I waited for the M2 and with the price hikes I picked up a 16GB M1 refurb. It's been great. I came from a 2015 13" Pro.
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M1 Air 16gb or M2 Air
- Thread starter Dnzilla
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I waited for the M2 and with the price hikes I picked up a 16GB M1 refurb. It's been great. I came from a 2015 13" Pro.
At my recommendation, my younger brother got the M1 8GB 265GB MacBook Air during his junior year of high school. It’s worked great for him doing ask the things you say you’ll be doing (canvas, YouTube, iMovie, office, etc). He’s now headed to college with no plans to upgrade since the computer still serves his needs without breaking a sweat. He works off of his external drives when doing much picture/video stuff. (I pointed out to him that external SSD prices were way cheaper than internal.)
I voted M1 16GB as that would be more future proof, but 256GB could drive you to upgrade sooner rather than later anyway.
I’d balance the future proofing of the 16GB versus the improved screen, camera, design, and MagSafe port.
I voted M1 16GB as that would be more future proof, but 256GB could drive you to upgrade sooner rather than later anyway.
I’d balance the future proofing of the 16GB versus the improved screen, camera, design, and MagSafe port.
This is all moot until the new MBA gets into people's hands. With the price hike ($200) you get the new M2 architecture, some video encoders (game changing if you use them), and 1 more GPU core (with increased efficiency) and potentially half the SSD bandwidth. That is the issue, as if it is configured the same way as the M2 13" MBP, you will be paying more, and getting less performance under load. I would imagine that any task that leverages the new encoders will blow away the M1 system, regardless. Otherwise the question is, it worth $200 more than the M1 (which they are still selling)? Oh, and the M2 will have the updated "notch" design, better camera, and MagSafe.
This would be my vote, but it's not an option in the poll.
Based on the Apple website, the M1 MBA starts at $999, and the M2 at $1199. Going back and re-reading my post, my point was lost. What I was supposed to be saying, is that if the new M2 MBA has the same performance characteristics as the M2 MBP, the original M1 MBA could outperform the new M2 MBA under load. Hence the comment that you would pay more for the M2 MBA over the M1, but could have a slower computer.
Thank for pointing that out!
Thanks for the gentle smackdown. But there have been stories of the M2 256GB being significantly slower. And even the M1 256 slower than higher specced HDs. OP mentions that they have memory pressure with iMovie library. Plus there are a several other reasons why getting a bigger than base HD is advantageous.
A poster linked to the refurb store with a great deal on what looks like the perfect M1 for the OP and at the price they are looking for it seems. Not sure if OP is in the States though...
As for my needs. 512 ain't big enough. I would have recommended 1~2 TB if I were to recommend based on my needs.
Apple Certified Refurb'ed Air or 13" Pro with the M1 and 16GB of RAM. If you're going Air, you could get an 8 GPU Core version of this Mac with a 1TB SSD for $1400.
If the longevity of M2 and the proven nature of pre-notch body styles are important factors for you (and mind you, I'm not at all saying they shouldn't be), I'd save your money and buy an M2 13" Pro. A 2014 MacBook Pro still runs Big Sur and Big Sur is still supported for another year. That all being said, I'd imagine that the delta between the M1 Air and M1 13" Pro inevitably losing support for a future macOS release and the M2 Air and M2 13" Pro losing support for a future macOS release won't be more than two years. Otherwise, the M1 is perfectly speedy to the point where I'd rather it with 16GB of RAM over an M2 with only 8GB. Even if I have fewer years of support with it, at least the time I do have will be more comfortable.
Wonder if the longevity of the screen/lid will be diff anyway give. It’s flat rather than slight curvature that would give strength…
Unless you are stacking heavy things on the center of your closed MacBook, I bet it's fine.
Personally I wouldn't let the 16Gb cost sway me for or against. My advice would be to look at the 16Gb M2 MBA vs the 16Gb M1 MBA and decide for yourself whether it's worth spending the extra for the M2.
Well, clear answer for me as I just got my M1 air 16gb and I could not have been any happier. The best laptop I have ever used, and I have used some that were considered medium-high end at the time. I was a bit in a rush to get a new laptop else I would have waited for M2 reviews, but I doubt it would have changed anything as I am in a quite tight budget to consider the SSD upgrade in the M2, plus the 16gb ram that I need anyway. And plus I got my M1 very lightly used, almost 30% cheaper than its official price, while there would be no M2 discounts any time soon. I would wait if I were you, but I doubt there will be any positive surprise (but maybe there will be negative ones about overheating, so there's also that). If the possibility of an SSD upgrade in the M2 was in the picture, or if you needed that anyway, I would say it depends on whether the new perks mattered to you, but otherwise it is no-brainer for the vast majority of uses.
