My review after using the MacBook Air M1 for 3 weeks!

[digitalbreak]

Overall I am very happy with the MacBook Air purchase. I traded my 2017 15” MBP i7/16GB as well. While I did review the M1/8GB/8-core GPU MBA, I also bought a M1/16GB/8-core GPU MBA that I will use as my personal device for my photography and content creation workloads. I usually use Pixelmator Pro/Darkroom and Final Cut Pro.

Here is my full review:

 

[Zazoh]

Nice work Chakaradeep. Video production value is top notch.

I've been a long time Apple user and while I really like Apple products, I'm seldom impressed or a true fan of the devices. Two devices have impressed me over the years.

1. AirPods
2. The M1 MacBook Air

To me, both products epitomize what Apple is about, innovation and and technology that doesn't get in the way. And by that, I mean, advancements that make working enjoyable because the frustration, in this case of lag, is all but removed.

 

[acidfast7_redux]

Nice work Chakaradeep. Video production value is top notch.

I've been a long time Apple user and while I really like Apple products, I'm seldom impressed or a true fan of the devices. Two devices have impressed me over the years.

1. AirPods
2. The M1 MacBook Air

To me, both products epitomize what Apple is about, innovation and and technology that doesn't get in the way. And by that, I mean, advancements that make working enjoyable because the frustration, in this case of lag, is all but removed.

agree 100% about the m1mba. frustration is zero. i'll probably live longer using this machine.

 

[digitalbreak]

Nice work Chakaradeep. Video production value is top notch.

I've been a long time Apple user and while I really like Apple products, I'm seldom impressed or a true fan of the devices. Two devices have impressed me over the years.

1. AirPods
2. The M1 MacBook Air

To me, both products epitomize what Apple is about, innovation and and technology that doesn't get in the way. And by that, I mean, advancements that make working enjoyable because the frustration, in this case of lag, is all but removed.

Thank you!

AirPods is the one Apple product I have not used mainly because I find comfort using over-the-ear headphones as opposed to in-ear earbuds. I am currently using my 3-year old Beats Studio Wireless Pro and love it! Thinking of the AirPods Max but waiting for reviews before I spend a fortune on those, lol!

 

[cliffordyen]

Can MBA utilize all the 16GB of RAM? I am wondering whether it will throttle first so it cannot utilize all the RAM under some heavy loads?

 

[senttoschool]

Can MBA utilize all the 16GB of RAM? I am wondering whether it will throttle first so it cannot utilize all the RAM under some heavy loads?

You can use up all the RAM without the CPU ever coming close to throttling.

 

[digitalbreak]

Can MBA utilize all the 16GB of RAM? I am wondering whether it will throttle first so it cannot utilize all the RAM under some heavy loads?

Open and stream 4 or 5 4K videos from YouTube in Safari while you edit and export 4k video in Final Cut Pro simultaneously - that will start utilizing the RAM easily.

 

[tonyr6]

Open and stream 4 or 5 4K videos from YouTube in Safari while you edit and export 4k video in Final Cut Pro simultaneously - that will start utilizing the RAM easily.

Why would you want to do that in the first place?

 

[BeatCrazy]

@digitalbreak very nice video! Easy to watch and absorb, especially for people just finding out about these new M1 Macs.

 

[digitalbreak]

Why would you want to do that in the first place?

No need to but the question was what would make it utilize all of the available RAM ?

 

[digitalbreak]

@digitalbreak very nice video! Easy to watch and absorb, especially for people just finding out about these new M1 Macs.

Thank you! ?

 

[mr_roboto]

Can MBA utilize all the 16GB of RAM? I am wondering whether it will throttle first so it cannot utilize all the RAM under some heavy loads?

Throttling down the CPU/GPU to avoid overheating is a completely different topic from how much RAM can be utilized. You can easily use up all your computer's RAM while the CPU is at extremely low load and is therefore not even close to throttling. And you can easily run the CPU at max load (which causes throttling on a M1 MBA since it has no fan) without using much RAM.

