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Anyone upgrade from an M1 Air to an M3 Air?
- Thread starter Mity
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What would possess anyone to upgrade from an M1 to a 3. Its giving charity money to apple without it even being a tax deductuble!!
I bought a base M1 Air a few years ago. I loved it so much I bought a custom 16GB 1TB version last year. I like using the newer one in clamshell mode but the biggest drawback for me has been the 1 external monitor limit. I know that there are DisplayLink docks that use virtualization to allow for a second monitor but it's not the same as having 2 native displays. If the performance difference in day-to-day usage is noticeable, I will give my old MBA to a family member and buy an M3 Air.
Wanting to use 2 monitors. Improved screen with smaller bezels. Better speakers and mic. Better webcam, etc.
Nope. I was originally thinking that the M3 might be the time to upgrade when I bought the M1 Air
But the M1 keeping strong whilst the new models have the nasty combination of a notch and no wedge, which rules them out until a design
But the M1 keeping strong whilst the new models have the nasty combination of a notch and no wedge, which rules them out until a design
I have, but haven't received it yet. The main reasons why I'm upgrading is that my M1 MBA is the base version and I'm finding I'm hitting the RAM limit more often and also my niece was needing a machine and figured it was a good excuse to give her that one and get a new one for myself (similar to the OP)! I went with the 16/512 version in Silver as after going back and forth from Space Gray and Silver over the years I decided to just stick with Silver for now on. It still is going to be more of a "travel" machine for me as I have other desktop setups.
MagSafe, which is awesome in and of itself but also with the added benefit of giving me back one USB port which isn't essential but is really preferred for my use cases. I use my M1 Air on battery alot and the battery isn't what it used to be (although it is alot better than it should be, I guess the OS-level battery charging optimizations are panning out). Apple is offering me basically 30% off the M3 Air when I trade in my 16/256 M1 so I know I can defray the cost of a new M3 pretty significantly regardless of how and where I do it. Tax refund season. Running low on space. 16/512 as a "stock" build for the M3 makes it an easy buy. Any chassis issues should be sorted by now as this design has been in production long enough to get ironed out.
My M1 Air has been phenomenal, probably the best computer I've ever owned, but the stars are kind of aligned for me and my (steadily) evolving needs. I guess we'll see if I miss the "wedge" form factor.
Do you use your MBA for coding, by chance? I also don't want to carry my expensive MBP to school but I need the extra RAM. I was hoping I could use the MBA for simple coding during lectures and do actual work back at home.
Upgraded from a base M1 Air, to a 16/512 15" M3 - can't really notice a huge difference in speed so far, but the extra memory is nice - main reason is I wanted a slightly bigger screen.
I actually used to, but haven't much in a while. Mostly light weight stuff using Perl (I'm old), some shell, some Python and some occasional Xcode projects. It was fine for that. Even when it was slower for that it is 100x faster than the high end systems I used 20 years ago (or even 5 years ago)! Where I ran into issues more lately is that I've had the need to run multiple profiles and more apps and even a few that aren't Apple Silicon native (TurboTax is a culprit). While again it does ok with that, I have noticed it more laggy recently.
How many of those folks are saying 8GB RAM is more than enough for everyone?
If it's just based on the posts on this forum, a lot.
I'd like to think those folks understand that many of us need more than 8GB. Fortunately Apple offers that choice (for a stupid premium). But there are a lot of people that seem just fine with 8GB. Who am I to judge?
Nobody has been saying that.
I have no idea why this is such a hot topic in this forum. Different people have different workflows and needs. People’s needs may be comfortably met with 8GB, 128GB, or anything in between.
There might be some folks with M1 MBAs interested in the M3 for other reasons besides simply CPU performance: MagSafe, 1080p camera, 13.6in screen, new form factor, smaller bezels, and some minor stuff: 500 nits vs 400 nits peak brightness, slightly lighter, support for 2 external displays, smudge resistant midnight color.....stuff like that. I don't think there are a huge number that would trade up from M1 to M3, but probably enough that Apple's marketing department thought it was worthwhile to highlight the differences on their web page.
