Macbook pro 16 or a gaming laptop

Don
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I just poured a large glass of wine over my 'old' i9 15" macbook pro, it was the slightly smaller variant so had the crappy keyboard etc.. I must admit I liked it, and my knee jerk reaction was to just order the same 16" variant. However, for once I thought I'd do some market research, and now I've seen Zephyrus's, XPS's, Blade's and alike. Anything I should consider?

What I consider high load apps which I use all the time are vmware fusion/worksation , Lightroom, Photoshop, Wireshark (fairly chunky captures)

I do like to game too, usually just Rust, Doom, LOL, the Battlefield series etc..

budget is 2.5k

what would you do?

thanks :)
 
Soldato
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I often wondered this myself as whilst I know many dedicated gaming laptops will have more powerful GPUs. Through having tried the 16" Macbook Pro I wondered if as an all rounder it might be a better option overall?

Especially by the time you factor build quality, residential values, overall experience plus the flexibility of being able to run both MacOS and Windows?
 
Soldato
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Gaming laptops are too loud for me, the macbook pro is passable at 40 odd decibels and silent at idle. I am actually also considering ordering one on Monday myself, aside from that I was looking at the OLED aero and razer 15.
 
Soldato
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It's 2 weeks with my base spec 16 inch, it's unbelievable. Just get it :D

Full comparison I came from the 2012 retina mbp 15 inch, which over it's life with me was a real work horse, I just wanted something with a more up to spec processor and graphics card (and something shiney for lockdown). It's blown me away, every last bit of the user experience is spot on (read up about this keyboard problem with the gen I missed, glad I miss that!).
 
Soldato
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I would also say that having owned several laptops over the years Apple is the only brand I'd feel comfortable spending serious money (£1000+) on.

Has anyone gone from owning a MacBook Pro and moved back to a gaming/high end Windows laptop instead?
 
Don
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After you’ve spent so much time with a MacBook, the build quality of everything else will disappoint.

Yep I fear you are right, I must admit the last two MBPs I had were quite disappointing, my old air was quite frankly the best thing ever, however, the changes in the MBP 16" seem to address everything that annoyed me with the previous version.

I shall spend another day being convinced by the myriad of YT videos praising the 16" variant :D
 
Soldato
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Two different beasts. Doesn’t the new MacBook come with a 5500M? An Alienware 51M comes with a full 2080 which crushes the MacBook and can be had for a lot less if you look around. So its going to be louder but it’s acceptable.

I have also seen the razer blade OLED for a decent price but haven’t used one. The OLED screen in the XPS is better also. I have seen them side by side. Saying all that, the 16” MacBook is very nice but pricey.
 
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Soldato
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I went from a MacBook to a fully kitted out Alienware. It lasted 3 days before I realised how superior MacOS is on a laptop. All the small optimisations, the trackpad, battery life, screen...

I replaced the Alienware with a 15 inch pro and loved it. Great machine. However, for my final year of uni, I opted to sell it for a Surface Book 2 (again, kitted out with an i7 and 1060) and while it's probably the best windows machine you'll get your hands on, it's still way behind the quality of a mac.

Just little things like:

Hinge
Battery life
Trackpad
Autobrightness
Display
Stability (I always closed the lid on my MBP, basically never turned off - can't do this with the surface, as the WiFi goes, or the pen, or autobrightness)

As soon as I'm done with university, the Surface, while a very good machine from a utilitarian point of view, doesn't do it for me.

Windows will always be my OS of choice on a desktop, but on a laptop, I can't see myself using anything other than a mac.

My only concern would be the new Ryzen CPUs - if Intel struggle to keep up, I can't see Apple sticking with them. Would love to see a mac using a Ryzen CPU.
 
Don
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right, sod it, my insurance money just came in and it was £400 more than I paid for the old one; result :)

So I just bought a brand new i9 16" MBP, 32gb 2TB

This thread will now haunt me, similar to when you buy a new car, never ever look at the prices again or wonder what else you could have had :D :D
 
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Two different beasts. Doesn’t the new MacBook come with a 5500M? An Alienware 51M comes with a full 2080 which crushes the MacBook and can be had for a lot less if you look around. So its going to be louder but it’s acceptable.

I have also seen the razer blade OLED for a decent price but haven’t used one. The OLED screen in the XPS is better also. I have seen them side by side. Saying all that, the 16” MacBook is very nice but pricey.

Depends how much noise bothers you.

The Alienwares are very loud.

Doesn’t sound like gaming on it is a high priority... so the 2080 is a bit of a waste too.

Battery life is another thing that’s pathetic on most windows laptops unless they’re exceptionally underpowered.

The Blade is the closest windows laptop I’ve found to a MacBook.
 
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right, sod it, my insurance money just came in and it was £400 more than I paid for the old one; result :)

So I just bought a brand new i9 16" MBP, 32gb 2TB

This thread will now haunt me, similar to when you buy a new car, never ever look at the prices again or wonder what else you could have had :D :D

Good choice, the others would have let you down.

I tried to switch away but nothing cuts it.

Plus it’s nice having something that just works, still endless issues with Windows 10 and for some reasons they are amplified on a laptop.
 
Soldato
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Depends how much noise bothers you.

The Alienwares are very loud.

Doesn’t sound like gaming on it is a high priority... so the 2080 is a bit of a waste too.

Battery life is another thing that’s pathetic on most windows laptops unless they’re exceptionally underpowered.

The Blade is the closest windows laptop I’ve found to a MacBook.

I had a 51M with a full fat 2070 and it wasn’t loud. Even hammering Battlefield 5 for hours the fan noise wasn’t bad.
 
Soldato
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My main apprehension with buying a macbook is:

1. GPU power not being as good as the competition - easy to accept, its apple.
2. Display being inferior to the competition - this one I find harder to accept. Apple have really rested on their laurels display-wise and I don't think they compete well enough with the 144hz or OLED screens which the competition offer.
 
Soldato
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Yeah, there's talk of the 16" model recieving an upgrade to Mini-LED later this year and supposedly the upcoming 14" MacBook Pro will also feature the same tech.

It'll be interesting to see how it compares with OLED. Whilst I agree OLED displays look glorious I'm still not convinced the tech is a good fit long term for a monitor due to issues with burn in.
 
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