Advice on Processor for Macbook Pro

I'm about to purchase my first Apple machine and have decided on the 13-inch Macbook Pro without the Touchbar.

I will only be using it for email, surfing and some word processing and spreadsheet creation.

This machine comes with a 2.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor.

I've read that one should upgrade to the i7 processor to make the machine more future proof.

Do you think I should spend the extra £200+ in this case?

Thanks

I would (and did) spec the i7, but if it comes down to a choice between a slightly faster processor or more storage, I'd take the storage every time.

If there was any choice in the RAM size, I'd also look at that before the processor. In this case, I believe the RAM size is not expandable, so it's not a consideration you will have to worry about.

If what you say is all you will use it for, go for the storage, If you are going to be storing spreadsheets etc go for the 512GB flash as 256 is not much by the time you get the system installed, Office 2016 etc. and the 16GB memory. You cannot increase the memory capacity of late model MBP as it is part of the motherboard.

keith2511 said:

I've read that one should upgrade to the i7 processor to make the machine more future proof.

Do you think I should spend the extra £200+ in this case?

Thanks

Click to expand...

How long do you typically keep a laptop for? There are CPU's from 2009 that are more than capable of running any application today - the things that usually choke older Macs are low RAM and an under-powered GPU.

There really isn't much in it, although the Iris 550 graphics in the i7 is quite a bit better than the 540 in the i5, but unless you're thinking of playing games you won't notice a difference.

Far more important is getting 16GB of RAM because 3 or 4 years from now, that is what will choke your machine. I believe that's the same price as the i7 upgrade. 256GB of storage will vanish quickly too... 512 give you a lot more wiggle room.