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M2 MacBook Air reviews starting to drop
- Thread starter Biosnake
- Start date
Weird question: is the M1 and M2 chips proprietary hardware that could never be leased out to other companies who are having "chip shortage" issues? Or am I an idiot and that the M1 and M2 are not similar to the chips in a chip shortage?
I was waiting for this since I wanted to ditch my old Surface Laptop 2 (I hated that thing) and go back to a MacBook since I used to own a 2010 Air and missed it greatly. After the reviews for the M2 Pro dropped and saw how small the improvement was over the M1, I just said fuck it and bought an M1 Air this week instead. Now seeing these reviews on the M2 Air I think I made the right choice. As someone who doesn't do a ton of extensive work on a laptop and just wanted a laptop back in the Apple ecosystem, the M1 Air is the better value here, especially with the sales that were going on this week. $1200 is just bullshit for this thing. It reminds me of the 12" MacBook all over again. So far I'm extremely pleased with the M1 Air.
I'll wait and see what the M3 Air offers in a few years.
I'll wait and see what the M3 Air offers in a few years.
M2 seems to be super nice and I wouldn't say $1200 is "bullshit" as it's a good value for the performance, size, fanless design, high quality display, premium build, and great battery life.
But yeah, when you can get an M1 Air for $800-$900 it's hard to swallow paying an extra $400+ for an M2 if you're just using it for web browsing, e-mail, media consumption, and word processing.
The entirety of the chip is proprietary but some components that makes up for the chip aren't. But Apple can afford to pay more for manufacturing capacity to get all the chips they need and manufactures are happy to do that.
I guess they fear reverse-engineering and losing their grip on the market? I know that basically all of their stuff is proprietary tech but it seems they're excluded from the chip shortage because of they development their own stuff in-house.
They're "excluded" from the chip shortage because Apple has more money than god and has paid for a significant amount of space on TSMC's line.
it is surprising they maintained the single display for air. I would have thought it would go to at least two. That said, if you go with a 32 or 34 inch display that is at least 4k the single display works well.
I was using a first gen MBA up until 2018 and haven't really had a laptop since (outside of work laptops). This will eventually be my next purchase if/when I ever get out of the house lol
I'm fairly sure they purposely saved multiple display support for M2 Pro/Max chips. There's no technical reason why they couldn't do it on M2.
I doubt there will ever be a bump as consequential as the one to M1
Nothing to feel here, it is true? You don't switch to a brand new, more efficient chip architecture many more times than once.
Looks like a solid laptop but having bought the M1 last year I feel like I'm good until the m3 or m4.
Would love to know if it has been. Last time I looked mine had used like 50TB swap, seems they changed metrics in an update.
They're not excluded from the chip shortage — look at the wait times on many configurations of 14/16-inch MacBook Pro, eight months after launch. They just have more money and higher margins than anyone else and so can buy up all the available capacity.
Is there anywhere I can compare benchmarks for the base 14" MBP vs the base 2022 Air? Interested in how the M2 compares to the M1 Pro.
I realize Air 2022 has no fan so sustained performance could be an issue. Heaviest lifting I do though is just simple 4K video editing (short 1-2 minute videos without anything fancy going on in Premiere Pro).
I realize Air 2022 has no fan so sustained performance could be an issue. Heaviest lifting I do though is just simple 4K video editing (short 1-2 minute videos without anything fancy going on in Premiere Pro).
Yes, but I already have the 2x monitors at home and work! I hate that they have have effectively locked me out of a really exciting upgrade -- when i'm eligible for a new laptop at work, even. I'm kind of stuck.
Lots of reviews of the M2 MBP compared it to the M1 Pro — the Air should be fairly similar but with slightly lower sustained performance.
It's basically halfway between the M1 and M1 Pro.
I use a Display link converter and it works amazingly well.
Yeah, single monitor support is an easy pass for me. Weird that it only supports one.
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Yup, for the vast majority of machines Apple sells, they have a few options in store:
1) The "base" configurations. For the MBA M2, for example, the $1,199 and $1,499 configurations are likely to be available in store (when in stock).
2) Anything else will be "Built to Order" and thus, you order online and wait several weeks for the device to arrive.... but for pretty much every machine, they usually have an option for the higher SKU that is selected with a little more RAM and a little more storage and will carry it in stores, too.
