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Should I keep M1 MacBook Air or wait for the redesigned M1X 14” MacBook Pro?

H

harrypham

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 9, 2014
132
34
SA, Texas
I purchased a base M1 MacBook Air for $750 before tax from BestBuy. I haven’t opened it yet because I wonder if I should keep it or wait for the redesigned 14” MacBook Pro.

I have been using a ThinkPad P1 as my main computer after giving my old 2013 15” MacBook Pro to my sister in 2019. But the battery is not good. As an Apple guy, I need a MacBook for travel.
 
Well it depends really. What are your priorities with the new machine? What type of apps will you be working with?
 
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harrypham said:
I purchased a base M1 MacBook Air for $750 before tax from BestBuy. I haven’t opened it yet because I wonder if I should keep it or wait for the redesigned 14” MacBook Pro.

I have been using a ThinkPad P1 as my main computer after giving my old 2013 15” MacBook Pro to my sister in 2019. But the battery is not good. As an Apple guy, I need a MacBook for travel.
Click to expand...

How could we know?

If you can and want to wait, wait.
 
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what are your needs/usage other than battery? you're not going to get helpful answers without providing that information
 
harrypham said:
I purchased a base M1 MacBook Air for $750 before tax from BestBuy. I haven’t opened it yet because I wonder if I should keep it or wait for the redesigned 14” MacBook Pro.

I have been using a ThinkPad P1 as my main computer after giving my old 2013 15” MacBook Pro to my sister in 2019. But the battery is not good. As an Apple guy, I need a MacBook for travel.
Click to expand...
There are currently too many unknowns. A new 14” MBP is almost certainly going to cost significantly more than $750. What is your budget?

We don’t know the specs of any rumored MBP. There are some potential leaks and a lot of speculation but nothing solid. You don’t give any information on what your travel computing needs are. From the base M1 MBA purchase I would guess that they are modest. If that is the case then I don’t see any reason to wait for newer hardware.

I’ve been using a 16GB/1TB M1 MacBook Air since it was released and it meets my usage requirements but it is likely that an 8GB/256GB wouldn’t.
 
harrypham said:
As a chemical engineer, I just need a portable and all day lasting MacBook for Web browsing, Microsoft Office, and coding during travel.
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Then the Air is all you need. It's got all day battery life and the M1 is super fast. Perhaps you should get the model with 16GB RAM for future proofing. However I would not justify the cost of the Macbook Pro if I were you.
 
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Based on your needs, keep the Air.
While the 14" will be great, I don't think keeping the Air sealed in the box is doing much for resale. Someone who wants a 2nd hand M1 Air won't mind it being slightly used.
 
jdb8167 said:
There are currently too many unknowns. A new 14” MBP is almost certainly going to cost significantly more than $750. What is your budget?

We don’t know the specs of any rumored MBP. There are some potential leaks and a lot of speculation but nothing solid. You don’t give any information on what your travel computing needs are. From the base M1 MBA purchase I would guess that they are modest. If that is the case then I don’t see any reason to wait for newer hardware.

I’ve been using a 16GB/1TB M1 MacBook Air since it was released and it meets my usage requirements but it is likely that an 8GB/256GB wouldn’t.
Click to expand...
My main computer is a ThinkPad P1 with 4K Touch Screen, i7 8850H, 32 GB RAM, 3TB SSD, and Quadro P2000.
I need a portable and all day lasting MacBook for Web Browsing, Microsoft Office, and some coding with MatLab, Typhon, and Aspen during travel.
From my experience with the 2013 15” MacBook Pro, I will not get the 16” MacBook Pro because it is too big for travel.
 
I've been considering this myself.

I remember though one reason I went with an Air is that I wanted a machine that could do the basics of what I wanted, and did not have a fan.

Seeing all the posts about MacBook Pro fan noise when hooked up to monitors or whatever, I thought I could get by without a Pro. So far I have with no issues.

I will be keeping an eye on the new Pros though. I don't need a new machine, so there is no rush I can afford to wait.
 
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harrypham said:
As a chemical engineer, I just need a portable and all day lasting MacBook for Web browsing, Microsoft Office, and coding during travel.
Click to expand...
harrypham said:
My main computer is a ThinkPad P1 with 4K Touch Screen, i7 8850H, 32 GB RAM, 3TB SSD, and Quadro P2000.
I need a portable and all day lasting MacBook for Web Browsing, Microsoft Office, and some coding with MatLab, Typhon, and Aspen during travel.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure of the status of FORTRAN on the M1 yet. You might want to research that before switching to Apple Silicon Macs. It looks like Matlab is all set with Rosetta 2 compatibility and future support for ASi coming. It looks like Aspen is commercial and their website seems broken so I couldn’t figure out the status of MacOS development.

