Early 2013 15-inch vs Mid 2014 13-inch?

That comes down to what you prefer. Do you want the larger screen real estate or not? Do you want portability or not? Do you want flash storage or can you live with an HDD.

Answer these questions and you may be able to solve this easily yourself! 😀

Yes, at least in my perspective it is worth buying the older one. I was in a similar position as you, but choosing from the MacBook Pro 13"s Retina vs Non-Retina, and mainly the graphics card. And when I got my intel hd 4000, I was more than satisfied with it. The Iris is better for sure, but the 4000 is amazing as well.

When you it comes down to what you are buying, the QUAD cores, and i7 WITH the Dedicated graphics card GT 650, thats most certainly better than the Iris pro, hands down no doubt.

Only things you will be sacrificing are: The retina, the slimness, the portability (because of the slimness+13 inch).

Things you gain: HDD + RAM upgradability(main reason why I bought the older 13" for myself), optical disk drive.

Now obviously i missed a few things that you'd gain and/or sacrifice but those are the ones that come to my mind right now.

Also, to add on the 2.4ghz vs the 2.6ghz, is not a big factor at all. Those extra 0.2ghz won't do you much good. But the i7, and the QUAD cores will most certainly show you some epic results!

Enjoy! 😀

I know for sure that the Intel Iris has 1.5GB of memory and the HD 4000 has 1024. I would say get the mid 2014 pro since it has flash storage and it's a retina display. I have a 13" late 2013 retina pro. I spent $1,500 on it and it has 256GB flash storage, 8GB RAM, 2.4GHz i5 proccessor, and Intel Iris graphics card and it is the best notebook I've used.

Getting the retina or not is his choice whether he wants a retina or not. The normal MacBook Pro's still have amazing displays and retina's weren't my needs.

I was able to completely max spec out my machine at 2.9 ghz, with an i7, 8GB RAM, and 1TB of hard drive, still cheaper than the base retina.

Getting the mid 2014 just for the flash? Thats debatable as the SSD is soldered to the machine. While on the older you can have 2 hard drives and it's upgradeable.

I'd have immediately told him to go with the 13" Retina because of the CPU, but when he mentioned the discrete GT 650m, getting the 13" would be somewhat foolish.

😉

In that case, as I just mentioned previously. Getting the 13" inch would be foolish in my case.

Enjoy! 😀

They do have their advantages and disadvantages and I can't force him into buying something they don't need/want. I had a non-retina that I bought as a base model. I upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 8GB and was planning on buying an SSD later on. But it never happened because it kept failing on me. So I decided to replace it with a new retina. But you are right, the HD 4000 is still a good graphics card.

Oh, it has a retina? I'm sorry then I confused myself with it being an older non retina.

Wow, that makes half of my post irrelevant then.

But still, the discrete graphics card will still benefit you than the iris for sure.

That would have been useful information lol. But in this case, get the 15". It may be a bit older, but it's worth it.

Yeah, I know exactly. Knowing that is has a retina then for sure, go for the 15". No doubt.

My post was mainly towards the non-retina but still the answer does not change, go with the dedicated graphics card!

😀