Hello everyone,
I need help choosing a laptop serving as a very mobile secondary machine. I am an architecture student and I primarily do all the work related to architecture on my desktop PC with a 24" 1920 x 1200 px screen (have been using a 1055T with 8GB RAM and a gtx 560Ti so far, just ordered an upgrade to a new motherboard with an i7-4770k, 16 GB and planning an upgrade to a gtx 780 very soon) but as much as I hate it, I sometimes have to use a laptop as well, when working together with other students or for finishing work before presentations and for presentations themselves.
Besides that, I also work part-time as a language trainer and I use my laptop a lot to play listening comprehension audio, videos with dialogues for my students etc. So for this purpose I definitely want it to be as light as possible (no more than 1,5 kg / 2,2 lbs for example) , but don't want to go below 13". I have even considered a convertible, like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga, since I figured it would be much nicer to display videos and learning material in digital form, etc. with the screen flipped over, when teaching one on one; on the other hand, when teaching to groups and being plugged in to a projector or a larger screen, it wouldn't have much use.
As far as the use for the studies goes, I wouldn't really mind the 15", but given that, as mentioned, I really want to do all my work on the desktop as far as possible, I would much rather opt for a 13" as well. Still, the laptop would pretty much have to be able to smoothly run Adobe's Creative Suite applications and a few 3d modelling and drafting applications (AutoCAD, Rhino, Revit or ArchiCAD, Cinema 4D), but since I want to do my rendering and post-processing on the desktop, I don't think I would go so far as to need a quad-core on the laptop as well, since most of the named applications would much more benefit from a higher clock than from several cores. Storage is no issue, since I store everything either on the desktop HDD or on the external HDD, but I have heard that 128 GB SSDs in laptops are often significantly slower than the 256 GB versions, so if that is the case, I'd probably be willing to pay the extra cash just for the speed.
So having considered all that, and trying to find a sort of a compromising or a universal solution for both purposes, I narrowed my choice down to the following three options:
13" MacBook Air with i7 -4650U, 8GB, Intel Graphics 5000, judging from the benchmarks the processor is great in single-threaded use because of its 3.3 GHz turbo, and very energy-efficient at the same time
+ weight, battery life
+ 16:10 = great advantage for design and CAD
- screen resolution, unfortunately only 1440 px
1320 EUR with a 128 GB SSD
1520 EUR with a 256 GB SSD
13" MacBook Pro with i7 -4558U, 8GB, Intel Iris Graphics 5100
+ great screen resolution
+ best graphics of all the three
- somewhat more expensive and probably shorter battery life
1700 EUR with a 128 GB SSD
1820 EUR with a 256 GB SSD
13" Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus 940X3G with i7 -4500U, 8GB, Intel HD Graphics 4400
+ great screen resolution
+ weight as the macbook air
+ windows (compatibility)
+ probably good battery life (no idea, compared to 2013 macbooks?)
- weakest graphics of all the three
- weakest processor of all three
ca. 1700 EUR with a 256 GB SSD
Also worth noting, the Samsung has 2 years warranty, the Macbooks only 1, so I doubt I wouldn't purchase additional warranty, which isn't really cheap with Apple.
What do you guys think?
Many thanks in advance
I need help choosing a laptop serving as a very mobile secondary machine. I am an architecture student and I primarily do all the work related to architecture on my desktop PC with a 24" 1920 x 1200 px screen (have been using a 1055T with 8GB RAM and a gtx 560Ti so far, just ordered an upgrade to a new motherboard with an i7-4770k, 16 GB and planning an upgrade to a gtx 780 very soon) but as much as I hate it, I sometimes have to use a laptop as well, when working together with other students or for finishing work before presentations and for presentations themselves.
Besides that, I also work part-time as a language trainer and I use my laptop a lot to play listening comprehension audio, videos with dialogues for my students etc. So for this purpose I definitely want it to be as light as possible (no more than 1,5 kg / 2,2 lbs for example) , but don't want to go below 13". I have even considered a convertible, like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga, since I figured it would be much nicer to display videos and learning material in digital form, etc. with the screen flipped over, when teaching one on one; on the other hand, when teaching to groups and being plugged in to a projector or a larger screen, it wouldn't have much use.
As far as the use for the studies goes, I wouldn't really mind the 15", but given that, as mentioned, I really want to do all my work on the desktop as far as possible, I would much rather opt for a 13" as well. Still, the laptop would pretty much have to be able to smoothly run Adobe's Creative Suite applications and a few 3d modelling and drafting applications (AutoCAD, Rhino, Revit or ArchiCAD, Cinema 4D), but since I want to do my rendering and post-processing on the desktop, I don't think I would go so far as to need a quad-core on the laptop as well, since most of the named applications would much more benefit from a higher clock than from several cores. Storage is no issue, since I store everything either on the desktop HDD or on the external HDD, but I have heard that 128 GB SSDs in laptops are often significantly slower than the 256 GB versions, so if that is the case, I'd probably be willing to pay the extra cash just for the speed.
So having considered all that, and trying to find a sort of a compromising or a universal solution for both purposes, I narrowed my choice down to the following three options:
13" MacBook Air with i7 -4650U, 8GB, Intel Graphics 5000, judging from the benchmarks the processor is great in single-threaded use because of its 3.3 GHz turbo, and very energy-efficient at the same time
+ weight, battery life
+ 16:10 = great advantage for design and CAD
- screen resolution, unfortunately only 1440 px
1320 EUR with a 128 GB SSD
1520 EUR with a 256 GB SSD
13" MacBook Pro with i7 -4558U, 8GB, Intel Iris Graphics 5100
+ great screen resolution
+ best graphics of all the three
- somewhat more expensive and probably shorter battery life
1700 EUR with a 128 GB SSD
1820 EUR with a 256 GB SSD
13" Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus 940X3G with i7 -4500U, 8GB, Intel HD Graphics 4400
+ great screen resolution
+ weight as the macbook air
+ windows (compatibility)
+ probably good battery life (no idea, compared to 2013 macbooks?)
- weakest graphics of all the three
- weakest processor of all three
ca. 1700 EUR with a 256 GB SSD
Also worth noting, the Samsung has 2 years warranty, the Macbooks only 1, so I doubt I wouldn't purchase additional warranty, which isn't really cheap with Apple.
What do you guys think?
Many thanks in advance