One month mini review of M1 MBA 8/512...

[AdamNC]

I have had my M1 MBA 8/512 for 5 weeks now and have a few things I want to say.. Most have been over stated but figure It can't hurt to have more views of them.

1) Battery Life.
I use mine anywhere from 4 to 8 hours a day. Depends on how busy I am doing other stuff. But I have as of today 11 charge cycles. Part of that was I was shocked to get a machine from Apple with only 10% out of the box brand new. But yeah I charge every 2-3 days now. I get it on the charger around 15-20% and fully charge it.

2) Performance and having "only 8 gigs of ram."
I have yet to run into any issues. I am not a power user but I will have several tabs open in Safari and Radar Scope in 4 pane mode running live loops and maybe a scanner site listening to police feed all at once. (I track sever weather outbreaks for fun.) I have checked the memory in the activity monitor.... 7 gigs used but the memory pressure will still be in the green. So no concerns there.
Speed and smoothness is simply flawless. No lag, no beachballs yet, and it's fast. You click on an app don't click you will miss it open.

3) Speakers
Not bad not great. Sounds average. Plenty of volume but not HI-FI.

4)Screen
BEAUTIFUL. I came from a 15.6 FHD HP Envy. I honestly thought the smaller screen would bug me. Not one damn bit. The clarity, the colors, contrast... all awesome. I always judge a screen by watching 3 things. Golf. The grass best look real. Yup it does. Terminator 2, Chrome of the T1000 and Arnolds black leather jacket. Got to see it and the clean reflections, and texture of the leather. Yup good. Then Schindler's List black and white tell you a lot.... Looks great. Apple makes awesome screens and calibrates them perfect...

5) Keyboard, Best Apple has made ever hands down. Pun intended.

6) Overheating... NONE. It simply stays cool.

Over all I say get the 8/512 if you are not rendering and doing intense work.. if so skip the MBA and get a 16 gig MBP or wait for the new ones. Am I saying there is no place for a 16 gig MBA no. IT is the perfect College computer. It will be 100% bullet proof for 4 or if you are Tommy Boy 12 years of college. You will have enough power, and enough ram to study, listen to music, and watch a movie while doing keg stands. and a computer that may last long enough into your early real adult life to get you by.

I love my MBA. It's perfect for me.

 

[NotTooLate]

Glad to hear you are enjoying your new machine!! I should hop on the new AS soon enough as well , also some weird hobby you got there

 

[xraydoc]

Am I saying there is no place for a 16 gig MBA

I agree with your review 99% with the exception of this line. What if one of the apps you like to use for your hobby is only available for Windows or Linux? With 16GB, you would have enough RAM to comfortably run a virtual machine along with all the rest of your stuff. With 8GB, you're going to be swapping RAM into virtual memory. Now, nothing wrong with that, but it will introduce slowdowns and potential temporary beachballs. These aren't things that one must use a MacBook Pro for. Good argument for a 16GB MacBook Air.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Good balanced mini review.

 

[PaladinGuy]

Thanks for your thoughts. The thing that has me stuck now is deciding if I’d rather have a 512GB MBA or a 256GB MBP. I just determined today that even 512GB won’t go very far if I don’t optimize my photos with iCloud. I was hoping to keep all original photos on it and iCloud.

Looks like either way, I’ll need an external drive soon, which is making me think I’d rather just have the nicer speakers, battery life, and slightly brighter screen.

The biggest annoyance is how small the differences are now. It makes it so much more difficult to choose.

 

[senttoschool]

As a developer, I definitely feel the 8GB holding me back. I'm going to jump onto a 16" 32GB M1X as soon as it comes out.

 

[drdudj]

MBA M1, 8/7 256, four months in to it, and love it! compared to the 10 year old toshiba laptop/windows, this one is a 'vette compared to a family station wagon. instant on, fast, easy to navigate in, great battery, colors, sound. but then again i am an average user; web surfing, videos, emails, messages, numbers, and photos. my only real concern was going from a 17" screen to the 13" but that wasn't even an issue. would buy it again without a doubt.

 

[Maconplasma]

As a developer, I definitely feel the 8GB holding me back. I'm going to jump onto a 16" 32GB M1X as soon as it comes out.

Really like the way that sounds. As great as my current Intel-based 16" 32GB i9 is I will be trading it in for the first Apple Silicon-based 16".

 

[jdb8167]

Really like the way that sounds. As great as my current Intel-based 16" 32GB i9 is I will be trading it in for the first Apple Silicon-based 16".

16” is too big for me but having 32GB or 64GB is going to be a requirement for me at some point with the Docker release. I’m hoping for a 14” with 32GB next year.

 

[Maconplasma]

16” is too big for me but having 32GB or 64GB is going to be a requirement for me at some point with the Docker release. I’m hoping for a 14” with 32GB next year.

There should be a 14" with an available 32GB option available this year for sure. Or at least 13" version.

 

[fgengineer]

I have the current MBA 8 GB. It was doing good until I decided to go house hunting. I have a bunch of tabs, PDFs and documents open and I get a delay when waking it from sleep. I look at the activity monitor and I get a small red blip for a moment.

I am definitely waiting for the 16 inch version with hopefully up to 64 GB support.
Hopefully the battery life will be even better with up to 25 hours of use.

 

[ImaginaryNerve]

I honestly thought the smaller screen would bug me. Not one damn bit.

This.

