13 or 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro? (2015) #Helpful Post

so you're looking to buy a MacBook Pro

but you're faced with the age-old

question of do I want the portability of

a 13-inch or the power of a 15-inch now

for reference I'll be comparing the

highest end stock 13-inch MacBook Pro

against the lowest end stock 15-inch

MacBook Pro what I mean by stock is

there's no tweaks no customization you

can walk into the Apple Store Best Buy

or even go on Amazon and pick these two

models up so like I mentioned the most

appealing thing about the 13-inch

MacBook Pro is the form factor it's

lighter it's more compact and therefore

easier to move around then you have the

15-inch MacBook Pro which is heavier

bulkier and maybe a little less portable

but you're getting desktop-like power so

performance wise this 13-inch MacBook

Pro has a 2.9 gigahertz dual-core i5 CPU

that turbo boosts up to three point

three gigahertz the 15 inch on the other

hand has a 2.2 gigahertz quad-core i7

CPU that turbo boosts all the way up to

3.4 gigahertz as far as RAM and storage

goes the 13-inch MacBook Pro has eight

gigs of RAM 512 gigabytes flash storage

whereas the 15-inch MacBook Pro has

doubled a ram but half the storage and

these can obviously be configured what

can't be configured though are the

graphics in the 13-inch MacBook Pro has

Intel iris graphics 6100 then you have

Intel iris pro graphics on the 15-inch

now in terms of those cores and those

graphics and how they make a difference

in performance we'll get to that in a

second but I think we first need to

focus on the displays the size the

resolution and overall screen real

estate the 13-inch MacBook Pro has a

resolution of 2560 by 1600 whereas the

15-inch MacBook Pro has a resolution of

28 80 by 1800 and in terms of what those

numbers actually mean everything is

scaled and if it wasn't text and

everything will be so small it would be

a nightmare to look at so the 13-inch

MacBook Pro visually looks like 1280 by

800 whereas the 15-inch MacBook Pro

visually looks like 1440 by 900 now

beyond that each of these can be

configured to give you more screen real

estate but if you were to pull these two

out of the box and just do something

like simple web browsing here's how they

compare next what I did here was bump up

each MacBook Pro to the next scaling

option which is going to give us more

screen real estate and what I have going

on here is a full 1080p window plane in

Final Cut Pro 10 and you can see how

much more screen real estate you get on

the 15 inch compared to the 13

next up let's get in to performance and

in Geekbench 3 the 13-inch MacBook Pro

had a single core score of three

thousand four hundred seventy five and a

multi-core score of seven thousand four

hundred and thirty nine the 15-inch

MacBook Pro is really close in terms of

the single core score and has to be

expected with the clock speeds but where

you see the big differences is the

multi-core score which was thirteen

thousand one hundred and thirty eight as

far as the flash storage both were

insanely fast and I will note though

that the speeds actually depend on the

amount of storage that's in your MacBook

Pro so it's not like one's gonna

automatically be faster than the other

but in this case the 13-inch MacBook Pro

was consistently around the thirteen to

fourteen hundred megabytes per second

read and write whereas the 15-inch

MacBook Pro has slightly slower write

speeds when compared to the 13-inch

MacBook Pro next up in Final Cut Pro 10

I have a three minute 1080p project that

you guys can actually download and test

yourselves but what I did was integrate

compressor into a multipass h.264 export

where I saw a minute and 55 seconds on

the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 15-inch

MacBook Pro did that in a minute and 40

seconds next up is a 1080p render test

and this really focuses on the graphics

as opposed to the actual CPU and here

the 13-inch MacBook Pro dished out in 2

minutes and 27 seconds whereas the

15-inch MacBook Pro did the same thing

in a minute and 41 seconds so you can

see a pretty big difference here so

staying in the graphics department

running tomb raider at 1440 by 900 the

13-inch MacBook Pro at 21 point 4

average frames per second whereas the

15-inch MacBook Pro more than doubled

out 45.9 average frames per second

moving on to an After Effects CC render

the 13-inch MacBook Pro took 3 minutes

and 4 seconds and then the 15-inch

MacBook Pro took 2 minutes and 25

seconds so again here that's where you

can see a big difference between the two

in terms of performance testing we're

going to go and close out with Photoshop

CC the 13-inch MacBook Pro took two

minutes and one second and then the

15-inch MacBook Pro did the exact same

task in a minute and two seconds so by

now you should hopefully be able to see

the performance difference in how the 15

inch MacBook Pro kind of separates

itself against the 13-inch MacBook Pro

now I'm not saying that the 13-inch

MacBook Pro is super slow or slouch or

you shouldn't get it because I

definitely think it has its place

especially with the portability but I

think this is a great example of with

the 30

MacBook Pro you really shouldn't max out

the CPU or anything like that this kind

of maybe stick with the stock CPU put

the money into the RAM or to the storage

or then obviously if you get up to this

price point and you need the power move

to the 15-inch MacBook Pro that's gonna

make a difference especially in a 4k

video and editing pricing availability

and any other info you might need on

these two MacBook Pros or others are

linked down below

this is Jonathan with TLD and I will see

you guys later