Should I upgrade or buy new?

So I know this question is asked everyday but I wanted to get the opinions of some of you. My laptop is very slow and I would like to buy a new one but I also like the one I have so Im in between upgrading the memory from 4GB to 16GB or buying a whole new laptop. I have a Macbook Pro form 2012 and what is holding me back is I'm not sure if its slow because of my processor or the memory. I have Intel Core i5 2.5 GHz 2 cores, 3mb cache. So if I upgrade the memory would my processor be good enough to last me a few more years? Keep in mind if i buy a new laptop I'm not looking for the best one out on the market I only need it for regular use don't need it for anything special.

 

Honestly, I'd probably upgrade the whole system mainly because the 2010-2012 MBPs had pretty poor PCB design and high GPU failure rates so investing more money in your current device may not be a great idea.

 

considering you bought a macbook to begin with you don't care about performance.

So just keep it as is and you're good to go.

 

If you want to keep your current laptop, the best way to speed it up would be to get an SSD.
Startup of the OS, various programs, etc. would radically speed up with that.

Getting a better CPU and more RAM would help yes, but only in situations where programs would be able to utilize that - and provided its a good enough upgrade on the CPU (which probably comes with an iGP - so make sure you can upgrade to a superior one with a more capable/faster iGP - though your options may be limited due to Intel's own poor track record of not having/allowing compatibility with new CPU's, even though they have the same socket/chipset - and you also need to keep in mind to stay within the current TDP of your Mac... because there's no guarantee a higher TDP CPU would be adequately cooled by your Mac's cooling solution).

And finally, since its' a Mac we're talking about, I'm not too sure what the procedure is about Mac OS installation on a new drive... though it seems that you can download the OS and just transfer it to a flash drive and install it from there - which seems rather straightforward - but given that Apple basically admitted they intentionally slow down older hardware with new OS-es, I'm not too sure its' worth investing into this older unit (although a potential option would in that case to completely replace Mac OS with say Linux or Windows)

Apart from that, your second best option (and probably the most reliable one) would be to get a new laptop.
Acer will be releasing a Nitro 5 laptop with new Ryzen APU (which is very close/or basically on par with i7-7700 HQ in performance, a Vega iGP which beats Intel iGP by a nice stretch, and an RX 560 discrete GPU), so you might want to consider getting that one if you're going for a new laptop:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1228...ing-laptop-with-amd-ryzen-mobile-radeon-rx560

 

Those models were the 15-inch, which only came with an i7 CPU. The i5 the OP has is a 13-inch.

 

You're correct. I have no idea why I assumed that he has a MBP 15.