MacBook Pro 14" vs MacBook Air

[mr_jomo]

I think you're thinking of the MacBook Air with butterfly keyboard (up to 2018-2019). Ever since Apple ditched butterfly keys, the arrow keys have always been this small in the US layout. I have seen some other layouts and they also seem to have the arrow keys at this size.

View attachment 1914376

Which is why mappleN was wondering about regional differences, since the MBA M1 you posted a picture of had the old 2019 keyboard layout with the larger arrow keys, while the normal US layout of the 2020 MBA looks like this:

I guess you re-keycapped it with the older layout to achieve the rad look ?

 

[ADGrant]

In defense of the 13 MBP, which I recently purchased over the MBA. I decided based on, brighter screen, better speakers, active cooling. The price difference is not much, the speakers are amazing (not as good as the 14 and 16, obviously, but really good). The screen is 25% brighter. And I have only gotten the fans to come on once, when I deliberately ran it hard, so not really an issue for me

I would still do it again, not much money, better speakers, brighter screen

If you configure the 13" MBA with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD it is only $300 cheaper than the base 14" MBP which makes the 14" seem inexpensive to me. It does have advantages over the MBA of course but the 14" has similar advantages over the 13" MBP.

If you like the Touch Bar though, the 13" MBP is now the only MacBook to have one.

 

[bill-p]

Which is why mappleN was wondering about regional differences, since the MBA M1 you posted a picture of had the old 2019 keyboard layout with the larger arrow keys, while the normal US layout of the 2020 MBA looks like this:

I guess you re-keycapped it with the older layout to achieve the rad look ?

Ah, I see. No, that was just the keyboard cover. I'm using an older keyboard cover as a temporary solution since it's really hard to find one that has the same layout as the new MBA.

Is this better?

 

[mr_jomo]

Ah, I see. No, that was just the keyboard cover. I'm using an older keyboard cover as a temporary solution since it's really hard to find one that has the same layout as the new MBA.

Is this better?

View attachment 1914430

Think that cleared mappleN's inquiry ?.

 

[tpfang56]

Honestly, I just don't believe Youtuber's MacBook Air "suitable for majority of people" claim, cause M1 is still not efficient enough to push even somewhat CPU/GPU intensive medium workload without getting warm. You can only do so much with passive cooling. Having a fan is highly suggested for people who wants to use MacBook more than just watching youtube videos and scrolling twitter and occasionally doing processing power intensive stuff.

I disagree, the MBA does seem perfectly fine for the majority of people because the majority of people—even for professional work—use their computers for basic web browsing, answering emails, writing documents, etc. If there are people who can 95+% of the time get by on an ipad or 5-10 year old computer, then they certainly won't need more than M1 MBA. With 16GB of RAM, it'll go a long way and possibly future proof them for 3-5 more years. What they want is another question entirely.

Personal example: I do a lot of basic/beginner programming while having 15-20 tabs open, and my MBA has been working beautifully with no lag or swap used. Of course, I really want an M1 Pro MBP for more external displays and other reasons, but I doubt I'll really make use of that power until I get into more advanced work w/ bigger projects.

Agree though that the battery life is just not as good as advertised depending on which apps you use. Certain apps are poorly optimized (Zoom and Teams) and others are relatively power hungry. VSCode is considered a "lite" text editor/IDE, and even passively in the background it'll use 3-6% of the battery. When compiling code, it can go up to 10-20%.

 

[jdb8167]

Personal example: I do a lot of basic/beginner programming while having 15-20 tabs open, and my MBA has been working beautifully with no lag or swap used. Of course, I really want an M1 Pro MBP for more external displays and other reasons, but I doubt I'll really make use of that power until I get into more advanced work w/ bigger projects.

Most of my programming work is typing, using an IDE (Xcode, PyCharm, Eclipse, etc.), and a browser. Not exactly something that needs 8 performance cores and 32 GPU cores. More than 16 GB might be slightly helpful but I only use 1 IDE at a time so it is pretty easy to quit an app to reduce memory pressure.

 

[bunce66]

Thank you for the brilliant comparison!

So now I have a MacBook Air M1 with me as well and I have tested the device for a day.

