Apple currently has three 13-inch MacBooks in their product lineup. The Standard MacBook Pro is kind of like the iPod Classic of the group. It is still the one for those who need an optical drive built-in or a high capacity hard drive built-in. If one of these features is not a requirement, then pass this model up.
This article will skip the standard MacBook Pro and compare the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Retina models. These two models are closely comparable and it may be hard to decide which one to get. The comparison will look at the base and high end version for both models. The following two tables show the differences between the MacBook Pro Retina 13-inch and the MacBook Air 13-inch. The first one looks at the base version and the second looks at the high end version.
Both models have an option to upgrade the solid-state storage from 256GB to 512GB for $300 on the high end version. This price was not included in the price of the product since they were both the same.
As the tables show, there are only a few features that differentiate the two models. On the lower end, the MacBook Air wins out with a cheaper price tag. Processor speed, HDMI port, and retina display are nice, but for budget conscious users, they don’t make up for the $300 difference in the price. MacBook Air makes a great base MacBook model with less weight and a smaller package.
MacBook Pro Retina 13-inch easily wins the comparison on the high end side. The extra 0.6 pounds is not a big factor for power users. The $300 price increase from Air to Pro is much easier to stomach given the 50% increase in processor performance and high resolution Retina display.
The MacBooks with 13-inch are the most popular Macs sold today. While they all have some similar specifications, each one fills a need. The Standard MacBook Pros are for optical and big hard drive users, the MacBook Air computers are for lightweight and budget conscious users, and the MacBook Pro Retina computers are for power users.
