I wound up in a bit of a analysis paralysis figuring out what to replace my old 2015 13” mbp pro with. As a lot of others I looked to the pros, and went down the “well if I’m spending x, then I might as well spend a little extra to get so much more”.
Long story short, I ended up buying the smallest Air available with no upgrades, and I’m so happy that I did. Unless you’re doing some serious heavy lifting it’ll be fine, and at it’s small price point it’s not something I worry about breaking. That last part may be an ADHD thing, but it does add to the experience of using a laptop around the house where you also have a car and a 3 year old.
I was on the fence about the 8gb ram, but it frankly out performs my work t14s thinkpad which has 32gb for any sort of programming I do on it.
The only real downside is the lack of the MagSafe charger, but it holds power so well that it’s rarely in the charger when I’m using it. So my advice would be to get the smallest air, unless you know why you’re getting something more powerful.
I had one of the original M1 pros. Upgraded to a 16” max fully loaded. I notice no difference in performance. The extent of my “hardcore” use is having dozens of safari tabs open.
If/when MacBook Air gets the M2 redesign (hopefully with the super nice screen), that will be the no brainer purchase of the decade.
I have moved from a 13" M1 Air to the 16" M1 Pro only because I wanted a bigger screen for traveling. I feel some buyer's remorse because it was more than twice as expensive, and I don't really care about the extra speed or memory (yet?). It's also really heavy, and I don't love its looks.
What I'd absolutely buy is a 16" MacBook Air, like an Apple version of the LG Gram.
Edit: For comparison, the 16" LG Gram with a discrete Nvidia GPU is exactly as light as the 13" M1 MacBook Air, and supposedly it has great battery life. And all those ports...sigh...
You would've not found much performance difference downgrading either if that's all of your use case. Why did you upgrade a machine that was already good enough?
> but it does add to the experience of using a laptop around the house where you also have a car and a 3 year old.
I got a 2019 MBP and my 3 year old spilled water on it. The repair cost more than an M1 Air. My next computer will be a cheap air I think. I won't feel bad upgrading early or if something happens to it.
Long story short, I ended up buying the smallest Air available with no upgrades, and I’m so happy that I did. Unless you’re doing some serious heavy lifting it’ll be fine, and at it’s small price point it’s not something I worry about breaking. That last part may be an ADHD thing, but it does add to the experience of using a laptop around the house where you also have a car and a 3 year old.
I was on the fence about the 8gb ram, but it frankly out performs my work t14s thinkpad which has 32gb for any sort of programming I do on it.
The only real downside is the lack of the MagSafe charger, but it holds power so well that it’s rarely in the charger when I’m using it. So my advice would be to get the smallest air, unless you know why you’re getting something more powerful.