People kept complaining about battery life and heat on the 14" due to all of these Youtube videos showing benchmarks and such, but I would like to share my personal experience:

1. There is ZERO difference in battery run time between the MacBook Air and the 14" M1 Pro with 10 cores. I have tried everything. They basically get the same battery run time with the exact same tasks, whether it is light computing or heavy computing (playing games, modeling in Fusion 360, photo editing in Capture One Pro). Both get about 10-12 hours under light use, and worst case about 2-3 hours when CPU + GPU are stressed to their absolute limits.
2. The 14" M1 Pro is still a lot faster than Air M1 even in Low Power Mode.
3. In Low Power Mode, the Air is... not bad but it's very very slow in comparison to the 14".
4. In Low Power Mode, both still get the exact same battery life with light use. That means the Air and the 14" get the exact same run time to me when both are in Low Power Mode.
5. In Low Power Mode, the fan in the 14" NEVER goes above 2300RPM no matter what I tried. Even Cinebench on loop for a whole 2 hours on top of a blanket did not get the fan beyond 2300RPM. It seems Low Power Mode is just Apple limiting the 14" to a certain power draw package? Need more confirmation on this, but I honestly could not get it to beyond 25-30W. Also, 2300RPM with the 14" is SILENT. My office's ambient noise level is 26dB and I can clearly hear any slight buzzing. Even putting my phone over the 14" vents did not detect any noise above ambient here. Practically, the 14" in Low Power Mode is as silent as the MacBook Air.
6. Without Low Power Mode, then yeah, the 14" will blast the fan when the CPU is stressed a lot and power consumption of the SoC goes beyond 35W. Even then, it's not maxing out the fan and it's more of a low whir. But without Low Power Mode, the 14" is over twice as fast as the MacBook Air at literally everything... from opening apps to running tasks.
6. The Air's max brightness is about 13.5 to 14 out of the 16 steps of brightness on the 14". Obviously the screen on the 14" is much nicer and much sharper.
7. The Pro's speakers are far better than the Air. I think that goes without saying.
8. The Pro charges up much faster than the Air. The Air takes about 3 hours to fully charge from 5% to 100%. The Pro takes 2 hours with a 100W charger. If that sounds like a lot, it took almost an hour for the Air to reach 50% but the Pro took only about 25 minutes or so. By the 1-hour mark, the Pro was already around 75 - 80%. This was with me still pushing the machine all that time.

So my conclusion: the Air is a good entry level machine, but... honestly, if I wanted the same configuration (16GB RAM and 1TB SSD) as my 14", I'd have to spend $1599 (or $1649 if I wanted that extra GPU core). At that point, it's pretty close to the base 14" Pro. I'd totally want to spend the extra $1000 for:

1. Twice the performance at all of my tasks, even in Low Power Mode
2. More ports
3. 4x bigger Touch ID button (matters a lot if you end up using Touch ID a lot) + 2x bigger Esc key
4. Better speakers
5. Better screen, and brighter outdoors
6. Faster charging
7. Slightly bigger trackpad
8. More screen real estate
9. Better webcam (relevant since I also do Zoom quite a lot)

Also I had the M1 13" Pro (just sold it recently) and the only thing I could say about the 13" Pro was... it might have lasted slightly longer under light computing tasks? And that's it.

Overall, from my point of view, the 14" is totally a worthy upgrade over the Air if anyone can afford it. But with that said, I got this Air for $849 on a recent deal. And at that price point, honestly... this is probably the best value for anyone's money. If I didn't need the extra performance of the 14" and I was on a tight budget, I'd totally go for this Air. It is plenty fast for random office tasks and Youtube. Plus it is absolutely silent and there's not much of a reason to go with Low Power Mode on it since it's not going to gain anything (but it loses quite a bit of performance). Oh, and also: no notch!

This is basically how I decided to get the Pro. While I don't need the M1 Pro, I did want 16GB of RAM and 1TB. At that configuration, the price gap is not so huge and you get a lot more extras than just a faster processor. I figure the Pro will be usable for 8 years like my current Macbook Pro, while the Air might have maybe 5-6 years of usability.

 

[mappleN]

I think you're thinking of the MacBook Air with butterfly keyboard (up to 2018-2019). Ever since Apple ditched butterfly keys, the arrow keys have always been this small in the US layout. I have seen some other layouts and they also seem to have the arrow keys at this size.

