M2 Air with 24GB or M1 Pro with 32GB

[ROSeaboyer]

I'm currently in the market for a new machine, but I'm torn between the M2 Air and an M1 Pro MBP.

What I'll be doing:

• Light video editing; nothing super fancy, just videos recorded on an iPhone being combined and/or cut up
• Playing Cities Skylines; the main bottleneck with this is RAM, so I'd be looking at either the 16GB or 24GB models (likely 24GB as I've seen it posted where 16 is a bottleneck).

To me, anything like an M1 Max is a massive amount of overkill as the M2 has hardware video decoders and Cities Skylines isn't exactly multicore (I've seen the joke where it barely uses 2 cores).

The way I'm leaning is the base Air but with 24GB of RAM and possibly a 512GB SSD, but am more than willing to hear arguments convincing me to go the Pro route.

Any thoughts?

 

[chrono1081]

Personally I'd go the M2 Air. I was running Houdini similations on it for hours as well doing some 4k video editing in Final Cut just fine and weirdly, even using Houdini I didn't run out of ram.

 

[ryanmillercg]

The Air will suit this just fine. Enjoy!

 

[aakshey]

Honestly, there is not much price difference between a specced up M2 and an M1 Pro. Might as well go Pro unless you mind the weight and size.

 

[jz0309]

Price them out, look at the differences in specs, than make your decision

 

[jav6454]

I'm currently in the market for a new machine, but I'm torn between the M2 Air and an M1 Pro MBP.

What I'll be doing:

• Light video editing; nothing super fancy, just videos recorded on an iPhone being combined and/or cut up
• Playing Cities Skylines; the main bottleneck with this is RAM, so I'd be looking at either the 16GB or 24GB models (likely 24GB as I've seen it posted where 16 is a bottleneck).

To me, anything like an M1 Max is a massive amount of overkill as the M2 has hardware video decoders and Cities Skylines isn't exactly multicore (I've seen the joke where it barely uses 2 cores).

The way I'm leaning is the base Air but with 24GB of RAM and possibly a 512GB SSD, but am more than willing to hear arguments convincing me to go the Pro route.

Any thoughts?

Get the Pro. Why? Cities Skylines is a resource hog in terms of CPU and memory; mostly CPU. If you select an MBA, you will hit the thermal throttle hard and your in-game experience will suffer greatly.

 

[jav6454]

Personally I'd go the M2 Air. I was running Houdini similations on it for hours as well doing some 4k video editing in Final Cut just fine and weirdly, even using Houdini I didn't run out of ram.

The Air will suit this just fine. Enjoy!

You guys have never even played Cities Skylines right? The MBA is the worst choice for that specific game.

 

[ryanmillercg]

You guys have never even played Cities Skylines right? The MBA is the worst choice for that specific game.

Seems fine on the M1 based on this video:

If you're purely buying a laptop for playing games, get a Windows machine with a NVIDIA/AMD GPU.

 

[dukebound85]

The Air will suit this just fine. Enjoy!

as would the m1 pro!

 

[mdhaus72]

I agree with the poster above that you should spec out both machines and see which one is the better value, You might find that with the upgrades you put into the M2 Air, it might be worth it to simply get an M1 Pro. It's a better chip overall.

 

[ROSeaboyer]

Thanks for the feedback; I specced out both, and when using the Apple US store (I'm Canadian, so the differences are more extreme), it's $800 more for the Pro. Both are base models, with memory upgraded to the maximum for each (24GB for the Air, 32GB for the Pro).

For the concern about the Air for thermal throttling, I put that down as that's essentially the only M2 option at the moment (the M2 MBP is an old, tired design IMO), but honestly I'd probably actually grab the iMac once Apple does a refresh on that.

 

[nick9191]

Don’t go for the 256GB SSD if you do go for the Air. The drives are considerably slower.

 

[jav6454]

Seems fine on the M1 based on this video:

If you're purely buying a laptop for playing games, get a Windows machine with a NVIDIA/AMD GPU.

So you tell me they tested out just the vanilla version when players actually use several mods for it to enhance playability?

 

[wilberforce]

The main reason to get an Air is portability, not performance or features

 

[Toutou]

I wouldn't recommend the Air for playing C:S. I have a M1 Air and it does run on it, but the machine gets red hot, the FPS is low and it generally isn't very enjoyable. And that's 100 % vanilla.
The M2 will probably fare a little bit better, but still...

 

[Zest28]

Get the 14" M1 Pro ofcourse. It has a much better GPU and doesn't thermal throttle when playing games.

 

[ascender]

Honestly, there is not much price difference between a specced up M2 and an M1 Pro. Might as well go Pro unless you mind the weight and size.

That's pretty much what it comes down to unless you absolutely need one of the hardware features the Air doesn't have.

 

[jav6454]

Get the 14" M1 Pro ofcourse. It has a much better GPU and doesn't thermal throttle when playing games.

In the case of the game OP is trying to play, CPU is much more important than GPU. Cities is a quite the demanding game in terms of CPU performance.