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Comment by daviddever23box | Hacker News Reader

Go for the 16"; the extra size gets you better cooling, screen real estate and battery life for roughly another $250 or less.

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Is there ever a reason to go for the smaller factor? At work, we got 13" macbooks, and I wish we'd gotten the one-size-up ones. I'm a reasonably healthy human being, and can easily carry the slightly larger version - not that I do, because 99% of the time it's sitting on my desk, anyway. When I'm away from my large monitor, it irks me that I don't have more screen real-estate.

It's lighter and easier to travel with. The 16" doesn't really fit on an airplane food tray, for example, and I don't think it fits in my messenger bag either.

Sad truth is that the 13in Pro doesn't fit when opened on an airline fold-down tray, unless you are flying first-class!

I've flown w/ the 14" in economy and didn't have a problem. You do have to be alert in case the passenger in the seat in front of you reclines suddenly (snatched the lid of an x60 out of the way just barely fast enough once), but it should be OK.

Now that I'm thinking about it I didn't have a problem w/ the 15" Intel either, and the dimensions are pretty similar. I'm pretty slim and short though; I don't feel like a T-Rex typing.

Are there any numbers on the difference in cooling? Is it significant? I don't generally want a laptop that large, but I have also had many laptops that run too hot in the past.

Yeah, the difference is 10-13 F. IMO it's on the edge of being uncomfortable, and it's not super easy to do (like, how often do you run Cinebench with the computer on your lap), but if it's a concern then yeah, there's a significant difference.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-14-2021-Lapt...

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2021-M1-M...

I'm not used to measuring computer temperatures in F, so that doesn't mean much to me (I only use it for outside temperatures pretty much). My concern would be thermal throttling as I have seen on many ThinkPads rather than it becoming a bit uncomfortable. I'll probably use my future MBP mostly stationary at a desk with the lid closed.

I am semi-regularly dealing with temperatures in the 80-90s in celcius with my ThinkPad T440p in a docking station.

From a glance at your links it looks like they didn't get anywhere near that in their testing, so I probably have nothing to worry about, but I guess when the M2 Max comes out I'll give some thought to getting the bigger model, even though I don't tend to like overly large things. With ThinkPads I would absolutely not want a numpad (often on 15" models but not 14"), but it looks like Apple doesn't put those on any laptops anyway.

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