View attachment 1914376

Yeah, that‘s what I was thinking. Because the MBA in the picture has the big arrow keys. But maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say in the first place…

edit: Never mind, I didn’t see your latest answer. That clears it all up. Thanks a lot and thank you also for the comparison!

 

[wortex]

im not sure how you get 12+ hour on battery on MBA. Im purchased one 3 weeks ago, and its doing 8 hours max on my workflow. Im It systems administrator, not doing anything too extensive on this, just some web, remote logins, 21 apps open all the time(office, notes, web) and after my full day, my air is off the battery.. Didnt noticed temperatures above 30 degrees c, so Im not consuming cpu. Thinking to get 14 pro, but not sure if I need one...

 

[Queen6]

im not sure how you get 12+ hour on battery on MBA. Im purchased one 3 weeks ago, and its doing 8 hours max on my workflow. Im It systems administrator, not doing anything too extensive on this, just some web, remote logins, 21 apps open all the time(office, notes, web) and after my full day, my air is off the battery.. Didnt noticed temperatures above 30 degrees c, so Im not consuming cpu. Thinking to get 14 pro, but not sure if I need one...

Doubt the 14" Pro will resolve your issues as Apple quotes less battery runtime for the 14" versus the Air. What you likely need is similar performance with a greater battery capacity such as the M1 13" MBP.

The base (CPU & RAM) 16" now offers the best runtime off mains of all portable Mac's, equally at cost. Such matters are never easy to offer recommendation's as the workflow and usage is so very individual. To me if you don't need the performance the 14" wont solve the issue, if price is not an issue the 16" makes sense at the cost of portability.

The M1 13" MBP will gain you a fair bump in battery life over the Air. TBH I'd just plug in the Air when you can and save the $$$$ unless you want the latest and greatest not that there's anything wrong with that

Q-6

 

[DerDerbste]

If you configure the 13" MBA with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD it is only $300 cheaper than the base 14" MBP which makes the 14" seem inexpensive to me. It does have advantages over the MBA of course but the 14" has similar advantages over the 13" MBP.

If you like the Touch Bar though, the 13" MBP is now the only MacBook to have one.

I am still amazed and envious of the regional price differences. In Germany the mba 16gb 512Gb is listed around 1630€ (1800$) after tax, street price right now a lot lower, around 1400€ (1580$). The mbp 14 base is listed 2250€ (2540$), street is 2120€ (2400$). So you are talking about list difference of 740$ and a “street” price difference of 820$.
Would love the bigger screen, but it’s not like the mba screen is so bad you have to get the MBP. And at that price difference it is really hard to justify if you are not a professional 4K content creator/ music producer/ dev with super big projects or/and lots of vms. If it were just 300€ difference I would buy the MBP in a heartbeat, just for the one inch more screen size, but sadly I live in Europe ?

 

[ingambe]

I am still amazed and envious of the regional price differences. In Germany the mba 16gb 512Gb is listed around 1630€ (1800$) after tax, street price right now a lot lower, around 1400€ (1580$). The mbp 14 base is listed 2250€ (2540$), street is 2120€ (2400$). So you are talking about list difference of 740$ and a “street” price difference of 820$.
Would love the bigger screen, but it’s not like the mba screen is so bad you have to get the MBP. And at that price difference it is really hard to justify if you are not a professional 4K content creator/ music producer/ dev with super big projects or/and lots of vms. If it were just 300€ difference I would buy the MBP in a heartbeat, just for the one inch more screen size, but sadly I live in Europe ?

You can find the base 14" in Germany for less than 2100 euros nowadays: https://www.mydealz.de/deals/macbook-pro-m1-2021-verschiedene-modelle-gunstig-konfigurierbar-1889291
And less than 2000 euros, if you are a student or know a student: https://www.mydealz.de/deals/apple-...u-silber-f-studenten-schuler-lehrende-1873090

For the difference, you don't just get an extra inch, but you get a better screen, more ports, faster RAM, better GPU, a cooled CPU that will throttle way less, and a higher resell value. In fact, if you sell it in 3 years, you may get your money back and it will be easier to sell

 

[arvinsim]

I disagree, the MBA does seem perfectly fine for the majority of people because the majority of people—even for professional work—use their computers for basic web browsing, answering emails, writing documents, etc. If there are people who can 95+% of the time get by on an ipad or 5-10 year old computer, then they certainly won't need more than M1 MBA. With 16GB of RAM, it'll go a long way and possibly future proof them for 3-5 more years. What they want is another question entirely.

