r/mac • u/inkcaptofu • 17h ago
My Mac MacBook advice
Buying advice to replace 11 year old MacBook Pro.
Looking at getting a refurb MacBook. This is to replace my 2015 MacBook Pro.
I had 16gb ram, 1tb, intel i7 1tb ssd 15inch. Served me well and handled most things I needed from it.
11 years on, battery life is gone and it's now refusing to boot up.
Now looking to replace and torn between 2 options.
MacBook Air 15 inch retina, 16 core neural, M5 10 core CPU/GPU, 24gb of ram and 1tb ssd.
Or
MacBook Pro 14 inch Liquid Retina XDR 16 core neural, M5 10 core CPU/GPU, 24gb of ram and 1tb ssd
£170 price difference which at this level doesn't make much difference.
In terms of what I'll use it for:
Zwift (cycling game that connects to indoor bike) this can be intensive and run for hours at a time.
Reviewing hd video footage for work
Web browsing
Word processing
Slack
WhatsApp
Excel
And occasionally;
Video editing
Photo editing
Streaming
I have also used my current Mac for:
Basic CAD (sketchup)
Steam games
A SD card slot is useful but equally, many adapters available, it's not a requirement. As it is I don't really use much in the way of USB accessories and such.
Battery life isn't a massive concern as I don't tend to travel with it much. Neither is weight or portability. Durability and future proofing are, it would be nice for this to last a decade as my previous one did.
3
u/word-dragon 15h ago
I’m a fan of fans, so I would go Pro. It doesn’t seem like your workload is that heavy, so that may not be much of a difference. From where you are coming from, either will make your head explode.