 

[jdb8167]

Can MBA utilize all the 16GB of RAM? I am wondering whether it will throttle first so it cannot utilize all the RAM under some heavy loads?

RAM and CPU performance don't really have that much of a relationship. The M1 is crazy fast. If you are processing a large amount of data with relatively low CPU requirements, then not swapping (which is I/O bound) will show serious performance improvements with more RAM. What is interesting is it looks like Apple made serious attempts to limit the performance hit in Big Sur when you swap out one application for another. If your RAM requirements are spread out over multiple applications (this is normal) then it seems that your RAM requirements for good performance on the M1 Macs are less. If you don't have an app that uses more than 8 GB of RAM normally but you have several RAM hungry applications, you will see much better performance from a M1 Mac than an Intel Mac.

 

[smoking monkey]

I tell you what the M1 MBA isn't good at -- keeping your hands warm. It is ice cold to the touch and I've been doing normal activities on it (but nothing overly taxing). It's like it's not even on. My fingers are freezing... Thanks for nothing Apple!

 

[cliffordyen]

Thanks for the explanations from @mr_roboto and @jdb8167! I understood what you both explained. Although I am not a professional from fields like CS or EE, I thought I knew how CPU and RAM work. There are two reasons why I asked.

1) According to many comments across the Internet (especially here in MacRumors), the way RAM works seems quite different from what it used to.
2) I saw the video from Max Tech in which they tested the 8GB and 16GB MacBook Pro models. When they tested the 8K RAW video exporting, the 16GB model maxed out the GPU, while the 8GB model only used about 80% of GPU. They thought the memory size might be the limiting factor here. Meanwhile, the temperature difference (on the chip) between them is 20 degrees Celsius (50 on 8GB model, 70 on 16GB model). Of course, this is the only test they got that 16GB of RAM makes a huge performance difference.

I put the video link here with the corresponding timestamp for your convenience (although I thought many of you already saw it).

So that's why I am wondering whether the thermal issue would be the limiting factor for MacBook Air M1 models to max out the 16GB RAM. But really, thank you all for the great responses!

(BTW, I am not really going to use M1 to do heavy video editing, but I am quite interested in using it for scientific computing.)

 

[digitalbreak]

Thanks for the explanations from @mr_roboto and @jdb8167! I understood what you both explained. Although I am not a professional from fields like CS or EE, I thought I knew how CPU and RAM work. There are two reasons why I asked.

1) According to many comments across the Internet (especially here in MacRumors), the way RAM works seems quite different from what it used to.
2) I saw the video from Max Tech in which they tested the 8GB and 16GB MacBook Pro models. When they tested the 8K RAW video exporting, the 16GB model maxed out the GPU, while the 8GB model only used about 80% of GPU. They thought the memory size might be the limiting factor here. Meanwhile, the temperature difference (on the chip) between them is 20 degrees Celsius (50 on 8GB model, 70 on 16GB model). Of course, this is the only test they got that 16GB of RAM makes a huge performance difference.

I put the video link here with the corresponding timestamp for your convenience (although I thought many of you already saw it).

So that's why I am wondering whether the thermal issue would be the limiting factor for MacBook Air M1 models to max out the 16GB RAM. But really, thank you all for the great responses!

(BTW, I am not really going to use M1 to do heavy video editing, but I am quite interested in using it for scientific computing.)

There are two ways to test and review a system:
1) Put the system through normal tasks a user would do
2) Put the system through a series of tests to find out how much it can handle

Max Tech’s video is in #2.

For your day to day work, you will find that Big Sur and M1 will be plenty capable with 16GB RAM or even with an 8GB RAM. If you are looking for 8k video or RED video editing, then M1 is not the machine you are looking for even though it can handle those. There are more powerful Intel machines that you can rely on for now until Apple comes with more powerful M-series processors.