Apple silicon is very fast per size/watt. The mind blowing thing is the macbook air that has weighs very little, doesn't have a fan, and feels competitive with top of the line desktop pcs.
My M1 MacBook Air is honestly the best laptop I’ve ever owned. Still snappy and responsive years after release. Fantastic machine. But I’m starting to crave an M5 Air…
I appreciate your helping to strengthen my resolve. More importantly, my wife thanks you as well. That said, the increased RAM available on the new models is really what I want. I have lots of programs open simultaneously.
I'm on an M1. I talk myself out of upgrading by remembering that I after a few hours of happiness my actual day-to-day experience won't noticably change.
Yea, that’s what I have been telling myself. The 16 GB of RAM I have on the M1 is starting to be a limiting factor now. If the RAM was upgradable, I would do that and probably keep the M1.
If you’re happy with the M1 performance, you could look into getting a used M1/2/3 mini a run some stuff via ssh? Much cheaper, and maybe even much better.
Yea, I’ve thought about getting an M4 refurb or used off EBay once the M5 line comes out completely and Apple stops selling M4s. I have an old x86-based Mac Mini that serves as the family media server and backup server. I’ll need to upgrade that at some point to Apple Silicon as Apple stops support for x86. As is, Apple dropped support for it with MacOS 26, so just some security updates to Sequoia from here on. That said, I’m not a fan of Liquid Glass, so I don’t really care for the time being, but eventually I’ll have to upgrade. I tend to buy a lot of refurb Macs and run them into the ground before I upgrade, often pushing them to full EOL.
I looked into this for the M1 MBA and it had the exact same performance at full load as the MBP...for 7 minutes. Then the thermal throttling hits and it slows down. I'm not sure what the time limit is for newer models. Regardless, the MBA's aren't offered with Pro/Ultra chips, which I desire (and would thermally throttle much sooner than 7 minutes).
My recommendation to friends asking about MBP / MBA is entirely based on whether they do anything that will load the CPU for more than 7 minutes. For me, I need the fans. I even use Macs Fan Control[0], a 3rd party utility, to control the fans for some of my workflows - pegging the fans to 100% to pre-cool the CPU between loads can help a lot.
I edit tons of raw images and 4K video like it’s going out of style.
My used M1 mba is the fastest computer I’ve ever used. If a video render is going to take more than 7 minutes I walk away or just do something in another app anyway. The difference of a few mini means nothing.
I've got a cheap laptop stand with built-in fans that blow against the bottom case of my MBA. With my previous M1 and current M3 the stand keeps them from thermal throttling for longer periods. Most of the time it's completely unnecessary but I use it occasionally when doing long duration compiles or other long term heavy loads. Even without using the stand the tasks would complete in a reasonable amount of time, it just gives me a few extra minutes of "full blast" which is often all I need.
I’ve been amazed that while it absolutely uses a ton of battery, so has to be plugged in, my kid is able to play 3D online games with me using my old M1 MacBook Air. Not top of the line stuff (and had to change the resolution to 1440x900), but still. It gets hot, but doesn’t thermal throttle. I had half expected it to start throttling but we played for 3 hours last night with no issues.
What’s surprising is it DOES throttle using Discord with video after an hour or so, unless the battery is already full (I’m guessing it tries to charge which generates a lot of heat). You get way less thermals with a full battery and it using power instead of discharging/charging the battery during heavy usage.
Apple chips are very good especially for their power envelope but let's not get ahead of ourselves, the only way a Macbook Air feels competitive with a top-of-the-line desktop is if you're not actually utilizing the full sustained power of the desktop. There's a reason why Apple sells much bigger Max/Ultra chips with active cooling.
