Jason Snell on the Exile from Dongletown:

Apple’s argument for getting rid of the SD slot was that the future would be wireless, and we wouldn’t need to use cards to transfer data anymore. It wasn’t true back in 2016, and it’s still not true. Sure, some devices equipped with SD cards now offer wireless data transfer, but let me tell you—it’s not as fast or reliable as just plugging in a card and transferring the data!

I still see this crop up from time to time. “I don’t need one because I have a dongle now” or “my camera supports some weird transfer over WiFi that I need an app for”. Nothing beats having an SD in your laptop, even more so for one aimed at pros.

I might be an edge case for people that will buy a MacBook Pro but I use 2-3 cards in rotation almost daily. Having to shoot onto multiple cards because they fill up fast. Not to mention I am away from my computer while doing this so I rely on being able to transfer all of this onto my Mac in one go. Even in a world where things have moved forward a few years and some cameras are moving partly to CFexpress but an SD card slot just makes sense if you have the room in the machine to put one.

A dongle is fine, but a built in slot is better.