16 inch Macbook Pro - performance?

[EGS]

Originally Posted by Will Russell

... Time for plan B......

Depends on your needs. For example, I use a laptop ONLY for remote sound gathering gigs (few tracks, high buffer, few or no plugs, no VIs, no video). For that purpose, even a slow old laptop works. For real work though, its hard to beat a desktop - better thermals, CPUs, RAM etc.

[Southsidemusic]

EGS /

He wants it for both stationary and portability so I would look at another solution if he needs to use it for everything.

My two older Laptops (Macbook Pro’s) are much quieter and these new ones are noisey when pushed and for me even when not pushed so of the OP is sensitive to noise as he wrote in the reply I would advice to go another route. One desktop for just music usability and older i7 MBP 2013-2015-ish for price vs performance and the portability factor etc. The omder MBP’s are great and much more quiet and for most uses in music they hold up great even today and can be had for a really reasonable price even for an Apple product hehe All IMHO of course

[JFreak]

My buddies (and I also) have found out that late 2013 MBP is currently the sweet spot regarding low enough noise and high enough performance. They max at 16GB ram but its i7 CPU is very capable, and SSD is in gigabyte range. Also some models have dedicated GPU.

Waiting eagerly to hear first rumors of Apple Silicon laptops and their thermal performance. Would not be buying a new Apple laptop now if not absolutely necessary. And for what it is worth, laptop as only studio computer is a bad idea as Chris already said. The noise will always be there.

[Will Russell]

Hi,

I appreciate this discussion. In addition to my Cheesgrater production rig I have a 2015 27" Retina iMac as a second editing station and a 2013 15" MacBookPro for carrying around, It occurred to me that I maybe didn't really need both machines and maybe I could simply use a newer, more powerful MacBook Pro for both my mobile needs and as my second workstation (with a larger monitor) at my studio.

From this discussion and others online it definitely seems like the current MacBook Pro might be a powerful beast but it will sound like a Hoover. That would drive me nuts.

Fortunately all of my current machines are running fine at the moment so I'm in no particular hurry except for my desire for a new shiny thing. I think maybe I will wait and see what's up with the ARM processor MacBook Pro's.

[audiobob]

So I have a 16" MBP and overall am pretty happy with it. It's a very fast machine but the fans really kick in and it sucks battery when using the AMD Radeon dGPU card...and unfortunately the card is used when connected to an external monitor. All is fine when just using the iGPU. There is software to turn off the dGPU but that sort of stinks that we have to do that...imo. Fan noise doesn't bother me that much so it's not that much of a problem for me.

Overall the CPU runs cooler than my new Mac mini.