All of these new M2 videos have me feeling even better about my decision

[DHagan4755]

I've watched a few "review" videos by the usual suspects. I put "review" in quotes because they're not really objective.

While iJustine didn't mention this in her video, she was editing 8K video on the new Air. This is why she ran out of space on the 1TB model Apple sent her. The video was recorded on the Sony A1; not sure if it was 10-bit HVEC 4:2:0 or the new firmware update that allows 10-bit HEVC 4:2:2 recording. Either way, impressive.

Brian Tong released his video & got good results video editing with Final Cut. Obviously Adobe Premiere was noticeably slower with exporting because Adobe hasn't optimized its app for the Mac.

These M2 Airs could be popular on the road with actual broadcast journalists & editors & they only need to finalize in 1080p right now (probably MPEG-2). So if the MacBook Air can handle 8K with aplomb, then they'll be fine for an everyday user.

 

[LoopsOfFury]

Is anyone able to provide a summary of what the throttling is like to save me the pain of having to watch 15 minutes of bro-chat pseudo-techno-nonsense?

At what task does it throttle and what is the completion time for that task relative to the M1 MBA, M1 MBP and M2 MBP?

When I'm playing a game (Eve Online) with my M1 Air, the frame rate drops by roughly a third after 10 minutes or so (e.g., from 60 fps to 40, or from 35 to 23). This doesn't happen with my PC or 14" MBP. Basically, any processor-intensive task which takes more than 10 minutes to complete will probably experience significant slowdown. Things that only take a few seconds (or less) - like loading web pages, scrolling through text, etc. never have slowdown. Non-demanding tasks like videoconferencing or watching YouTube also have no slowdown - regardless of how long they take.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

I am also baffled why the vast majority is just talking about media editing and not coding. On the M2 MBP I think I only saw two videos that bothered to mention XCode at all.

The answer may be simple. The people who are getting their videos out first are those who do video all the time. I'm pretty sure we're going to see reviews from the people who do music, still photography, coding, design, etc. fairly soon. I just think all those people have skillsets that mean they are not as fast with shooting/editing/posting videos.

 

[gentleman00]

I've seen just one video about the M2 MBA and he describes it perfectly. If you wanted a computer to do all kinds of intense tasks, you wouldn't be buying a MacBook Air.

All these reviewers keep banging on about 4k video editing as though it's the most important thing in the world. It may be important for them but for the rest of us it really isn't.

Today is the first time since I got my launch day M1 MBA that it's got warm to the touch and that's because I'm running a two hour video through Handbrake to reduce the size.

The bottom line is that 95% of people will never get these machines warm enough to throttle in normal use. It's a non issue.

There is a reason why it’s called MB Air. And, yet, fanboys are fuming over the fact that it is not designed for intensive video editing work.

 

[Misheemee]

There is a reason why it’s called MB Air. And, yet, fanboys are fuming over the fact that it is not designed for intensive video editing work.

It’s not the video work - it’s the read/write speed on the base model M2 which is the issue which is going to impact the memory swapping efficiency and simple read/write times of files

Testing results in screenshots below, which comes from ZoneOfTech’s review here

 

[filterdecay]

most people are going to use it to doomscroll twitter and have thread battles while having a youtube video drone away in the background of a 40 tab chrome session.

 

[filterdecay]

this is my use case

 

[cygy2k]

Notebookcheck has some prelim data up.

 

[happyslayer]

Okay, so UPS showed up about 90 minutes ago and I setup my new base model M2 (midnight!) in less than an hour. All my apps are reinstalled--did a fresh setup, no time machine-- and it just finished downloading my docs from DropBox and OneDrive. It got a tad warm (NOT hot) when it was installing Office365, Scrivener, And synching my docs while I listened to music on YouTube. Since it finished, it has cooled right down. This little machine is very fast. Any concern about the "slow" drive seem to be way overblown (as I thought) and I am quite happy. I also installed my TakeControl software while that was happening and dialed in to a customer's server to check a backup job. No issues.