Personal example: I do a lot of basic/beginner programming while having 15-20 tabs open, and my MBA has been working beautifully with no lag or swap used. Of course, I really want an M1 Pro MBP for more external displays and other reasons, but I doubt I'll really make use of that power until I get into more advanced work w/ bigger projects.

Agree though that the battery life is just not as good as advertised depending on which apps you use. Certain apps are poorly optimized (Zoom and Teams) and others are relatively power hungry. VSCode is considered a "lite" text editor/IDE, and even passively in the background it'll use 3-6% of the battery. When compiling code, it can go up to 10-20%.

I guess there is no way around it. Doing software development is considered "heavy" and will suck the battery no matter what Macbook you buy.

 

[Tozovac]

It is plenty fast for random office tasks and Youtube.

After all the ringing endorsements worldwide in the M1 12 months ago, that’s quite a tepid endorsement!

How utterly amazing the M1 pro must be.

 

[ARJR84]

If you configure the 13" MBA with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD it is only $300 cheaper than the base 14" MBP which makes the 14" seem inexpensive to me. It does have advantages over the MBA of course but the 14" has similar advantages over the 13" MBP.

If you like the Touch Bar though, the 13" MBP is now the only MacBook to have one.

Where on earth are you even getting that $300 from? I mean that literally, what geographical location on earth?

The difference is closer to $700 here than $300. Or in a relative sense, ~50% more expensive.

Also, I find it hard to believe that so many people find the M1A so much slower. Must be a lot of 8k video editors in here ? Or rather just a lot of people trying to justify their purchases

 

[bobcomer]

Also, I find it hard to believe that so many people find the M1A so much slower. Must be a lot of 8k video editors in here ? Or rather just a lot of people trying to justify their purchases

I don't have a new 14" M1 MBP to compare speed-wise, but my MB Air gets slow after a few minutes of use with my normal developer, administrative, office tasks. It's slower because it's throttling because of heat. I should have never bought a passively cooled laptop.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I don't have a new 14" M1 MBP to compare speed-wise, but my MB Air gets slow after a few minutes of use with my normal developer, administrative, office tasks. It's slower because it's throttling because of heat. I should have never bought a passively cooled laptop.

The key part of the first sentence must be ".....my normal developer ...." because no way does an M1 MBA throttle during administrative and office tasks.

No benchmark is perfect but a common benchmark of throttling is Cinebench running continuously for 30 mins. 6% after 10 minutes. 10% after 32 minutes, here.

 

[bobcomer]

The key part of the first sentence must be ".....my normal developer ...." because no way does an M1 MBA throttle during administrative and office tasks.

It does for me, and there's no doubt of that. It's regularly is over 90C and has gotten as high as 118C running a VM. And don't say it's defective because I know it's not. At idle with just Chrome running right now, CPU temp is in the 40C's.

No benchmark is perfect but a common benchmark of throttling is Cinebench running continuously for 30 mins. 6% after 10 minutes. 10% after 32 minutes, here.

I don't do benchmarks.

 

[jdb8167]

It does for me, and there's no doubt of that. It's regularly is over 90C and has gotten as high as 118C running a VM. And don't say it's defective because I know it's not. At idle with just Chrome running right now, CPU temp is in the 40C's.

It won’t throttle at 90° C.

It must have been at 118° C for a very short time or your MBA has a hardware problem. I’ve never seen above 102° C on my MBA even trying to push it to the limit with all CPU & GPU cores active at the same time.

Why is it important that Chrome is causing temperatures in the low 40° C range?

 

[Mike Boreham]

I don't do benchmarks.

Fair enough, but without measurements everything is anecdotal.

 

[Queen6]

I don't have a new 14" M1 MBP to compare speed-wise, but my MB Air gets slow after a few minutes of use with my normal developer, administrative, office tasks. It's slower because it's throttling because of heat. I should have never bought a passively cooled laptop.

