Question Can I be stolen away from Apple?

[beardboy]

Hey folks. The time has come to upgrade. I have been running a speced up 2015 Macbook since...2015, and it is definitely starting to chug. At this point in my computational life it seems like I could go several ways. I could either buy a 2019 Macbook for about $1500 (I prefer 16gb of ram), I can wait for the 2020 Macbooks to come onto the refurbished market, or I could do the unthinkable and switch over to a windows machine like a Zephrus.
My workload is mostly for academic writing and light gaming (Total war is about as intense as it gets). I am not much for 3d design or anything like that.
I was wondering what you guys think? I would love some input!

 

[Oussebon]

PC would get you more powerful hardware (better graphics card, important for the gaming side) at a much lower price. Total war games can be very demanding. Also the PC platform can give you more choice of titles than Mac.

It depends if you're wedded to the Apple ecosystem for other devices, or to mac for specific software for your writing.

Tbh if someone had just posted here asking for something to do a bit of gaming and professional writing on, Mac would have been unlikely to enter the conversation. Since PCs are a much better option for gaming than macs, are often cheaper, and are fine for writing (it's not like all PhDs etc are written on mac...)

Laptops with premium branding can cost silly money, maybe not quite as silly as macs, but still a lot. And the branding covers a lot of different specs. Zephyrus gets applied across a range of hardware for instance. If you had a specific product in mind, can you link to it?

 

[beardboy]

I use an Iphone, but that is about as far into the Apple ecosystem as I go.
For most of my writing I just use docs or Microsoft word, and yeah having support for more than just 64 bit applications (thanks Catalina) would certainly be nice. I guess I am a bit apprehensive about learning a new OS, since I haven't had a PC since my family's old shared computer back in like '08.
I remember an Asus ROG Zephyrus that caught my eye, seeing as they use Ryzen cpus (having been with Apple for so long, I am not totally blown away by Intel's performance as of late)

 

[Oussebon]

Well, you already use Word, so software's not not an issue.

As for the OS, Windows' success lies in it being quite easy to use.

As for the hardware, read reviews of the specific model before buying I guess. And try not to get stung for premium features / hardware options you don't need. It's hard to be exact than that with advice without talking about specific units and prices, though when you have some options you can always post those

Apple are moving away from Intel for their CPUs and AMD for their GPUs to their own silicon designs in the coming years. The gated community's walls grow higher...

 

[beardboy]

My budget is around $1500-$1700 give or take.

Here are a few models im looking at. More of a reference than a definitive list.
Macbook Pro 2019
Zephyrus G14
Blade 15
Dell Xps 13

 

[Oussebon]

The one thing you didn't link is the Zephyrus - the Mac is linked on both the Mac and the Zephyrus.

You've started another thread asking about GPU performance. Without completely duplicating everything, as per my answer on that thread you can write off anything with less than a GTX 1650. So the XPS is out (you didn't link a specific store page for the XPS, but they all seem to have Iris graphics, so are all out).

The Razer Blade has a GTX 1660 ti, which is pretty decent. It is very expensive for a 1660 ti - bearing laptop, but Razer products, thin laptops, and any laptop (claiming to have) a premium chassis all carry price premiums. So that might be par for the course.

 

[beardboy]

Whoops, sorry about that. So it seems like:
Zephyrus G14 vs Blade 15 (fixed the link)

 

[Oussebon]

That particular Zephyrus charges a high price premium for an R9 4900HS + RTX 2060 Max-Q versus say this:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-ti-512gb-ssd-eclipse-gray/6409482.p?skuId=6409482

With an R7 4800HS and GTX 1660 ti.

Both the GPU and CPU are only very slightly slower than the ones in the chassis that's $200 more. There's a larger SSD but that still doesn't really justify the price difference, in my eyes.

The Blade's even more expensive and it depends if the chassis is more appealing to you for whatever features it has to offer.