Base 14" M1 Pro MBP or M1 Air

[Mity]

I'm currently using a base M1 Air for streaming videos and music. It's mostly okay but the 8GB of RAM isn't enough for me, especially when hooked up to a 4K external monitor. So, I'm trying to decide between a (base 14" MBP or 32GB RAM) and (M1 Air with 16GB RAM).

If I go with an Air, I will end up buying an external dock because I will be using it with my 4K monitor, external keyboard/mouse. Meaning, the cost will increase by $300. My total price will be $1600.

But a base 14" MBP costs $1600 at the moment. So, am I better off just buying the 14" since it gives me an HDMI port and just a simple dock for keyboard/mouse?

One other factor is noise. I love that the Air is silent when streaming 4K videos. How often does the 14" MBP's fan come on with light tasks like video streaming and Tidal? When I listen to music playlists on YouTube in Chrome, the Air heats up, which I find weird. This doesn't happen when I watch Netflix.

Lastly, 4K monitor support is a must. I can't live without an external 4K display. Is the 16GB Air good enough? Or just based on this, should I go with the 14" MBP?

 

[uller6]

I upgraded from an M1 Air to a 14" M1 Pro. The experience is nearly the same when docked, but the 14" M1 pro gives me more flexibility with extra USB-C ports, HDMI, and a SD card slot, and the ability to connect a second external display. The 14" is silent with the fans off nearly all of the time connected to my 6K + 5K external displays. I recommend you get the 14" in case you ever pick up a second external monitor.

 

[Mity]

I upgraded from an M1 Air to a 14" M1 Pro. The experience is nearly the same when docked, but the 14" M1 pro gives me more flexibility with extra USB-C ports, HDMI, and a SD card slot, and the ability to connect a second external display. The 14" is silent with the fans off nearly all of the time connected to my 6K + 5K external displays. I recommend you get the 14" in case you ever pick up a second external monitor.

I was hoping to hear from someone with experience using both.

Is your MBA 8GB or 16GB? How was the 4K experience it? I noticed a slight delay with poor video quality when skipping through a 4K Netflix stream but once I let it catch up, the video quality would improve. I wonder if that's because of the processor or low RAM. My MBA is only 8GB RAM so I don't know if 16GB of RAM would remedy any issues that I'm having.

 

[uller6]

I was hoping to hear from someone with experience using both.

Is your MBA 8GB or 16GB? How was the 4K experience it? I noticed a slight delay with poor video quality when skipping through a 4K Netflix stream but once I let it catch up, the video quality would improve. I wonder if that's because of the processor or low RAM. My MBA is only 8GB RAM so I don't know if 16GB of RAM would remedy any issues that I'm having.

The MBA was 16 GB, and the MBP 14" is 16 GB also. I haven't used an 8 GB M1 machine so can't speak to how smooth that would be or if the upgrade to 16 GB will help you. I upgraded to the 14" for the ability to run 2 external displays, otherwise I would have been perfectly happy with the speed and performance of the M1 Air.

 

[Mity]

The MBA was 16 GB, and the MBP 14" is 16 GB also. I haven't used an 8 GB M1 machine so can't speak to how smooth that would be or if the upgrade to 16 GB will help you. I upgraded to the 14" for the ability to run 2 external displays, otherwise I would have been perfectly happy with the speed and performance of the M1 Air.

My main machine that I use for coding is a fully spec'd 2019 16" MBP. This new machine would only be for personal use, Netflix, Tidal, etc. The only taxing thing I would do would be connect 1 external 4K monitor (definitely not 2). From your experience, it sounds like I could get away with the Air.

BTW - how many Chrome tabs can you keep open with the 16GB Air before it begins getting slow? I'm at about 25 (depending on what the tab is) until I feel any lag. But sometimes, I do get to 30-35. Because if 16GB would allow me to easily run these many tabs, then I may just get the Air.

 

[wilberforce]

I have struggled to make my fan on my base 14" come on (e.g. by running Cinebench continuously with all cores at 100%), and struggled to hear it, that I even thought at one point there was something wrong with it (like the fan was faulty). I could just hear it with my ear near the vents.
YMMV, as some people are super sensitive to noise or have very quiet environments

 

[darngooddesign]

For the same price, the main reason to get an Air is for its lighter weight and smaller size; if that isn't important go for the 14" MBP. If for some reason the MBP bothers you, return it and get the Air.

