Help me choose whether to upgrade Air M2 -> Pro M3 Pro

[1ncend1ary]

First of all, thanks everyone for making this forum possible. It is very useful at times.


Right now I'm looking for your experienced advice.

I'm studying and working in software development. I have a MacBook Air M2 2022 8/512. I'm finding that this machine is starting to lag on me in some of my workflows.

My workflow is:
1. Software development in some J**Br**** IDE
2. 30-40 tabs in FF open, only 5 of them unslept, others are automatically unloaded
3. Some Telegram open
4. Misc apps in background: Surge, 1Password, Bartender, etc.

Right now, I have this approximate set of windows open, my stats are:
Physical Memory: 8,00 GB
Memory Used: 7,18 GB
Cached Files: 782,8 MB
Swap Used: 3,65 GB

Which is starting to lag slightly whenever I start quickly switching between the 3 most heavy RAM users: FF, Telegram, PyCharm. Also the IDE actions start to lag a bit.

Some of my workflows include heavy compilation tasks for 3-5 mins, or some moderately light data analysis in a pytnon venv that also lasts for 3-5 mins. This makes the laptop heat up considerably and slows down the process (no proof here, just feels throttled and more laggy than when cold).


I really love the passive cooling and the "no moving parts" bit of Airs.

Now to my questions:

1. Is it reasonable to want to upgrade? Maybe I'm doing something wrong -- and everything is doable on my hardware
2. If hardware is the bottleneck here, what would you recommend me to upgrade to based on my workflow? I've been looking at a MacBook Pro M3 Pro 18/512 for its active cooling and bigger RAM.

 

[Andrey84]

First of all, thanks everyone for making this forum possible. It is very useful at times.


Right now I'm looking for your experienced advice.

I'm studying and working in software development. I have a MacBook Air M2 2022 8/512. I'm finding that this machine is starting to lag on me in some of my workflows.

My workflow is:
1. Software development in some J**Br**** IDE
2. 30-40 tabs in FF open, only 5 of them unslept, others are automatically unloaded
3. Some Telegram open
4. Misc apps in background: Surge, 1Password, Bartender, etc.

Right now, I have this approximate set of windows open, my stats are:
Physical Memory: 8,00 GB
Memory Used: 7,18 GB
Cached Files: 782,8 MB
Swap Used: 3,65 GB

Which is starting to lag slightly whenever I start quickly switching between the 3 most heavy RAM users: FF, Telegram, PyCharm. Also the IDE actions start to lag a bit.

Some of my workflows include heavy compilation tasks for 3-5 mins, or some moderately light data analysis in a pytnon venv that also lasts for 3-5 mins. This makes the laptop heat up considerably and slows down the process (no proof here, just feels throttled and more laggy than when cold).


I really love the passive cooling and the "no moving parts" bit of Airs.

Now to my questions:

1. Is it reasonable to want to upgrade? Maybe I'm doing something wrong -- and everything is doable on my hardware
2. If hardware is the bottleneck here, what would you recommend me to upgrade to based on my workflow? I've been looking at a MacBook Pro M3 Pro 18/512 for its active cooling and bigger RAM.

It's completely reasonable to want to upgrade. You're using the most basic laptop - which is meant to be used by most of its users just for browsing - for professional purposes.

It appears you're bottlenecked both by unified memory size and by passive cooling of the CPU.

M3 Pro/18GB/512GB sounds like a great choice. If you get a reasonable deal, go for it.

Just a couple of considerations:
- Watch the memory pressure graph in the middle of your work. If it's yellow, upgrade to 18GB should be OK. If it's red, you should consider more memory.
- Check how much free space your SSD has. If you have less than 100GB now, consider getting the 1TB model. As you may already know, lack of space can slow the system down significantly as well (which is not the case with you now, but might happen in the future).