Choosing the Right MacBook For You in Spring 2020

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at Apple's MacBook lineup and figure out which one is the right one for you.

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So now that Apple has come out with a new 13-inch MacBook Pro there's a complete new lineup of MacBooks. As a matter of fact every MacBook is younger than six months. So this is going to be the lineup for a little while. If you're in the market for one which one is the right one for you. Let's take a look at all of them and hopefully this will help you decide.

Here's the lineup. You could see there are three models. The MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. But actually this is misleading. There are really four different models. There are really two different 13-inch MacBook Pros. I'm going to call them the lower end model and the upper end model. So that main differences are the processor and the number of ports. The lower end model is still using the old 8th generation Intel processors and it has only 2 Thunderbolt ports while the upper end is using very new 10th generation Intel processor and has 4 Thunderbolt ports just like the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

So let's start by looking at the Air. Here are the basics. It has the cheapest starting price at just under a thousand dollars. At that price you get only a Dual core i3 processor which actually is going to be fine if you're browsing the web, you're doing some writing, and some basic light work. It's good for students and most people using a MacBook in a general business situation. But you can spend more to get Quad core i5 or i7 processors in it. Like all the MacBooks except for the 16-inch it has integrated graphics. Which means it doesn't have a dedicated graphics processor. But, you know, now a days the Intel Iris Plus integrated graphics  are pretty good. They'll do the job for basic image editing, doing short videos in iMovie or even Final Cut Pro.

Now the good news is for this base model it gives you 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This is exactly what you want on a base model. Before this you could get 128GB drives on MacBooks which were pretty much useless. I'm glad that now there's no 128GB option. You start at 256GB and for people that don't have a lot of photos and are not doing a lot of video work 256 may be good enough. The Air is the only model that doesn't have the Touch Bar. It does have Touch ID though, which is the best feature of the Touch Bar, being able to login by just putting your finger there over the power button.

So here's the lower end 13-inch MacBook Pro. It's a little bit bigger and a little bit heavier than the MacBook Air and it's $300 more. But with that you get a Quad Core processor although it's the older 8th generation quad core processor. But you do get the Touch Bar. So if the Touch Bar is important to you this is a major change from the Air to the MacBook Pro.

Now here's the upper end 13-inch MacBook Pro. The price  jumps up quite a bit. We're at $1800 now. But with this you go to the 10th generation processor and a bunch of other upgrades. I've highlighted them here. So you have 10th-gen processors. Also it starts off at 16GB of RAM, instead of 8GB of RAM. So the higher base price doubles your RAM and it also doubles your storage because you start off with 512GB and in addition you get 4 Thunderbolt ports now.

So for $500 more you get newer and better processors, double the RAM, double the storage, and double the number of ports.

Now let's look at the 16-inch MacBook Pro. This one is quite a bit larger and quite a bit heavier. Of course the big advantage of it is the larger screen. So if screen size is important to you, as it should be for many graphic professionals, then that's a huge advantage here. But you know you're going to have to sacrifice size and weight for that. Here you've got 6-core and 8-core processors in it. You also have a dedicated GPU in here. So for high end graphics work this is going to be much better than any of the other models.

Here's my comparison. So these are basically my opinions based on all of the data and my experiences with the MacBook. First let's look at portability. Obviously, the MacBook Air is the most portable and I give is four stars here. Five stars, well that would be the 12-inch MacBook that Apple doesn't make anymore. That was smaller and lighter. So I can't really give the Air five stars even though it's the most portable of all the models because until recently Apple had a more portable model. Now the 13-inch models are really only a little bit heavier and a little bit bigger than the Air so they get three stars. Maybe is should be more like three and a half. But clearly the 16-inch MacBook Pro, because it has the bigger screen and larger battery and everything that's not really a very portable machine. Although it's certainly not bad compared to some of the big heavy Windows laptops that are out there.

Now looking at Power, of course the MacBook Air is not going to be rated really high for power but if that's not what you need that's fine. You get a big jump in power between the two 13-inch MacBook Pros models going to a much newer processor. But then the 16-inch MacBook Pro, well that's the most powerful laptop that Apple has ever made and one of the most powerful ones on the market right now. That clearly is a five star rating there. 

Now instead of comparing price I want to look at value because, obviously, you know the difference between $1000 and $2400. I don't need to tell you that. But what's the better value. Well, for $1000 the base model MacBook Air is a really good value. But so it the high end 16-inch MacBook Pro. For $2400 you get a super powerful MacBook. When you're thinking of bang for the buck the high end one is great and so is the low end one. The 13-inch MacBook Pros really aren't that great on value. The lower end one really isn't that much better than the MacBook Air but you're paying a lot more for it. The upper end one definitely is more powerful but you're paying a lot for that extra power. So I only give both of those two stars in terms of value.

So basically between those three things if you decide which two are the most important to you, you can figure out which MacBook is best. For instance if you want portability and value but power is not important to you, well, the MacBook Air if the winner. It's the most portable one and it's also a great value. On the other hand if power is very important to you but you also want value, well then the 16-inch MacBook Pro is a great value with a ton of power. So that's the clear winner there. 

What if you want portability and power and you don't really care about the price. That's not your concern. You just want a very portable machine but something that's decent in terms of what it can do. Well, this is probably where the upper end 13-inch MacBook Pro fits in. Now it's still not going to have it's own dedicated GPU but you can get the newer processors in it and it's almost as lightweight and as small as the MacBook Air. So this is where this model fits in.

So where does the lower end 13-inch MacBook Pro fit in. Well, beats me. I don't really see that as a good option for really anybody. Hopefully that helps make things clearer for you of which one you should get.

Now let's take a look at the different options. Say you go with the MacBook Air. You've got the base price of $999. You've got a bunch of different upgrade options. Here are two that I think are worth looking at. One is for $200 more you can go up to the quad core processor and you can double the storage. All for $200. I think that's definitely worth it. So unless you're really on the tightest budget and you want to keep it to that base level of $1000 that's worth going to. Another thing you might want to look at is going from 8 to 16 GB of RAM for $200. I'm not as excited about that one because I think if you're getting the MacBook Air you're probably going to use it for general computing purposes and 8GB is probably fine.

Now looking at the upper end 13-inch MacBook Pro you start off with 16GB of RAM for $1800. But for $400 more you double it to 32GB. So if you know you're going to be using things that use a lot of memory, so you're using a particular app that you know is a memory hog, well $400 may be something you want to look at. Also 512GB of storage is fine for a lot of people. But if you're someone like me where that's just not going to cut it you can double that to a 1TB drive for $200.

Now the 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2400 but it has an interesting $400 upgrade. For $400 you can go from 6 cores to 8 cores and from 512GB to 1 TB and also for that you get a slightly better graphics chip. So that's definitely something to look at. You can also double the RAM from 16GB to 32GB of memory for $400.

So there's my look at the three, really four, different models of MacBooks that Apple's got going here in the Spring of 2020. Hopefully this helps you decide which one is the right one for you.