MBP or MBA?

[81Tiger04]

My wife had been using MacBooks since they were clunky, plastic white things 😆. Well, a year ago my wife took a leap and purchased a PC for work. Fast forward to now ... She wants to go back to a Mac (big surprise ha ha). What would you suggest she do as far as her Mac purchase? Pro or Air? Which will suffice?

She bought a Dell XPS 15 9500. She was starting a new job and would be working online at home a lot. It primarily involves online video & audio sessions via Zoom or Adobe. During sessions, she is is often running something such as an interactive game, websites, taking notes, etc. She currently runs 1 monitor but will possibly increase to 2.

The XPS 9500 meets her needs. In her new purchase, she would like to make sure her computing needs are met for the next few years.

XPS 15 9500
	6-Cell Battery, 86WHr (Integrated) Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (2x2) and Bluetooth 5.0 15.6" FHD+ (1920 x 1200) InfinityEdge Non-Touch Anti-Glare 500-Nit Display 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive 16GB DDR4-2933MHz, 2x8G NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1650 Ti 4GB GDDR6 10th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H (12MB Cache, up to 5.0 GHz, 6 cores)

 

[Falhófnir]

Neither are actually equipped to use as part of a 2 monitor set up, the MacBooks are both limited to driving a single external display (and only have two Thunderbolt ports anyway). The M1 Mac mini to use at a desk (it does support 2x monitors, one via Thunderbolt up to 6K and one more up to 4K via HDMI) and, if you can run to it, the Air (or just keep the XPS) for on the go is one possible solution?

 

[deeddawg]

While the current M1 MBA and M1 MBP don't support two external monitors, they do just fine driving the internal display plus an single external monitor. I typically work with my MBP open to the side of my 1440p 27" display and use an external Apple Magic Keyboard & Trackpad. While it's not two external displays, it is two displays and I find it works well for me.

I'd expect either MBA or MBP would be suitable for her workload, though the MBP with it's active cooling would give a higher compute threshhold if the video + zoom demands got heavy. As for fan noise - I've heard my MBP's fan exactly once in a half year of ownership and that was when I was specifically trying to make it spin audibly.