Last January I bought a M1 MacBook Air because my 2017 MacBook had a screen issue and it was not worth paying the repair costs. At that time, I was still in university and my workflow was quite light. Now I'm working in marketing content creation, I also do freelance marketing/photography on the side, and the Air is constantly getting very hot and I only have 10GB left on the 256GB SSD. I was wondering if it makes more sense to upgrade to the 1900CAD 2020 M1 MacBook Pro or spend the extra 500CAD and go for there base model 14"?
Really, my main concern is that (unlike this air), I want a laptop that will last me at least the next 4 years without overpaying for something I don't need. A tricky balance.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated!
Your title says that your air isn’t powerful enough but the body of your post says that it’s running hot, which can totally make things throttle and act bizarre. Which is it?
The next time you use your air during your heaviest workflow, I would check what your actual CPU usage is. The air can’t keep up with sustained full performance of the M1 chip because it doesn’t have a proper cooling system. It can do full throttle for a little while but then it needs to throttle. Is it running super hot but your CPU usage isn’t even close to maxing out? I would consider getting the 13” MacBook Pro. The cooling system is absolutely necessary for sustained workloads so that it doesn’t throttle itself.
If your actual CPU usage is near 90% or more consistently, and you really are maxing it out or getting close to doing so, then getting an M1 Pro 14” may be in the cards.
Best of luck to you.
I think you can check CPU usage in activity monitor, but I prefer a program called istat menus. You could likely use either.
Edit: I would also like to add that there is a general rule of not filling up your SSD past 75%. You can, but it will start to slow down significantly. At a bare minimum i would leave at least 50 gigs of storage always available on there. It may be very worth your while to invest in a 500 gig SSD for your new computer, or get a new 256gig machine again and buy an external drive for it. This will allow you to give your SSD breathing room and also have a place for you to backup your Mac