Buying help: MBA or MBP for mostly clamshell mode?

[tosolu3]

After many, many months of delaying replacing my mid-2015 MPB in light of new product announcements, it is time. At this point in time, the MBP is overkill, as I use it mainly for remote work via Logmein connected to an office Windows system. My only concern with a MBA is whether I would have heating issues since it would be in clamshell mode 95% of the time. I found a few MBA threads regarding heat, but nothing really definitive.

We have fairly frequent power outages and I need occasional portability with remote login capability, so I've decided against a desktop system.

Is overheating in clamshell mode a concern with a MBA?

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

On M-series models there shouldn't be any issues especially since you're limited in just using one monitor with a MBA.

 

[satcomer]

The Mac Book Air is ONLY For people that don't have 3000 tabs open or audio/picture/video crunching! If you plan to make money then get a Mac Book Pro especially if want to make any of aforementioned trades!

 

[James_C]

Get the MBA, I used mine for about a year in Clamshell mode at work with an external screen. I since upgraded to a 16" MacBook Pro. MBA is a great machine. The M1 MBA is fine for you use case. I would not bother waiting / paying more for the M2. In Clamshell mode I was mainly using Office 365, Teams, Parallels to run Windows for Arm - never got warm.