After several years of using Ubuntu laptop for programming, I have decided to upgrade my laptop 👨💻. My old laptop is Thinkpad T450s, it has a good keyboard, very lightweight but its performance was not good enough for me. I spent days looking for a new laptop with a great build, so there are few options for me:
- Thinkpad X1 Carbon
- LG Gram 14”
- Dell XPS 13”
- MacBook Pro 13”
The Thinkpad X1 Carbon and Dell XPS have a high price like MacBook Pro, so with Unix-like OS prefer, I must remove them from the list. And with LG Gram 14”, it has RAM and SDD upgradable but I lost the offer at the last minute. So, MacBook Pro 13” would be my final choice 😆
I still had some concerns at that time. Because I can only go for MacBook Pro 13” 2020 base model, so there are few questions make me need to think:
- Is 8GB RAM enough? (My old laptop always use almost 8GB RAM, so sometimes it’s quite slow)
- Is it overheating? (I’m living in a hot country so cool temperature laptop would be great for me)
I would like to try macOS so just go to buy it, the answers will come later 😅. So here are the few things I can say when using it:
Great build and design
I love the MacBook Pro design, it’s more beautiful than I thought, the screen bezel is no problem, I haven’t noticed it when using. Actually, I’m looking for the 14” model but 13” is still ok for me compare to the 14” of my old laptop.
I love the space gray color, it’s look so strong and beautiful. The build is solid, and the weight is light but I feel it a little heavier than Thinkpad T450s.
Good performance
The CPU i5 (4 cores 8 threads) is definitely enough for me. Especially, it has great performance compare to my old CPU i5 (2 cores 4 threads).
8GB RAM on this MacBook is still enough for my development requirements, and I love how the Swap amount can change dynamically, so I don’t need to manage it manually.
I opened around 20 Chrome tabs, 5 docker containers, 3 node dev servers, 2 VS Code projects, some other macOS apps, the RAM used amount is around 4.5GB, I don’t need to worry about the memory for now 😆
High temperature
The bottom of the laptop quite hot but when using it with the air conditioner turn on, there is no problem.
P/s: Above is my quick review about MacBook Pro 2020 base model, if you need a new laptop for programming, it would be a great option for you!
Bonus: You may want install these packages for your new mac