I don't understand why people insist on trying to convert laptops into desktops.
I finally bought a desktop again over Thanksgiving after a decade of having a laptop that functioned as a desktop. It's been a great experience.
I don't do anything taxing, so I just got a little Intel NUC i5 with a 24" monitor. Having an actual desktop setup is just head and shoulders better than the "laptop as desktop" I'd been living with.
The laptop only needs to drive the display(s) so anything made in last few years should suffice. Currently using a surface go.
They want to have just one computer without worrying about synching or other coordination.
I can imagine that when it came to configure the machine the decision was `Put more RAM in it, he's a web-dev, doesn't need a fancy graphic's card!`
Which I don't as I'm not going to gaming on my work PC, but if that 15W is pushing it above the thermal limits of the chassis, then that would have been a decent upgrade.
I'd prefer it without a heavy-lifting graphics card in that case, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
The problem is the vram using full power.
The only solution I’ve found under OSX is using an eGPU. I have both the Core X and the Core X Chroma, and the Chroma works fantastically both as a fully fledged docking station and keeping the output wattage / fans at bay. I’m almost exclusively using my 16” stationary with an external display.
Another solution, albeit expensive, is buying the 16” MBP with the 5600m graphics. That card uses HBM2 memory which uses around a 4th-5th of the wattage of the GDDR6 memory of the 5500m. Around 4w instead of 19w.