M2 Air vs. MBP

[Hatespendingmoney11]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a little bit of advice. I have been reading all about the slow SSD issues with the M2 air. This annoys me very much that Apple would do this. However, if I spec out my M2 MBA to 24gb Ram and 512 ssd, will that alleviate the issue completely and put me at speeds higher than the M1 air and closer to the M1 MacBook pro? If not, I will cancel my order and just buy a base 14 inch MBP or add 32 gb ram. I was never considering the base M2 air because I work with tons of tabs open and am often sceeensharing etc. Basically I am trying to find a way to get good performance without spending MacBook Pro money. So I guess what I’m asking is if upgrading ram and storage on the M2 air a complete and total work around for the slow ssd issue?

 

[ct2k7]

What is your workflow or application? How would you benchmark the MacBook as being faster, for your use case?

if all you’re doing is having tabs open and screen sharing, you’d benefit from more RAM.

 

[Hatespendingmoney11]

What is your workflow or application? How would you benchmark the MacBook as being faster, for your use case?

if all you’re doing is having tabs open and screen sharing, you’d benefit from more RAM.

Yeah it’s basically just 20 heavy chrome tabs (online IDEs), screen sharing, and a couple apps like VS code, excel etc. and sometimes I have to open up massive csv files.

 

[ct2k7]

Yeah it’s basically just 20 heavy chrome tabs (online IDEs), screen sharing, and a couple apps like VS code, excel etc. and sometimes I have to open up massive csv files.

if you can afford the extra memory go for it, in terms of M1 or M2, i don’t think you’d benefit from an M2 greatly.

 

[darngooddesign]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a little bit of advice. I have been reading all about the slow SSD issues with the M2 air. This annoys me very much that Apple would do this. However, if I spec out my M2 MBA to 24gb Ram and 512 ssd, will that alleviate the issue completely and put me at speeds higher than the M1 air and closer to the M1 MacBook pro? If not, I will cancel my order and just buy a base 14 inch MBP or add 32 gb ram. I was never considering the base M2 air because I work with tons of tabs open and am often sceeensharing etc. Basically I am trying to find a way to get good performance without spending MacBook Pro money. So I guess what I’m asking is if upgrading ram and storage on the M2 air a complete and total work around for the slow ssd issue?

You don't have to upgrade the RAM to avoid the issue, just select 512GB or larger. Based on your workload, 16GB RAM would be enough for you.

 

[chrono1081]

I have a 14 inch MBP for work and just ordered the M2 Air for personal. Airs are a lot more capable than people give them credit for, I've had a few of them.

My use case is usually lots of Xcode work, Unity, Godot, 3D work in Modo, Blender, and ZBrush and occasional video work in Final Cut + Motion and sound work in Logic.

I ould go for a pro but I also like the lightness and portablity of the Air. I bet for what you do you'll end up loving the air too.

 

[jav6454]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a little bit of advice. I have been reading all about the slow SSD issues with the M2 air. This annoys me very much that Apple would do this. However, if I spec out my M2 MBA to 24gb Ram and 512 ssd, will that alleviate the issue completely and put me at speeds higher than the M1 air and closer to the M1 MacBook pro? If not, I will cancel my order and just buy a base 14 inch MBP or add 32 gb ram. I was never considering the base M2 air because I work with tons of tabs open and am often sceeensharing etc. Basically I am trying to find a way to get good performance without spending MacBook Pro money. So I guess what I’m asking is if upgrading ram and storage on the M2 air a complete and total work around for the slow ssd issue?

If you update your MBA with stuff such as maxed memory and high storage, consider instead sticking to a 14"MBP

 

[MacGizmo]

Hi everyone,

...So I guess what I’m asking is if upgrading ram and storage on the M2 air a complete and total work around for the slow ssd issue?

The M2 is going to be faster than the M1 in almost all tasks you appear to want to do overall - because it's faster at single-core tasks (which is what it sounds like you're doing with the apps/tasks you mentioned). This is regardless of SSD speed or RAM configuration. But "faster" doesn't necessarily mean you'll notice it much.

Remember, the speed difference between the SSDs all these articles are talking about is subjective. For many folks, it's the difference of a few minutes at the end of an 8-hour work day, if even that... for others (say, people editing video or compiling code) it can be a big hit to their productivity. But for those people, they aren't looking at M2 processors, they're going with M1 Max or Ultra or waiting for M2 Max or Ultra chips anyway (if they're smart).

The SSD speed difference will likely be fairly meaningless to you because (it sounds like) most of your tasks are CPU intensive, not disc read/write speed intensive. In other words, you're doing things that are held in memory (RAM), not reading/writing large files to the storage drive.

For that reason, I would get more RAM because that way the OS doesn't have to use SSD read/writes for swap memory as often—thus saving you the speed hit.

All that being said, the difference between the base M1 and M2 for 90% of average people will be almost completely unnoticed. On the other hand, the M1 Pro chips will be faster for almost everything you do than the M2 chips, and the M1 Max and M1 Ultra even faster.

Since you appear to have a limited budget, your options are also similarly limited. You can get an M2 MB Air with upgraded SSD and RAM, or you can get a base model 14" MB Pro with M1 Pro chipset... they'll be about the same price.

 

[MajorFubar]

This is one of the rare occasions where I'd say for your uses opt for more RAM because it doesn't look like you would at all be impacted by the slower SSD in the base model. But if you can afford 512 and more RAM, why not do both. Thing is in my country when we spec-out an M2 Air with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD it's within spitting distance of a 14" MBP, which personally I'd always choose in preference.

 

[paulchiu]

I took home a M2 MBA with 8-10 8GB and 512 SSD and it opened lots of Chrome tabs while playing HDR Youtube videos and running Parallels Desktop 17 Pro with Windows 11 Workstation and EXCEL 2010 opened with 8 highly data intensive spreadsheets fed with live DDE data-streams.

Yeah, the Windows 11 stuff ran about 50% slower than my 2019 Mac Pro with 768GB RAM. Yes!
But it ran. So I can take this minimal gear on trips.

Now, I am ordering the 16 GB and 1TB version, as I type this. As 512 was all they had at Apple 5th AVE last Sunday.
I think 16GB would open those EXCEL files faster, under Parallels.


I say, what you have in mind is FINE.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

The (comparatively) slower read-write speeds on the MBA M2 only affect the base model MBA M2.

You say you are looking to get the 512GB model. This model doesn't have that issue.

If you have a lot of applications open, you may benefit from more RAM.