Choice between MacBooks super awkward... M2/M3 Air for professional work?

[danqi]

I never wanted to post a lame "What should I buy" post, but I've also never been so unsure before...

I am a photo and video professional and my rMBP 2014 has become virtually unusable. The situation has been ok because I mostly use my M1 Mac Studio for serious work anyway. But I also need a laptop for occasional on-the-road work, being able to respond to basic requests while traveling, etc.

Money has been tight lately and I can't afford a MacBook Pro right now. So I thought instead of scraping by without a usable laptop just to maybe buy a MacBook Pro at some point in the future, I'd probably get more value out of just getting a "cheap" MacBook Air now. That would still be much more capable than my old rMBP from 2014.

But the base models only have 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD. The exact same specs as my 2014 rMBP! But if I upgrade that it's getting expensive fast... How necessary is RAM on these new machines?

Or maybe an M2 would be enough for me for now... But they're only 100€ cheaper? That doesn't seem worth it for resell value of the newer model alone, right?

So, in other words: M2 or M3 Air? Or save up for Pro? If Air now, upgrade RAM (and may SSD) or no?

I guess I could also look for deal on an M2 (Amazon Prime Days?), but those seem to be usually locked in to 8GB of RAM...

 

[mmkerc]

For your uses and constrains suggest the M2, but with 16gb if at all possible. Reasoning is the difference between the M2 and M3 for occasional use is not worth it. The 16gb is likely not needed for occasional use, but if you start to use it more you will want the additional ram. I also think a 16gb machine will hold value better than an 8 gb machine. Lastly while my minimum standard for HD space is 1TB, given the price of flash drives (Samsung T5/T7) I would get one of those instead on upgrading to 512gb, or 1TB.

 

[russell_314]

But the base models only have 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD. The exact same specs as my 2014 rMBP!

That’s like saying both my Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Corvette have 18” wheels. One spec number is the same, but it’s not comparable. at least with the RAM. With SSD space that’s depending on how much stuff you want to keep on your laptop and of course other than faster ports to use external storage it’s the same.

But if I upgrade that it's getting expensive fast... How necessary is RAM on these new machines?

That all depends on your usage. I suspect for photo editing you could get away with 8 GB but buy from someplace like the Apple Store that has a good return policy. This way if it doesn’t work, you could just return it.

So, in other words: M2 or M3 Air?

One is going to be slightly faster, but without purposely timing projects or using them side by side, you’re not going to notice that. If budget is a concern, I wouldn’t even consider M3.

 

[ChrisA]

I never wanted to post a lame "What should I buy" post, but I've also never been so unsure before...

I am a photo and video professional and my rMBP 2014 has become virtually unusable. The situation has been ok because I mostly use my M1 Mac Studio for serious work anyway. But I also need a laptop for occasional on-the-road work, being able to respond to basic requests while traveling, etc.

Money has been tight lately and I can't afford a MacBook Pro right now. So I thought instead of scraping by without a usable laptop just to maybe buy a MacBook Pro at some point in the future, I'd probably get more value out of just getting a "cheap" MacBook Air now. That would still be much more capable than my old rMBP from 2014.

But the base models only have 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD. The exact same specs as my 2014 rMBP! But if I upgrade that it's getting expensive fast... How necessary is RAM on these new machines?

Or maybe an M2 would be enough for me for now... But they're only 100€ cheaper? That doesn't seem worth it for resell value of the newer model alone, right?

So, in other words: M2 or M3 Air? Or save up for Pro? If Air now, upgrade RAM (and may SSD) or no?

I guess I could also look for deal on an M2 (Amazon Prime Days?), but those seem to be usually locked in to 8GB of RAM...

You already own a Mac Studio. You can see how much RAM you are using if you run Apple's "Activity Monior". It is already installed on thre Studio. But be carfull MacOS is designed to always use all the RAM it finds. So every Mac, unles grossly over-provisioned with exccess RAM will appear to be using nearly 100% of whatever it has.

Looked at the amount of "app memory" then add some for caching files.

Sometimes memory use seems unintuitive. For example right now my Mac has decided it is good to sap out 2GB so that it can cache 4GB of files. People who don't understnd this will see that swap is beibg used abd say this is because there is not enough RAM. No. That is not the case. What is happening is that MacOS has found that I am more likey to need the cached files then whatever it moved to swapp. That is all.

So look at your Studio's Activity Monotor but learn how to interpet it.

In the end, any Apple Silicon Mac with at least 16GB of RAM will liley work for your purpose.

 

[Fishrrman]

MacBook Pro.

 

[SkweeBop]

I made the decision to go MacBook Air to replace my Mid-15 MBP (serious music recording and composing and some video work) over the pro, based on my experiences with my desktop M1 mini at home. What was killing my Intel MBP was scarfed up very quickly by my M1 with 16GB of RAM, and I can't imagine that an M2 MBA wouldn't be the same or better if you got 16. For your occasional use case and if money is truly that tight, I'd find an M2 with 16 and a small hard drive, then buy an external ssd for a lot cheaper than loading up the space from Apple.

 

[_Mitchan1999]

If you're in the United States, I think Best Buy has the M2 MacBook Air for $799.