Window Partition using BootCamp Assistant on the 15" Retina Display, there's a bug that causes BootCamp to crash that I know the engineers at Apple are working on; I've spent several hours working through the steps with the Applecare Support team AND my local Apple Store Genius Bar team to get beyond the crash point.

    I'll be trying "Wine" -especially as its small (150MB) and runs Windows natively WITHIN OS X.

    My 15" Retina MacBook Pro is fabulous and I really appreciate the extra screen real estate over the 13." And its light and easy to carry about - and protect.

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