 

[jerryk]

I'm currently using a base M1 Air for streaming videos and music. It's mostly okay but the 8GB of RAM isn't enough for me, especially when hooked up to a 4K external monitor. So, I'm trying to decide between a (base 14" MBP or 32GB RAM) and (M1 Air with 16GB RAM).

If I go with an Air, I will end up buying an external dock because I will be using it with my 4K monitor, external keyboard/mouse. Meaning, the cost will increase by $300. My total price will be $1600.

But a base 14" MBP costs $1600 at the moment. So, am I better off just buying the 14" since it gives me an HDMI port and just a simple dock for keyboard/mouse?

One other factor is noise. I love that the Air is silent when streaming 4K videos. How often does the 14" MBP's fan come on with light tasks like video streaming and Tidal? When I listen to music playlists on YouTube in Chrome, the Air heats up, which I find weird. This doesn't happen when I watch Netflix.

Lastly, 4K monitor support is a must. I can't live without an external 4K display. Is the 16GB Air good enough? Or just based on this, should I go with the 14" MBP?

I just upgraded to a MBP 14" 16GB/512GB from the M1 Air 8 GB. Same issue with limited Ram. I am really liking it. And pricewise the MBP 14 was cheaper from Amazon or BestBuy than a M2 Air with same 16GB/512GB. The screen is fantastic. It is 1 pound heavier, and you can feel that. But the performance and screen upgrade made it worth the extra pound.

 

[mr_roboto]

I noticed a slight delay with poor video quality when skipping through a 4K Netflix stream but once I let it catch up, the video quality would improve. I wonder if that's because of the processor or low RAM.

This is extremely unlikely to be anything related to your computer's hardware. Many video streaming services like Netflix do this to improve responsiveness when the user is seeking around. If they let seeking happen with full video quality, you might perceive more than a "slight" delay thanks to needing to buffer more video data before play could resume.

A faster internet connection might help (or it might do nothing), but upgrading your computer won't.

 

[MrGunny94]

Unless you really need the battery life or weight, I'd go for the 14" Pro. I came from a 16" 2019 & MacBook Air.. Loved the upgrade to a 14" Pro.

 

[Mity]

This is extremely unlikely to be anything related to your computer's hardware. Many video streaming services like Netflix do this to improve responsiveness when the user is seeking around. If they let seeking happen with full video quality, you might perceive more than a "slight" delay thanks to needing to buffer more video data before play could resume.

A faster internet connection might help (or it might do nothing), but upgrading your computer won't.

I have gigabit internet. I think it's the RAM.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

I'm currently using a base M1 Air for streaming videos and music. It's mostly okay but the 8GB of RAM isn't enough for me, especially when hooked up to a 4K external monitor. So, I'm trying to decide between a (base 14" MBP or 32GB RAM) and (M1 Air with 16GB RAM).

If I go with an Air, I will end up buying an external dock because I will be using it with my 4K monitor, external keyboard/mouse. Meaning, the cost will increase by $300. My total price will be $1600.

But a base 14" MBP costs $1600 at the moment. So, am I better off just buying the 14" since it gives me an HDMI port and just a simple dock for keyboard/mouse?

One other factor is noise. I love that the Air is silent when streaming 4K videos. How often does the 14" MBP's fan come on with light tasks like video streaming and Tidal? When I listen to music playlists on YouTube in Chrome, the Air heats up, which I find weird. This doesn't happen when I watch Netflix.

Lastly, 4K monitor support is a must. I can't live without an external 4K display. Is the 16GB Air good enough? Or just based on this, should I go with the 14" MBP?

The air runs a 4k144hz easily

But in your case I'd get the pro honestly , it's much better

If you don't mind the thicker edges ( I do , they hurt my wrist to the point that I couldn't use it at all, had to send it back)

And don't mind the slightly worse battery

Then the 14 is the obvious choice

 

[Sami13496]

May I ask why not Mac Mini? It would be cheaper to buy and I think it has all the ports you need. If your main usage is as a desktop machine. You already have portable laptop.

 

[mr_roboto]

I have gigabit internet. I think it's the RAM.