I usually have multiple tabs open on Chrome and Safari simultaneously and YouTube playing in the background. I make frequent use of iMessage and MS Word or Pages all at the same time. I occasionally use iMovie to edit.
I have 8GB on my MBA M1 and have not had any noticeable slowdowns or lag. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen the spinning beachball over the past year.
One of the best features of the original M1 systems, was the phenomenally fast SSD. The performance of the included SSDs are fast enough to disguise the typical symptoms of disk swapping, making many users of the M1 systems, oblivious to their systems making heavy use of the swap file. On top of how macOS uses memory compression, the high-disk speed makes 8 GBs feel like more, which lead to a lot of people claiming M1 8GB = Intel 16 GB. You should take a look at your memory usage (not talking about pressure) and see how much RAM you are actually using when you have all of your stuff open (Chrome, Safari, YouTube, iMessage, MS Word or Pages) and see how much it adds up to. If you are well below 8 GBs, you are in a great place memory wise. macOS itself seems to like around 4 GBs to run smoothly, leaving 4 GBs to account for apps and video memory. This is really an issue on longevity as there is no way to upgrade this later, you are stuck with what you got.
The biggest conundrum for the new M2 MBA is the fact that Apple (at least for the initial batch) is using only a single package for the 256GB SSD in the M2 MBP, which seems to be effectively halving the performance. So when one of these new M2 MBPs needs to disk swap, it has half the available performance of the original system, causing it to feel slower If Apple did the same thing in the new MBA, we might see similar perceived performance issues.
Unless you need/want the new features of the redesigned MBA, the performance delta between the M1 and the M2 might not be worth the $200 difference. However, if you are going to use the new Media encoding engine built into the M2, then you absolutely need the M2. This performance difference will be well worth the additional $200. You could also argue that the available added GPU cores are worth the cost difference, but only you will know if that is true for you.
In all cases, you can mitigate the risk of having a slower SSD by either opting to upgrade the SSD to 512GBs, or at least 16 GBs of RAM (you can go to 24 GBs on the M2). Of course, this might all be moot, if Apple did not opt for single package SSDs in the MBA, time will tell
I just did it!!
Ordered M1 w 16gb
The comments above and the latest Maxtech comparison of m1&2 did it..
Price
Speed
Just dumb I waited over 10 months to pull the trigger.
Silly me!!!
Also a 4 Week wait time, wow must be popular..
I almost get the feeling M1 a bit special as they did the first M computer with extra care because the future was riding on its shoulders.. hence strong across the board PLUS the sharp price.
Ordered M1 w 16gb
The comments above and the latest Maxtech comparison of m1&2 did it..
Price
Speed
Just dumb I waited over 10 months to pull the trigger.
Silly me!!!
Also a 4 Week wait time, wow must be popular..
I almost get the feeling M1 a bit special as they did the first M computer with extra care because the future was riding on its shoulders.. hence strong across the board PLUS the sharp price.
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I can't say if they did, but it is the final-boss of the much-loved wedge design.
There are a variety of USB-C magnetic adapters you can get to simulate MagSafe.
None specifically. Unless you know you will be regularly unplugging, most of them are power only, get one where there isn't a gap between the body and the adapter. It's been discussed before so search the forums.
I’m having second thoughts, I’m gonna go to store and touch an M2.. haha
Those long delivery times leave too much room to back out!!
Stock M2 has been widely debunked as not a good idea tho right??
M1 16 better if heavy MS office user??
I’m not usually this indecisive.
Those long delivery times leave too much room to back out!!
Stock M2 has been widely debunked as not a good idea tho right??
M1 16 better if heavy MS office user??
I’m not usually this indecisive.
Only you can answer this. My bet is the M2 base model will be fine for you. I found the M1 base model to be mostly good enough, but I wanted more space and decided that more ram was worth it too--especially since I could still get it at the same price as an M2 base model.
But again, everyone has to decide this for themselves. At least we don't have to deal with intel inside level problems anymore.
I’m thinking maybe I just stick w M1 on 16gb, have a play around, see if my workflow goes over the 8gb and then decide it was necessary based on that…
I do like having endless multiple desktops and flicking between stuff as it loads/processes etc..
Too easy to load up 8gb isn’t it…? Grr
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Its hard to tell like that because MacOS is designed to use as much RAM as is available, even if it's not necessary. A better test would be getting 8GB and seeing how frequently you memory pressure is yellow. But very few people have ever regretting getting 16GB over 8 so I'd say do that.
My M1 Air, with two safari tabs open, excel, maps and App Store running, is using over 8GB ram. It often sits at 9 or 10GB used. I'm very happy with my M1 16GB
I prob also learned from this to not just wait on YouTube vids and reviews and shoulda gotten what I need, when I needed it…
Plus the M1 Air was/is something special.. bound to be a classic, last of the wedge (for now) and before prices rocketed up even more 😅