Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (Late 2011) is slower in every category than the early 2011 model

The early 2011 MacBook Pro is Apple's masterpiece, no doubt: besides the overheating problems that many of us reported (but which seem to be solved as of now). Core i7 MPBs are super-fast with a Geekbench score of over 10.000 points for the i7 quad-core version - this was and still is an awesome performance for a notebook.

If you are planning on buying a new MacBook Pro 15", keep in mind that newer does not necessarily mean better: the early 2011 MacBook Pro is currently the best deal you can get ($1,549.99 for a new, $1,499.99 for refurbished MC721LL/A 15.4-Inch quad Core on Amazon) especially since they fixed all the flaws people reported about. I was complaining about issues a lot, but after Apple replaced the two notebooks we had, the run smootly ever since.

So a clear winner for buying a new MacBook Pro in 2011/2012 is the Apple MacBook Pro MC721LL/A 15.4-Inch early 2011 model that performs better in most of the situations compared to the late 2011 version (review and benchmarks by anandtech).

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