It isn't, trust me. An extra 8GB of RAM won't do anything for this. You might need it for other reasons, but Netflix streaming isn't one. Video streaming doesn't need much memory.

It might help to go into more detail on what I'm pretty sure is happening here. The basic problem is that the Internet is not a smooth content delivery service with guaranteed performance. It's the exact opposite of that; unplanned brief pauses in streaming data transfers are common. To deal with this, video streaming services try to buffer several seconds ahead (on your end) to make sure any brief interruptions don't have a visible consequence. As long as that buffer's large enough, your computer can ride out any brief interruptions in Internet service without you noticing.

With that in mind, think about what happens when you skip ahead (or back). Now, all data in your local stream buffer is useless - the stream has to resume from a new timecode, and the buffer has to be refilled. Companies like Netflix have a choice to make here. Do they restart streaming from the new timecode at full quality? If so, they risk glitches as the buffer rebuilds to whatever size they've found necessary to minimize problems. Do they insist on refilling the whole buffer before allowing the stream to start playing again? That might be annoying to users because there will be a pause while the buffer fills.

What Netflix is doing is a common compromise. They restart at a reduced quality, which improves how fast the buffer can be refilled to contain N seconds worth of content (where N is however much their engineers feel is necessary to provide safety margin). Once the buffer's refilled, they can resume sending you a full quality stream. This scheme provides reasonably quick seeks with a low chance of unplanned pauses, at the cost of always annoying you by being low quality for a moment.

(I didn't say all the choices video streaming services like Netflix make are good ones...)

 

[Mity]

It isn't, trust me. An extra 8GB of RAM won't do anything for this. You might need it for other reasons, but Netflix streaming isn't one. Video streaming doesn't need much memory.

It might help to go into more detail on what I'm pretty sure is happening here. The basic problem is that the Internet is not a smooth content delivery service with guaranteed performance. It's the exact opposite of that; unplanned brief pauses in streaming data transfers are common. To deal with this, video streaming services try to buffer several seconds ahead (on your end) to make sure any brief interruptions don't have a visible consequence. As long as that buffer's large enough, your computer can ride out any brief interruptions in Internet service without you noticing.

With that in mind, think about what happens when you skip ahead (or back). Now, all data in your local stream buffer is useless - the stream has to resume from a new timecode, and the buffer has to be refilled. Companies like Netflix have a choice to make here. Do they restart streaming from the new timecode at full quality? If so, they risk glitches as the buffer rebuilds to whatever size they've found necessary to minimize problems. Do they insist on refilling the whole buffer before allowing the stream to start playing again? That might be annoying to users because there will be a pause while the buffer fills.

What Netflix is doing is a common compromise. They restart at a reduced quality, which improves how fast the buffer can be refilled to contain N seconds worth of content (where N is however much their engineers feel is necessary to provide safety margin). Once the buffer's refilled, they can resume sending you a full quality stream. This scheme provides reasonably quick seeks with a low chance of unplanned pauses, at the cost of always annoying you by being low quality for a moment.

(I didn't say all the choices video streaming services like Netflix make are good ones...)

I think there's a misunderstanding here. All of my devices are connected via ethernet except my MBA. My 16" MBP doesn't have much of a lag when I do this because it has 64GB of RAM and a 5600M. The opposite is true of my MBA. Skipping back and forth is a test I use to see how fast the stream can recover and the MBA doesn't recover as fast as my MBP.

 

[Fishrrman]

In any decision between a MacBook Air and a same-vintage MacBook Pro, the MBP "gets the win".
At least for me...

 

[mr_roboto]

I think there's a misunderstanding here. All of my devices are connected via ethernet except my MBA. My 16" MBP doesn't have much of a lag when I do this because it has 64GB of RAM and a 5600M. The opposite is true of my MBA. Skipping back and forth is a test I use to see how fast the stream can recover and the MBA doesn't recover as fast as my MBP.

The idea that the explanation must be RAM simply doesn't fit with how any of this actually works. It's ok if you don't understand all the tech details - not everyone is an engineer. I can only try to explain as best I can, and hope that you find it educational and informative rather than hostile.

At the bottom, a video stream is just a sequence of bytes sent from an internet server to your computer. This data stream is fed into a hardware or software video decoder (hardware in both of your computers), which spits out decompressed video frames and an audio stream. These frames and audio samples are then presented through the computer's display and speakers.