My take so far: The keyboard is shallower than the 14 Pro but I like it better; fantastic to type on; the sound is good but not as full or loud as the 14 Pro; the screen as really nice though not as sharp as the 14 Pro--the text is crisp and screen gets plenty bright--I'm at about 55% in my office and it looks good. (Though again, not as flat out brilliant as the 14 Pro screen.) Overall very snappy and it just feels good in the hand when you pick it up and carry it around. Will do more testing and such over the weekend, but so far, great!

 

[filterdecay]

Okay, so UPS showed up about 90 minutes ago and I setup my new base model M2 (midnight!) in less than an hour. All my apps are reinstalled--did a fresh setup, no time machine-- and it just finished downloading my docs from DropBox and OneDrive. It got a tad warm (NOT hot) when it was installing Office365, Scrivener, And synching my docs while I listened to music on YouTube. Since it finished, it has cooled right down. This little machine is very fast. Any concern about the "slow" drive seem to be way overblown (as I thought) and I am quite happy. I also installed my TakeControl software while that was happening and dialed in to a customer's server to check a backup job. No issues.

My take so far: The keyboard is shallower than the 14 Pro but I like it better; fantastic to type on; the sound is good but not as full or loud as the 14 Pro; the screen as really nice though not as sharp as the 14 Pro--the text is crisp and screen gets plenty bright--I'm at about 55% in my office and it looks good. (Though again, not as flat out brilliant as the 14 Pro screen.) Overall very snappy and it just feels good in the hand when you pick it up and carry it around. Will do more testing and such over the weekend, but so far, great!

the reality is apple made a computer with a bit of market research and youtube reviewers are gonna make a big story out of a thing thats not even a big deal. Im getting 512gb anyhow tho

 

[AppleFan735]

I ordered 16/512 M2 Air primarily for web development. As someone pointed out coding is really not that computationally intense (apart from some short occasional bursts). Things like long, high-res video exports tax the machine a lot more, but since that is not my workflow I’m not worried about throttling. In fact, I believe the single-core and Speedometer 2.0 scores of M2 Air are better than entry level 14”. Things that actually matter in daily use and for my workflow.

 

[Celebion]

Okay, so UPS showed up about 90 minutes ago and I setup my new base model M2 (midnight!) in less than an hour. All my apps are reinstalled--did a fresh setup, no time machine-- and it just finished downloading my docs from DropBox and OneDrive. It got a tad warm (NOT hot) when it was installing Office365, Scrivener, And synching my docs while I listened to music on YouTube. Since it finished, it has cooled right down. This little machine is very fast. Any concern about the "slow" drive seem to be way overblown (as I thought) and I am quite happy. I also installed my TakeControl software while that was happening and dialed in to a customer's server to check a backup job. No issues.

My take so far: The keyboard is shallower than the 14 Pro but I like it better; fantastic to type on; the sound is good but not as full or loud as the 14 Pro; the screen as really nice though not as sharp as the 14 Pro--the text is crisp and screen gets plenty bright--I'm at about 55% in my office and it looks good. (Though again, not as flat out brilliant as the 14 Pro screen.) Overall very snappy and it just feels good in the hand when you pick it up and carry it around. Will do more testing and such over the weekend, but so far, great!

How’s the weight compared to the MacBook Pro 14“?

Does it feel lighter and sleeker?

 

[Analog Kid]

It’s not the video work - it’s the read/write speed on the base model M2 which is the issue which is going to impact the memory swapping efficiency and simple read/write times of files

Testing results in screenshots below, which comes from ZoneOfTech’s review here

This is what drives me up a freaking wall... You somehow got me to watch that stupid video and, just as I expected, the actual testing doesn't support the conclusion. It actually doesn't support any conclusion at all other than YouTube content creators don't know ****.

The "real world usage" was a transfer from an undisclosed external drive. Where was the data rate limit? Was it the external drive? The dataport? The internal drive? How is it that a 17GB file writing to a M1 drive at 2GB per second takes 35 seconds to transfer rather than 9 seconds?

Based on the shape of the drive he quickly waved in front of the camera, I'm guessing at best that it's a basic USB 3.1 Gen2 SSD which typically maxes out at 1000MB/s, so slower than even the M2 base model write speed.

