MacBook Pro 15 W/Retina Vs. ThinkPad W540, Which one to choose?

[Amr Salah]

I need help to decide which machine should I get for my work/play style;

Mainly I do project management and most of work is typing, graphic reporting, or reading; I also do some graphic-extensive personal work (like Photoshop, 3Ds MAX, etc.), Beside, I may spend some time (4-6 hrs a week) playing games like WoT.

Should I use;
MacBook Pro 15 Retina Display (with Nvidia GT750M 2GB card, 16GB RAM, 512SSD) or
Lenovo ThinkPad W540 (with 3k display, Nvidia Quadro K1100M 2GB card, 16GB RAM, 500SSD)

With these configurations, they are at the exact same price 2600 USD.

Bottom line:
# Both are fully loaded in terms of hardware configuration for a laptop
# Both have good build quality
# With this configuration, both have very good screen quality
# Performance-wise, I think both will act well
# Battery Performance will be not that issue on both, due to use pattern
# Both have backlit keyboard and this is must for me

Considerable problems in both:
# MacBook Pro: I read a lot about heating problems and since there are no big fan grills, it may suffer from overheating under graphic-extensive work.
# ThinkPad W540: A lot of people out there complaining about keyboard layout and positioning of the touch pad.

Note that I am outside US, (now in Istanbul, Turkey), so I will ship it anyway.
And BTW Turkey now have Apple Store, but not Lenovo itself is here in turkey (retailers only); and this mean better support and I can buy AppleCare for Macbook Pro.

However I like the extended keyboard (numeric) and windows ecosystem (I have no problems with either OSX or Windows) on W540

Should I choose Mac, or ThinkPad? or do I have a third option?

 

[TalonL]

I prefer the MacBooks for style and the 750m is a better overall card to play games decently, and work on heavy graphical tasks while the lenovo's card is good in compute tasks but will be worse than even the intel graphics in games. I'm in a similar situation and I'm going to get the 2014 razer blade. The blade isn't to flashy and looks very nice and when you're not gaming you get very good cooling and battery life. It starts at $2200 and has a 3200x1800 display better than the MacBook. It also comes with an 870m graphics card better than both. If you don't like the blade I would go with the MacBook.

 

[Amr Salah]

I will go with MacBook Pro, I have been using Windows for about 20 years now, I will give OSX a chance

I believe they (MBPR and ThinkPad) are both - along with Blade - very good at hardware and performance in most categories; processor, battery, graphics, storage and speed. The main extinguisher here is the operating system.

For me, after a lot of research, I will go with OSX for now.