No part of this process needs huge quantities of memory. A gigabyte of RAM can hold well over a minute of extremely high quality compressed video (assuming an unusually high encoded bitrate of 100 Mbps). The streaming services are designed to buffer ahead of your current viewing position a little - probably far less than 1 minute, in most cases - then rate limit to keep the buffer small. They design the system this way because the whole point of streaming is that you can watch on any device with the relevant hardware video codec, even if it has no local storage, a terrible CPU, and very little RAM.

When you skip, the server has to restart the stream from a new timestamp and refill your local buffer. This restart is the limiting factor on stream performance when skipping ahead or back.

In this post you've mentioned a detail which you probably thought insignificant, but is far more likely to be the actual reason: the MBP is on wired ethernet, but the MBA isn't. All those things I discussed about different ways streaming might resume after you skip? Restart choices are made by software written by Netflix (and others). Part of the decision process is, without doubt, based on some estimate of internet connection quality. If your connection seems a little dodgier, the software might decide to use a reduced quality restart, then build back to full quality.

Guess what going through WiFi does to connection quality? It's usually far slower than wired ethernet, even if you have advanced WiFi which claims to offer gigabit+ performance. WiFi's latency is also worse, and highly variable. These problems get compounded by nearby WiFi networks competing for radio bandwidth, traffic on your own WiFi net competing for its bandwidth, distance between computer and WiFi base station, walls, interference sources, and so on.

 

[Mity]

The idea that the explanation must be RAM simply doesn't fit with how any of this actually works. It's ok if you don't understand all the tech details - not everyone is an engineer. I can only try to explain as best I can, and hope that you find it educational and informative rather than hostile.

At the bottom, a video stream is just a sequence of bytes sent from an internet server to your computer. This data stream is fed into a hardware or software video decoder (hardware in both of your computers), which spits out decompressed video frames and an audio stream. These frames and audio samples are then presented through the computer's display and speakers.

No part of this process needs huge quantities of memory. A gigabyte of RAM can hold well over a minute of extremely high quality compressed video (assuming an unusually high encoded bitrate of 100 Mbps). The streaming services are designed to buffer ahead of your current viewing position a little - probably far less than 1 minute, in most cases - then rate limit to keep the buffer small. They design the system this way because the whole point of streaming is that you can watch on any device with the relevant hardware video codec, even if it has no local storage, a terrible CPU, and very little RAM.

When you skip, the server has to restart the stream from a new timestamp and refill your local buffer. This restart is the limiting factor on stream performance when skipping ahead or back.

In this post you've mentioned a detail which you probably thought insignificant, but is far more likely to be the actual reason: the MBP is on wired ethernet, but the MBA isn't. All those things I discussed about different ways streaming might resume after you skip? Restart choices are made by software written by Netflix (and others). Part of the decision process is, without doubt, based on some estimate of internet connection quality. If your connection seems a little dodgier, the software might decide to use a reduced quality restart, then build back to full quality.

Guess what going through WiFi does to connection quality? It's usually far slower than wired ethernet, even if you have advanced WiFi which claims to offer gigabit+ performance. WiFi's latency is also worse, and highly variable. These problems get compounded by nearby WiFi networks competing for radio bandwidth, traffic on your own WiFi net competing for its bandwidth, distance between computer and WiFi base station, walls, interference sources, and so on.

I'll try it with ethernet and see if there's an improvement. Thanks.

 

[dusk007]

One other factor is noise. I love that the Air is silent when streaming 4K videos. How often does the 14" MBP's fan come on with light tasks like video streaming and Tidal? When I listen to music playlists on YouTube in Chrome, the Air heats up, which I find weird. This doesn't happen when I watch Netflix.

You will never hear the fans, when watching TV the good speakers and the screen are quite nice as you can decently enjoy anything without headphones and it is a bit bigger.
I only got my fans to ramp noticeable up once. I was sitting in one of those video conferencing phone booths which was in an office were people refused to turn on the AC desipte it having humid 30+ C in the office. In that booth probably 45 it was a sauna and I was dripping just from sitting there. In any other case it never turns on, maybe if you do things that the Air would even be able to handle or when gaming and using GPU+CPU which I only did once (didn't hear anything).