I am a designer and I use an iMac 27" late 2009 with Intel i5, ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB and 12 GB of RAM.
I will start traveling a lot, so I need a 'secondary computer' and I am considering a Macbook Pro Retina 13" [i5 2.4ghz, 8gb, 256gb], but I am afraid of the performance compared to my iMac.
So, my question is…
The Macbook Pro Retina 13" performance is good enough for front-end designers?
I usualy use Photoshop, some code editor, localhost server, Spotify and Chrome at the same time. Will I have some delays or it will handle okay?
Thanks.
Best Answer
If you can handle going from a 27" screen to a 13" screen (even though it's retina, the 'apparent' resolution is set quite low), then the rest of the system is fast.
Of course, you would want as much RAM and SSD as you can afford (you can't upgrade it later), but there is nothing to worry about with the CPU or the SSD speed.
In fact, the SSD alone will make it seem SUPER fast compared to a 3-4 year-old iMac (assuming it didn't have an SSD in it also).
If you needed an external GPU, then your only laptop Mac option these days is the top-end 15" Retina MBP, but that's larger and quite a bit more expensive than the 13" models.