In what actually qualified as "real world usage", the exports from Final Cut Pro and Compressor, the M2 smoked the M1.

So I still don't see anything that indicates the transfer speed on that tiny internal drive is going to be the limiting factor of any real workflow.

 

[filterdecay]

This is what drives me up a freaking wall... You somehow got me to watch that stupid video and, just as I expected, the actual testing doesn't support the conclusion. It actually doesn't support any conclusion at all other than YouTube content creators don't know ****.

The "real world usage" was a transfer from an undisclosed external drive. Where was the data rate limit? Was it the external drive? The dataport? The internal drive? How is it that a 17GB file writing to a M1 drive at 2GB per second takes 35 seconds to transfer rather than 9 seconds?

Based on the shape of the drive he quickly waved in front of the camera, I'm guessing at best that it's a basic USB 3.1 Gen2 SSD which typically maxes out at 1000MB/s, so slower than even the M2 base model write speed.

In what actually qualified as "real world usage", the exports from Final Cut Pro and Compressor, the M2 smoked the M1.

So I still don't see anything that indicates the transfer speed on that tiny internal drive is going to be the limiting factor of any real workflow.

anyone doing real work isnt going to be doing it off the internal drive. The internal is a boot drive and maybe aspera downloads will go here. The real test would be transfering data off the drive. But who cares this thing is for laying on the couch and hanging out with. Doing scheduling project budget spread sheets and other light office work. The workstations do the real heavy work. This is a second or third computer for most people.

 

[Misheemee]

This is what drives me up a freaking wall... You somehow got me to watch that stupid video and, just as I expected, the actual testing doesn't support the conclusion. It actually doesn't support any conclusion at all other than YouTube content creators don't know ****.

The "real world usage" was a transfer from an undisclosed external drive. Where was the data rate limit? Was it the external drive? The dataport? The internal drive? How is it that a 17GB file writing to a M1 drive at 2GB per second takes 35 seconds to transfer rather than 9 seconds?

Based on the shape of the drive he quickly waved in front of the camera, I'm guessing at best that it's a basic USB 3.1 Gen2 SSD which typically maxes out at 1000MB/s, so slower than even the M2 base model write speed.

In what actually qualified as "real world usage", the exports from Final Cut Pro and Compressor, the M2 smoked the M1.

So I still don't see anything that indicates the transfer speed on that tiny internal drive is going to be the limiting factor of any real workflow.

If you watched the video, “Real world” testing show the read write speed is slower on the M2 than it is on M1. That’s what I stated, and I posted the video to support it. The comment I replied to was this:

“gentleman00 said:
There is a reason why it’s called MB Air. And, yet, fanboys are fuming over the fact that it is not designed for intensive video editing work.”

If you also noticed - the testing also showed that the base M2 handled content creation better than the base M1.

Simple. Nothing to get upset about, be a grown up, order the 256gb if you see fit - if not go with whatever suits your needs. Whatever floats your boat 🤷‍♀️

 

[Macalway]

Is anyone able to provide a summary of what the throttling is like to save me the pain of having to watch 15 minutes of bro-chat pseudo-techno-nonsense?

We are just going to have to wait as it just came out. It will take a week before people start realizing bugs and such (and regretting decisions )

 

[Apple_Robert]

Okay, so UPS showed up about 90 minutes ago and I setup my new base model M2 (midnight!) in less than an hour. All my apps are reinstalled--did a fresh setup, no time machine-- and it just finished downloading my docs from DropBox and OneDrive. It got a tad warm (NOT hot) when it was installing Office365, Scrivener, And synching my docs while I listened to music on YouTube. Since it finished, it has cooled right down. This little machine is very fast. Any concern about the "slow" drive seem to be way overblown (as I thought) and I am quite happy. I also installed my TakeControl software while that was happening and dialed in to a customer's server to check a backup job. No issues.

My take so far: The keyboard is shallower than the 14 Pro but I like it better; fantastic to type on; the sound is good but not as full or loud as the 14 Pro; the screen as really nice though not as sharp as the 14 Pro--the text is crisp and screen gets plenty bright--I'm at about 55% in my office and it looks good. (Though again, not as flat out brilliant as the 14 Pro screen.) Overall very snappy and it just feels good in the hand when you pick it up and carry it around. Will do more testing and such over the weekend, but so far, great!

