One reason not mentioned is that you can actually replace the disk drive with a caddy to put in another hard drive. I replaced mine with an SSD. I also upgraded

One reason not mentioned is that you can actually replace the disk drive with a caddy to put in another hard drive. I replaced mine with an SSD. I also upgraded the RAM so I could finally appease Chrome because I would get a lot of swapping to disk previously. I'd say it's quite competitive to the later models and does everything I need. (Just don't look at a retina screen or you'll be jealous) Repairability is a huge feature that is being lost, so I'm very grateful to iFixit for advocating for it and putting out such valuable guides. Sadly, there's an issue with mine where the hard drive cable breaks after a few months and I've had to get it replaced about 4 times already. The thermals also aren't very good so under heavy CPU load it heats up, though that doesn't happen for me much unless I (rarely) play a game or use all my cores. The added ports are just a bonus, even if I don't use them often like the Ethernet port. Edit: Just noticed that it is mentioned in the first footnote.