After Effects on a MacBook Air?

[KimHansenDK]

Does anyone use their MacBook Air for After Effects? I have the maxed out 13-inch MacBook Air 2012 and use it primarily for web and app design which it handles just fine. Now I want to start using After Effects and plan on doing simple 2D animations (infographic etc) How will the Air handle it? I know that for ray tracing and complex compositions a discrete GPU is recommended.

So either I keep using my Air and Thunderbolt display or I replace the Thunderbolt display with a 27-inch iMac (3.4GHz/2GB GTX 775M).

What to do...

 

[WiLLGT09]

It'll probably run okay for simpler things. I've run Premiere Pro CC on my 11" + 27" TBD to edit 1080p footage, and it does pretty well. The only time I noticed a big slow-down was when I rendered the final video, which ended up taking HOURS. I imagine it'd be a similar experience with After Effects renders.

 

[chabig]

I would expect it to do everything you want. It just won't be as fast.