Play with the configs when in-store pickup for the M2 is available tomorrow, and bet you'll see something.
Hmm feeling a bit blindsided by this 256gb SSD speed topic. I got the base model because overall I'm a fairly light user and I figured the M2 was beefy enough as is but wish that detail would have been made obvious sooner. Guessing it won't have much of a real world impact though if you aren't doing super intensive tasks? The most I use this for is Lightroom and GarageBand.
Every manufacturer does this. MS still sells devices with 128gb storage as a default. Garbage
I wish we had jumps like the M1 more often but understand it's not realistic. My launch M1 MBP still never stutters, never gets hot and can go a day and a half of regular use with battery to spare.
I was going to get the M2 Air, but after 16gb or ram and 1tb drive, I was so close to the 14" MBP that i just decided to go for that. It's supposed to arrive today actually, very excited!
I was strongly considering picking one of these up originally but after the recent price hikes by Apple because of the currency exchange being bad for Japan at the moment I've decided to put any future Apple purchases on hold. Instead I think I will be going for something powered by a AMD 6800U. The 6800U being both x86 still and nearly as good as the M1 in terms of battery life I think would suit me better in the end anyway.
I jumped in on an 16GB/512GB. It should last me until 2031 if my 2013 MBP is anything to go by.
I was seriously debating this or throwing down another $500 for the 14" Pro. In the end, the idea of going to the lightest MacBook won me over.
I was seriously debating this or throwing down another $500 for the 14" Pro. In the end, the idea of going to the lightest MacBook won me over.
I will never, ever, ever understand the obsession with thinness in laptops. Weight, I understand. X and Y dimensions, totally. But I really can't see any practical difference between a laptop that's 1 cm thick and a laptop that's the thickness of a sheet of paper.
I had a base 256gb / 8gb model pre ordered but cancelled that for higher end one with 10 gpu cores that starts at 512gb. I'm a pretty light user, but I still didn't want the slower hard drive to get in the way of anything. I'm hoping this laptop will last me a long time. Still very excited to get my hands on it.
Also deiced to get the space gray. Love how the midnight looks, but the fingerprinting might bug me, and I could get the space gray a couple of weeks sooner.
Also deiced to get the space gray. Love how the midnight looks, but the fingerprinting might bug me, and I could get the space gray a couple of weeks sooner.
Finally got rid of my 2013 Pro last year. Thing was a stalwart, could still do the work.
No regrets for telling my mom to upgrade to the M1 back in April. I sorta wish I would have had her take the 16GB instead of the 8GB though. Everything else is great.
Some web pages are ram hogs (3GB for 1 tab, like sheesh, talk about ram leaks) which makes her M1 MBA slow to crawl until I look at activity monitor and quit the tab. I wish Safari handled ram usage better than it does, like limit each tabs ram to refresh if it's over an amount, somewhat like mobile does it, but able to select the tabs. I wonder if there's an extension that achieves that.
Some web pages are ram hogs (3GB for 1 tab, like sheesh, talk about ram leaks) which makes her M1 MBA slow to crawl until I look at activity monitor and quit the tab. I wish Safari handled ram usage better than it does, like limit each tabs ram to refresh if it's over an amount, somewhat like mobile does it, but able to select the tabs. I wonder if there's an extension that achieves that.
Yeah and I'm not using it for anything to taxing but I'd like it as a personal computer for sometime. Prob will go for it. Just heard a lot of complaints with 8 gb ram
I had 8gb ram on my mac mini (2018, so not m-series), and had a ton of problems starting 2021. Upgraded the ram and it runs like a dream.
I would go min 16gb on the m1/m2. Learned my lesson already.
Good point on the 16GB/512GB configuration getting close to the 14" Pro in price.
Was considering the M2 MBA once the Back to School promo kicks off early next year in Aus but might wait and see how an M2 Pro goes. About the only thing the M1 Pro is worse at is battery life compared to the M2 Air.
Was considering the M2 MBA once the Back to School promo kicks off early next year in Aus but might wait and see how an M2 Pro goes. About the only thing the M1 Pro is worse at is battery life compared to the M2 Air.