If you needed that 32GB RAM on the ThinkPad before then I suspect that the 8GB in the base M1 MacBook Air is not going to be sufficient.
 
jdb8167 said:
If you needed that 32GB RAM on the ThinkPad before then I suspect that the 8GB in the base M1 MacBook Air is not going to be sufficient.
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From his description of his needs, he doesn't. Unless he's opening 4gb Excel spreadsheets :p
JayMysterio said:
Seeing all the posts about MacBook Pro fan noise when hooked up to monitors or whatever, I thought I could get by without a Pro. So far I have with no issues.
Click to expand...
I use mine with external monitors and there's nearly-zero fan noise. The fan will kick up to like minimum levels under heavy load. I've only heard the fans go toward max once, when I had runaway CPU-hogging processes.
Any threads about fan noise from an MBP are probably Intel.. or someone DYING to find a problem with their M1.
 
kevcube said:
From his description of his needs, he doesn't. Unless he's opening 4gb Excel spreadsheets
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Programming, Matlab, and the other simulation software he listed is kind of open ended for RAM requirements. Scientific programming can be almost anything. Without more information there is no way to tell.
 
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harrypham said:
I purchased a base M1 MacBook Air for $750 before tax from BestBuy. I haven’t opened it yet because I wonder if I should keep it or wait for the redesigned 14” MacBook Pro.

I have been using a ThinkPad P1 as my main computer after giving my old 2013 15” MacBook Pro to my sister in 2019. But the battery is not good. As an Apple guy, I need a MacBook for travel.
Click to expand...
how did you get it for $750??
 
Considering what you have now and assuming that you chose those metrics out of neccessity I'd say get an M1X MBP if it ever materializes. However don't expect to get them before early next year (as, yes, announcing them in November IF they do that will still take for them some time to hit the market in sufficient numbers), and don't expect to get away cheap. If we're talking a 32gb machine again I can't see them coming in below 2K. But if 16gb or memory is something you NEED for your workflow then you will not be happy with an 8gb MBA. As amazing as they are, memory is still memory, and from experience I can tell you that running your day to day on 8gb can get tiresome real fast if what you do actually needs more than what a few browser windows would consume.

Plus: really check if your software runs on Apple Silicon machines at all. If what you do requires OpenCL there is a good chance it will not run or not properly on Apple's rather Metal focussed proprietary iGPU.
 
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Honestly I'm keeping my M1 Air and I don't think I will be upgrading cause it's genuinely an all around great computer

The design and architecture of it is just great

I'm still excited since purchase that I'm sharing but all in all having the newest device is most likely everyone's go to
 
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kp98077 said:
I really like the air but the display seems so washed out😏😏😏😏😏M1. Is that usual?
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Compared to the M1 MacBook Pro? If you are really sensitive to that kind of thing, you will probably find the display on the MacBook Air lacking. I personally can't tell the difference but I definitely believe that some people can.
 
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Neither, take it back to Best Buy and use the money for something other than a computer. When you are actually ready to make a purchase, you will know.
 
harrypham said:
As a chemical engineer, I just need a portable and all day lasting MacBook for Web browsing, Microsoft Office, and coding during travel.
Click to expand...

Keep it.

There will ALWAYS be something better/newer around the corner. Additionally: the current MBA/MBP design is a known quantity and appears to be reliable.

The next version(s) are yet to be seen/tested. You may end up disposing of a perfectly good, reliable machine that will meet your needs and ending up with something like the butterfly keyboard disaster, early retina stain-gate, the display cable problem on the 2016 MacBook pros, etc..

I think I've finally learned over the years to stay away from v1 apple hardware re-designs (in the case of the M1 based machines, its only the CPU which is new, and that's just an update of what they've been punching out on iOS for years - the current chassis/keyboard/trackpad is solid).
 
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jdb8167 said:
Compared to the M1 MacBook Pro? If you are really sensitive to that kind of thing, you will probably find the display on the MacBook Air lacking. I personally can't tell the difference but I definitely believe that some people can.
Click to expand...
Ya I can tell it’s as though the saturation is poor
 
harrypham said:
My main computer is a ThinkPad P1 with 4K Touch Screen, i7 8850H, 32 GB RAM, 3TB SSD, and Quadro P2000.
I need a portable and all day lasting MacBook for Web Browsing, Microsoft Office, and some coding with MatLab, Typhon, and Aspen during travel.
Click to expand...

Based on the rumours (and trying to see around some of the garbled reporting of them) the new M1X 14" and 16" MBP are going to be potential replacements for your ThinkPad P1 that start at $1700-$2000 and rise to infinity and beyond. If you just want an ultraportable with long battery life as a secondary machine, the base M1 Air will probably still be the appropriate choice.

Everybody is guessing at the moment - but to me the most likely scenario seems to be that the cheapest M1X 14" will replace the $1700+ Intel 13" MBP , and the M1 Air and low-end 13" MBP will hang around until the all-new M2 Air appears sometime in 2022. My guess is also that the low-end MBP won't have a reason to exist when the new Air appears.

The M1 Air should ace web browsing and MS Word. You'll have to check that the specific coding tools and libraries you need are compatible with M1 & Big Sur. Of course "some coding" is as long as a bit of string, and if you're coding software that needs 32GB of RAM and processors, 8 performance cores and 3TB of storage to run then you're obviously gonna have problems... but otherwise the M1 should eat coding and compiling for breakfast.
 
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