Here is my own opinion, coming from 16 years of networking.
My MBP has a 500GB drive. I have a 1TB drive connected to my AirPort Extreme dedicated to Time Machine for the MBP.
My MacMini also has a 500GB drive. I have a 1TB drive plugged into it dedicated to Time Machine for the Mini.
Let Time Machine do the work. It will do a full backup once, then incrementals after that once an hour. you will find you forget it is even running, until you need to get in and restore something. I have had to multiple times and it has worked flawlessly. I highly recommend having a dedicated drive twice the size of the system drive. Eventually, the drive will fill up and it will start overwriting older backups. That is normal, and to be expected.
enjoy the Mac.