Being into photography and film making you certainly need a laptop thats reliable, one thats battery lasts for a minimum of 4-5 hours while doing day to day things and a minimum of 1-2 hours when using intensive apps like after effects, logic pro, photoshop, lightroom, final cut pro etc.
The choices are endless both apple and windows can do things flawlessly, being an apple user I was in the market for an upgrade and decided I might as well try out windows if it ticks all my requirements
i.e lightweight, not to bulky, a battery that lasts long and good after sales support
with regards to after sales support as I have experienced previously apple is rather quick, they make sure to fix your laptop in 3-4 working days, some centers let you keep your laptop if its functional and bring it back when the part arrives and its just a 1-2 hours affair to fix that part.
I had shortlisted the hp workstation laptop as well as the macbook retina 15" with dual graphics late 2013
the hp looked bulky and weighed more battery life was almost the same if not a tad lower than the macbook, after sales support I heard a good bit about them but then I decided to take the plunge and go in for an apple.
The purchasing bit was quick and the store offering me a good discount for being a regular customer. Setting up was a breeze a few clicks a bit of adding ids and personalization and your up. And thanks to time machine back ups I could transfer all my data and apps and pick up form where I left of in a matter of hours.
My Initial impressions was wow, this pcie ssd is blazing fast and this retina display is gorgeous, the laptop boots up quick and has your apps up in a jiffy.
Rendering videos and editing photographs was a breeze and took less time.
Only issue is with any mac are they heat up and you can hear the fans on full blast.
Battery life has been great when using the wifi surfing sites, using doc editors or listening to music it puts out about 5 hours at the most at 75% brightness with the on board graphics being used.
While doing intensive thing slike rendering movies it puts out a fairly decent 1- 1.7 hours if not 2.5 hours which give or take is acceptable I would’nt like to sacrifice performance for battery life.
The hdmi port is a great addition to hook upto hdmi projectors or monitors with hdmi inputs, and the two thunderbolt ports come as a savior for connecting your thunderbolt raid drives and a mini display port monitor.
Fast forward to a year and 4 months the laptop has not needed any visits to service guys and battery still lasts the way it used to, though I am at 950 charge cycles now and 90%health its exactly as advertised 1000 cycles before it drops below 80%.
All in all a great laptop.
Would I recommend it to others?
Depends if you have the needs or money to splurge its great else your better of with a windows or any of the lower specced macs.
gamin is pretty ok with it and not recommended if you are an avid gamer.