2015 Retina Pro to M1 Air

[mylatestnovel]

So, I'm currently on a 2015 Retina Pro (base model) and it's clearly on it's last legs. The battery is quite degraded, and it only has 128 gb of storage, which is more and more of an issue. (I have added one of those 256 GB SD card storage expansions, though). The only thing is, it's quick enough at Word and Powerpoint and the screen is still nice.

I was thinking of upgrading to the new 13 inch pro (which would require some saving up) until I was walking around my local supermarket and saw the baseline M1 Air from 2020 on sale for the equivalent of $650. Now, I live in a country in the Middle East with no Apple stores or presence, so a refurb Mac or one from eBay is completely out of the question.

I guess the question is, could I actually survive on an M1 Air? I'd miss the HDMI port for movies, and I don't know how 8GB ram and 256 GB of storage would actually last me. But considering that the Pro I priced up was $2000 I'm suddenly really conflicted. Has anyone made this swap? Would I regret it?

 

[JCCL]

I'm an idiot, for some reason I thought this was about iPads.

 

[kschendel]

What do you do with your laptop? If it's Word and Powerpoint of reasonable size (ie not thousand page documents), and some typical web stuff, I think you'll find the Air is just fine. You may or may not want 16GB memory, depending on what you do, and only you can say how much storage you need. (Your SD card storage expansion should still work if it's USB-connected, although you might need a small hub or adapter depending on what else you use USB for.) If you are more or less OK with 8 GB on your current laptop, you'll be fine with 8 GB on a new one; the Apple Silicon laptops use memory very effectively. I do note that if you actually push the laptop into swap a LOT, you might end up shortening the life of the SSD; I wouldn't expect it to happen under normal office type usage. (Avoid keeping dozens or hundreds of browser tabs open!)

I moved from a late 2013 rMBP to an m2 Air, both 15" screens. I only needed the Pro-ness of the original laptop for the 15 inch screen size, although I did use the machine every day for "office" work. I have 16 GB memory on the new laptop mostly because I can see myself running virtual machines on it sometime in the next few years (and yes, I expect it to last years.)

I never had any real performance problems with the old laptop, so I don't see any real speed increase with the new, other than in a few special cases. (Updating apps is one!) The new screen is just as nice if not nicer than the old, and the battery life is spectacular compared to the old one, even after I replaced the battery in the old one.

If you are more or less satisfied with the performance of your current laptop, you'll be entirely satisfied with an Air, whether M1 or M2.

Oh, and you can get USB-C to HDMI adapters for the new laptop.