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I recently finished a master's degree which involved ML/AI coding in both Python and R.
I have an 8GB early-2020 Intel MBA and it did the job fine. Ran a local MySQL database for the gene data I was playing with, and had no issues. Colleagues had better Macs (such as 16GB Pros) and their neural nets didn't run much faster than mine.
I connect to a monitor at home; same laptop.
I think 8GB is enough for most people.
I have 64GB in my 2019 MBP and with Zoom, Stackoverflow, YouTube tutorials, Jupyter, Postgres, I am content but I have no idea what would happen with 8GB on my M1 Air.
I'm shocked to hear of your experience because my base Air consistently suffers from memory pressure with 10-15 Chrome tabs open alone, but many with YouTube videos loading.
I recently deferred my admission to a MS in DS. I think I will use the base Air for going to lectures but I'm skeptical that it will be sufficient for any Data Eng work.
I don't use Chrome (although I use Firefox which probably isn't much better, memory utilisation wise) and tended not to watch multiple Youtube videos while doing my coursework. Maybe the Intel MBA with fan is better in certain (rare) cases?
I had the same issue with my M1 Air. I love everything about it except for the limitation of a single native external display. I finally ended up replacing my 10+ year old dual monitor setup with a single ultra-wide. I really wasn't sure about it at first but after using an ultra-wide for a few months now I'm never going back. It's more like having three monitors because you now have extra usable space in the middle between windows you've place on each side.
Obviously this isn't a cheap solution, but neither is buying another Mac to solve the problem either. 💸
Just to be clear, the YouTube videos were tutorials. I mentioned it because it's part of my workflow. Not everything in my textbooks has been explained properly so seeing someone code through something really helps me. The Intel machine was a MBP not MBA.
Sure, I also have to watch either youtube videos, or recordings of lectures, or asking stackoverflow/chatgpt for help
Maybe I think my laptop runs well because I know no better!
Let's be real - not every student has money to shell out for 16-32-64gb systems.
All the course work is designed to be run on 8GB + DS is reliant on R,Python which are not ram eaters.
You would learn small data sets anyways that can be done on 8GB, but if smth requires more then often it would be run in the cloud on VMs with many more cores/RAM and etc. So you can never speck out your home system to be equal to running a VM but you can get by with what you have to test the concepts on local machine.
I am considering a jump from M1 to M3 for my wife because our daughter is looking for an upgrade.
Our daughter currently has a base MBP Retina 13-inch Early 2015 - 8 GB and 256 GB. She does not need anything fancy and because her system is getting long in the tooth, we were planning to trade-in her old system and then giving her my wife's M1 Air (also base).
The only reason I am considering M3 for my wife is because the base storage in M3 is now on par with M1, unlike M2 which were half the speed; otherwise, I would look for a deal for M2 Air. Given that we would go with base 8 GB for my wife, the storage speed might be a factor with page swap etc. Alternatively, we could go for M2 16GB/256 GB but at the end that config would be more expensive than M3 base, hence the most logical option is to go from M1 base to M3 base. She might also be interested in 15-inch model, but that is something we need to see in person; so if that would be the case, she would go from M1 base to M3 15-inch base.
Our daughter currently has a base MBP Retina 13-inch Early 2015 - 8 GB and 256 GB. She does not need anything fancy and because her system is getting long in the tooth, we were planning to trade-in her old system and then giving her my wife's M1 Air (also base).
The only reason I am considering M3 for my wife is because the base storage in M3 is now on par with M1, unlike M2 which were half the speed; otherwise, I would look for a deal for M2 Air. Given that we would go with base 8 GB for my wife, the storage speed might be a factor with page swap etc. Alternatively, we could go for M2 16GB/256 GB but at the end that config would be more expensive than M3 base, hence the most logical option is to go from M1 base to M3 base. She might also be interested in 15-inch model, but that is something we need to see in person; so if that would be the case, she would go from M1 base to M3 15-inch base.