I was worried about the 13" screen, but for the last six years or so I'd been using various iPads, iPhones, and a Surface Pro 7 and I can safely say that the 13" screen is almost perfect for me on the M1 MBP I have. My only criticism is I wish I could scale the macOS UI just a little bit smaller so I could have an easier time switching between two larger windows, but it isn't a dealbreaker. Multiple desktops don't work since I need the windows almost side-by-side, but I can deal with command+tab as needed.

 

[leons]

I have the current MBA 8 GB. It was doing good until I decided to go house hunting. I have a bunch of tabs, PDFs and documents open and I get a delay when waking it from sleep. I look at the activity monitor and I get a small red blip for a moment.

I am definitely waiting for the 16 inch version with hopefully up to 64 GB support.
Hopefully the battery life will be even better with up to 25 hours of use.

Change from Safari to another browser and use a Tab Dicscarder extension and this won't happen.

 

[macminv]

I agree with your review 99% with the exception of this line. What if one of the apps you like to use for your hobby is only available for Windows or Linux? With 16GB, you would have enough RAM to comfortably run a virtual machine along with all the rest of your stuff. With 8GB, you're going to be swapping RAM into virtual memory. Now, nothing wrong with that, but it will introduce slowdowns and potential temporary beachballs. These aren't things that one must use a MacBook Pro for. Good argument for a 16GB MacBook Air.

OP actually said : "Am I saying there is no place for a 16 gig MBA no" [emphasis mine], so he is saying there IS a place for a 16GB MBA.

 

[matrix07]

3) Speakers
Not bad not great. Sounds average. Plenty of volume but not HI-FI.

I love speakers on it though. Like you said it’s not Hi Fi but I wouldn’t expect Hi Fi for a laptop, a beginner Mac laptop at that. What I love about it is the balance of sound. It sounds so clear for such small speakers that I can comfortably listen to movies, YouTube video without a need of headphone anymore.

 

[senttoschool]

I love speakers on it though. Like you said it’s not Hi Fi but I wouldn’t expect Hi Fi for a laptop, a beginner Mac laptop at that. What I love about it is the balance of sound. It sounds so clear for such small speakers that I can comfortably listen to movies, YouTube video without a need of headphone anymore.

Yea I would have to agree with this.

The speakers are definitely above average compared to Windows laptops.

I was shocked at how good my M1 MBA speakers are.

 

[tollickd]

2) Performance and having "only 8 gigs of ram."
I have yet to run into any issues. I am not a power user but I will have several tabs open in Safari and Radar Scope in 4 pane mode running live loops and maybe a scanner site listening to police feed all at once. (I track sever weather outbreaks for fun.) I have checked the memory in the activity monitor.... 7 gigs used but the memory pressure will still be in the green. So no concerns there.
Speed and smoothness is simply flawless. No lag, no beachballs yet, and it's fast. You click on an app don't click you will miss it open

Nice review. What sites would you recommend for scanners?

 

[Newjackboy]

we’ve had this for about 6 months now. Very nice machine. But we use it very lightly and still get the spinning ball, takes 40-50 seconds to boot up, and battery about 6-7 hours at the very most

 

[Serban55]

we’ve had this for about 6 months now. Very nice machine. But we use it very lightly and still get the spinning ball, takes 40-50 seconds to boot up, and battery about 6-7 hours at the very most

You got a lemon, exchange it

 

[fs454]

This.

I was worried about the 13" screen, but for the last six years or so I'd been using various iPads, iPhones, and a Surface Pro 7 and I can safely say that the 13" screen is almost perfect for me on the M1 MBP I have. My only criticism is I wish I could scale the macOS UI just a little bit smaller so I could have an easier time switching between two larger windows, but it isn't a dealbreaker. Multiple desktops don't work since I need the windows almost side-by-side, but I can deal with command+tab as needed.

You should be able to do this with the "More space" options under Display in system preferences. If you need even more scaling down, you can use SetResX to run 1:1 native without hidpi and there's probably a few more options that macOS doesn't present to you in the Display area.

 

[Maconplasma]

You got a lemon, exchange it

That member had their Mac for about 6 months. You can't exchange it, unless the store they bought it from has an extremely long return policy, which is not common. Only a warranty repair (if needed) is qualifiable.

 

[xraydoc]

OP actually said : "Am I saying there is no place for a 16 gig MBA no" [emphasis mine], so he is saying there IS a place for a 16GB MBA.

I presumed it was an accidental double negative given the lack of any punctuation. So in that case, I retract my objection and agree with the OP's review, lol.

 

[AdamNC]

Nice review. What sites would you recommend for scanners?

I use an app called 5-0 Radio. Its an iOS App and works fine on the MBA.

 

[AdamNC]

I presumed it was an accidental double negative given the lack of any punctuation. So in that case, I retract my objection and agree with the OP's review, lol.

Yeah I kinda screwed up that sentence. I believe unless you want to keep it very very long or are a power user the 16 gigs isn't needed. For a light to moderate user the 8 gigs is plenty. sorry for the confusion.

 

[cvtem]

Memory pressure is a useless graph, it will endlessly swap and remain green.
You are very much being fooled, and if you look at how much it is swapping, you will realise this for yourself.
OSX uses almost all the RAM just to boot, even your limited use will be guaranteed to be causing serious swap.
If that's an issue or not, from a technical standpoint, absolutely. From an end-user standpoint, that's your decision.
But don't be fooled because you don't notice it or that the pressure graph is green!