

Ask HN: Can a 15-inch Retina MBP substitute an external monitor? - ratsimihah

I&#x27;m aware that the rMBP has a usable resolution of 1900x1200 at most, and that 2880x1800 is unfortunately unusable due to readability issues, so my question could be reformulated as &quot;Can a developer comfortably code on a 1900*1200 resolution without external monitor&quot;?
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fhoxh
In my experience, that can be comfortable on a part-time basis, but less so --
perhaps significantly less so -- on a full-time basis. I find myself
overwhelmingly more productive with an external display. When I'm onsite, I
typically use my rmbp lid-down with a 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display
(2560x1440).

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ratsimihah
Thank you, that's what I was afraid of. It seems the upgrade to 15" retina is
not worth it and I should stick with a 13" Air then.

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fhoxh
No worries! In my mind, there are only a few situations where I feel the 15"
rmbp is particularly worth it (for developers):

1\. If you're offsite far more than you're onsite.

2\. If you need >8 GiB of RAM.

Of course, if you expect to do much gaming on your laptop, you may want a
laptop with a dGPU. *8-)

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ratsimihah
I actually am offsite a lot more than I am onsite at the moment, and maybe for
the next couple months. I bought the low-end 15" rMBP to test it. 1920*1200
actually provides a lot of real estate while being quite usable. I'll see
within the next two weeks how much it can increase my productivity. But it is
really heavy.

Agreed on the gaming part. But one wouldn't buy a Mac to play games lol.

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chris_va
So, the 15 inch retina can drive a _large_ external monitor at high resolution
(full resolution). This is worth a lot to me. I connect it to a dell
ultrasharp via a thunderbolt cable.

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pandaexpress
I have a 15" MBP and I run it at 2880x1800 (not in HiDPI mode) by using
RetinaDisplayMenu. I've been working without an external monitor like this for
~6 months now.

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ratsimihah
Really? It's kind of usable but it requires being really close to the monitor.
I find 1920*1200 more comfortable.