I noticed the difference in keyboard travel as well between my M1 MBA and the M2. The M1 is more spongy. I was rather surprised by that.

 

[Macalway]

Simple. Nothing to get upset about, be a grown up, order the 256gb if you see fit - if not go with whatever suits your needs. Whatever floats your boat 🤷‍♀️

The base model will be fine. It's these tests that cause confusion.

 

[ozziegn]

I picked up a base M2 MBA today in hopes that I could justify replacing my flawless M1 MBA "just because". I played with the new laptop for a few hours and I have decided it definitely isn't worth what it would cost me to upgrade even after selling my M1 for a premium price. My M1 MBA only has 37 charge cycles on the battery. The laptop is in flawless condition.

I can sell my M1 MBA for $750. I figure it'll cost me around $500 to keep the new M2 I just picked up. $500 isn't worth it to have such slower SSD read/write speeds.

 

[joshwithachance]

This thing is INSANE. I bought the base model *gasp* and the SSD "issue" is a non-starter. Fun fact, while the read speed is noticeably slower (in benchmarks anyway) the write speed is nearly identical between the M1 and M2 256GB SSDs.

 

[Analog Kid]

If you watched the video, “Real world” testing show the read write speed is slower on the M2 than it is on M1. That’s what I stated, and I posted the video to support it. The comment I replied to was this:

“gentleman00 said:
There is a reason why it’s called MB Air. And, yet, fanboys are fuming over the fact that it is not designed for intensive video editing work.”

If you also noticed - the testing also showed that the base M2 handled content creation better than the base M1.

Simple. Nothing to get upset about, be a grown up, order the 256gb if you see fit - if not go with whatever suits your needs. Whatever floats your boat 🤷‍♀️

What you said was this:

It’s not the video work - it’s the read/write speed on the base model M2 which is the issue which is going to impact the memory swapping efficiency and simple read/write times of files

Testing results in screenshots below, which comes from ZoneOfTech’s review here

None of which was supported by the video or screenshots you posted.

 

[joshwithachance]

I picked up a base M2 MBA today in hopes that I could justify replacing my flawless M1 MBA "just because". I played with the new laptop for a few hours and I have decided it definitely isn't worth what it would cost me to upgrade even after selling my M1 for a premium price. My M1 MBA only has 37 charge cycles on the battery. The laptop is in flawless condition.

I can sell my M1 MBA for $750. I figure it'll cost me around $500 to keep the new M2 I just picked up. $500 isn't worth it to have such slower SSD read/write speeds.

The write speeds are identical. (At least on my base model M2 Air anyway.) I've only had the machine for a few hours but I couldn't go back to the M1's display after using the M2. It's THAT much better, in every regard. And the midnight color/design...🙏🏼

 

[calstanford]

It’s not the video work - it’s the read/write speed on the base model M2 which is the issue which is going to impact the memory swapping efficiency and simple read/write times of files

Testing results in screenshots below, which comes from ZoneOfTech’s review here

Then don't get a base model. Frankly I find 256GB super little in 2022.
Or if that's all you need why not go with the M1 and save $200 or more?

 

[DHagan4755]

There is a reason why it’s called MB Air. And, yet, fanboys are fuming over the fact that it is not designed for intensive video editing work.

It really is THIS simple!

Even still, people like Justine edited an 8K project in Final Cut Pro with MotionVFX plug-ins to see how it would do — not like that it's something everyone's going to be doing on it regularly. I didn't watch the whole podcast she did here on MacRumors. But I'm willing to bet she's not switching from her decked out 16" MacBook Pro M1 Max with 64GB of memory & 8TB SSD to edit videos on the new MacBook Air M2. Let's be real.

 

[mr_jomo]

I'm starting to feel opposite: wondering if I should hand down another, older macBook and keep my M1 Air until the M3 cycle.

Ahh, who am I kidding - once the M2 Air lands on Thursday (current projection) they'll have to pry it out of my cold dead hands 🤣.