The MacBook Pro and 5K iMac have now been updated for 2019, and we’ve just finished
testing them, so let’s talk about what’s changed since last year and compare performance
to help you decide which Mac you should buy.
Here are the specs for the models of each Mac we tested, both pretty much specced out
except that we didn’t pay the extra $200 for the better 8-core processor on the MacBook
Pro because you only get around 2% faster performance, which is not worth it at all.
And for the iMac, we paid only $300 for 64GB of RAM by upgrading it ourselves instead of
paying Apple $1,000 for that same upgrade, and it was incredibly easy and simple to do.
You can check out our RAM upgrade tutorial video by clicking the card above, and we’ll
link the RAM we used down in the description.
We already expect the iMac to perform better than the MacBook Pro, but the main point of
this video is to see if the difference is small enough to make the portability of the
MacBook Pro worth it over being tied down to a desktop iMac.
For the new 15” MacBook Pro, not much has changed except for the updated butterfly keyboard
which has new materials for the switches which should hopefully fix the keyboard issues once
and for all.
Not only that, but we noticed much better temps across the board and quieter fans compared
to the 2018 i9 model which suffered from a ton of thermal throttling.
To learn more about it, watch our 2019 MacBook Pro review.
For the 5K iMac, nothing at all has changed on the exterior, but on the inside, we get
a new Vega 48 graphics option which is much more powerful than the old Radeon Pro 580.
Not only that, but the new 8-core performs extremely well and the fans are noticeably
more quiet compared to the 2017 iMac, despite the old model having only 4 cores.
Now let’s jump into performance.
Starting with Geekbench 4, we see around 10% faster multi-core speeds, which isn’t much,
but in the more realistic Cinebench R20 test, we got around 30% higher scores on the iMac,
and that’s because of the MacBook Pros thermal limitations, so this shows a good representation
of performance differences in processor-heavy tasks like photo editing, audio production
and programming.
Now testing raw graphics performance in Geekbench 4, we’re getting about 2x more performance
on the iMac, which will give you a good indication of performance differences in apps that use
a lot of graphics, like video editing, 3D rendering and animation.
For gaming performance, we tested Unigine’s Heaven benchmark, which gives a good idea
of the differences you’ll see while gaming and the iMac got 80% more FPS thanks to that
Vega 48 chip, and if you want to see it in action, click the card above for our 5K iMac
gaming video.
Now for photo editors, let’s run some tests in the latest version of Lightroom.
Importing 50 42MP RAW photos, they both only took around 5 seconds, so no difference there.
Converting them to 1:1 Smart Previews, the iMac was a few seconds faster, but they’re
both so quick that it doesn’t make that big of a difference.
And finally, exporting them all to JPEG, the iMac was just a little bit faster than the
MacBook Pro, despite the 30% faster processor performance in Cinebench R20 and the fact
that it has 64GB of RAM compared to 32, so we’re really impressed with the MacBook
Pros performance for photo editing.
Now moving onto video editing in Final Cut Pro, the iMac is over twice as fast in the
BruceX benchmark because it pretty much just uses the graphics.
Now stabilizing a 20s 4K clip, we get around 40% faster performance with the iMac, but
they’re both so quick that you’ll hardly notice the difference.
Moving onto exporting a 4K H.264 video, which most YouTubers shoot in this format, we actually
don’t get any real performance advantage at all because both machines are limited by
the same Intel Quicksync exporting chip, so the extra performance of the iMac isn’t
really being used.
And editing smoothness is also identical because of how easy this 4K footage is to playback.
Now here’s a shocker, if we switch to 8 bit 4K H.265 or HEVC footage, the MacBook
Pro is actually more than 2x faster, and that’s because it packs Apple’s T2 Chip, which
features hardware HEVC encoding.
The new 2019 iMac doesn’t have that chip, so it takes much longer.
And finally, for the more advanced video editors out there who edit RAW video, the iMac starts
to shine with about 2x faster performance exporting a 4K 60 C200 RAW clip, because there’s
no specific chip like Quicksync or the T2 chip that decodes it.
It fully depends on both the graphics and processor performance for exporting, and that’s
why we see such a huge difference.
Not only that, but timeline smoothness is doubled, with the iMac playing it back at
the full 60 frames per second, compared to 30 on the MacBook Pro.
So let’s answer the original question, are you sacrificing a lot of performance by going
with the portable MacBook Pro instead of the more powerful iMac?
Well, for most people, no.
Both of them are so powerful that the difference won’t really matter that much in the real
world unless you’re someone who deals with RAW footage or likes to play games on their
Mac.
For common video and photo editing, there’s really no difference at all, and both displays
are also equally color accurate as well.
Now a plus for the iMac is that you can go from 8GB to 64GB of RAM for just $300 by following
our RAM upgrade guide, while it costs $400 just to go from 16GB to 32 on the MacBook
Pro.
You can even get up to 128GB of RAM on the iMac for the same price that Apple charges
for 64GB, and yes it does support 128GB, so if you’re doing virtualization or any task
that eats up a ton RAM, the iMac is the way to go.
But for most people, we think the better choice is the MacBook Pro because we no longer have
the serious thermal throttling issues from last year, and the portability outweighs any
extra performance of the iMac in most cases.
If this video helped you out, tap the like button and click the circle above to subscribe.
And check out our iMac RAM upgrade guide right there, as well as the 2019 MacBook Pro review.
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next video!