That's the issue as the M1 13" MBP with active cooling wont throttle down. The Air with only passive cooling has no alternative other than to throttle loosing as much as 20% in performance, potential more or less dependant on the ambient temperature. I like passively cooled, however all the notebooks I've tried and or owned suffer the same flaw throttling for several reasons...

14" MBP will be significantly faster, 13" MBP same performance as the Air without the throttling issue. As for benchmarks, well they can be very handy to test and evaluate before you commit even if only from reputable secondary sources.

Q-6

 

[bobcomer]

It won’t throttle at 90° C.

I never said it would, just that it *does* get high enough to throttle with my normal IT Manager workload. It most certainly does throttle at 118C!

Fair enough, but without measurements everything is anecdotal.

I never said it wasn't anecdotal either. Sure, it's anecdotal based on my workload, that's it -- I don't need a benchmark to see it's throttling or not, nor am I trying to prove anything (There's absolutely no way you'd accept any proof I'd post here, nor should you -- it's all personal experience) -- just saying my experience doesn't match the OP of the post I responded to.

 

[bobcomer]

It must have been at 118° C for a very short time or your MBA has a hardware problem. I’ve never seen above 102° C on my MBA even trying to push it to the limit with all CPU & GPU cores active at the same time.

LOL! It works well, there is no hardware problem. Mine's *regularly* over 100C with a VM running, and I always have a VM running, either parallels or UTM. I need Windows for my work flow. It's acting just like it should -- it never crashes from heat. (which it would if there were a heatsink problem, it would, as I've had that problem with other laptops.)

Why is it important that Chrome is causing temperatures in the low 40° C range?

Just saying it's not always running hot like if there was a hardware problem.

 

[bobcomer]

14" MBP will be significantly faster, 13" MBP same performance as the Air without the throttling issue.

I suspect so, I just don't want to spend that much money right now. I had an M1 Max 14" 32G RAM, 1TB ssd on order but I chickened out. I'd just not get that much use out of it to spend that much. I'll probably get a new Mini when I can get it equipped at least the same.

As for benchmarks, well they can be very handy to test and evaluate before you commit even if only from reputable secondary sources.

I use the secondary source benchmarks when i'm shopping for new laptops/desktops for work, it gives me a feel for the performance of the machine before ordering it. I don't run benchmarks myself is what I meant as I have no need for them. I do all my research before ordering, so i've never returned anything because of performance. This MBA is the first one I've owned that I could say I'm slightly disappointed with. I got caught up in the hype and that's my bad, not Apple's.

Performance is actually really dood when I'm not working, and that's what the MBA is for me now, my relaxing machine. I switch to an Intel machine for work. (I have an i9 desktop with 128G of RAM and discrete graphics, an XPS 15 laptop with 32G RAM, and an Intel Mac Mini with 64G of RAM to switch to, so it's not a problem. Right now I'm using my MBA, and not a work task running or a VM.

 

[Queen6]

I suspect so, I just don't want to spend that much money right now. I had an M1 Max 14" 32G RAM, 1TB ssd on order but I chickened out. I'd just not get that much use out of it to spend that much. I'll probably get a new Mini when I can get it equipped at least the same.


I use the secondary source benchmarks when i'm shopping for new laptops/desktops for work, it gives me a feel for the performance of the machine before ordering it. I don't run benchmarks myself is what I meant as I have no need for them. I do all my research before ordering, so i've never returned anything because of performance. This MBA is the first one I've owned that I could say I'm slightly disappointed with. I got caught up in the hype and that's my bad, not Apple's.

Performance is actually really dood when I'm not working, and that's what the MBA is for me now, my relaxing machine. I switch to an Intel machine for work. (I have an i9 desktop with 128G of RAM and discrete graphics, an XPS 15 laptop with 32G RAM, and an Intel Mac Mini with 64G of RAM to switch to, so it's not a problem. Right now I'm using my MBA, and not a work task running or a VM.

I held off a while with the 13" M1 as wanting to let the dust settle and cool my heels LOL. No doubts I'd like a new 14" M1 MBP, however I simply don't have the need for one as of now and the 13" M1 MBP remains more than adequate as I too have alternative PC's.

Q-6