Just curious if anyone has an M1 Pro and switched to the M2 air for the new form factor and lighter weight and how they feel about performance? I’m looking to swap my 8/256 M1 Pro for a 16 or 8 /256 m2 air mainly for weight and battery. My current M1 Pro battery is at 85% since launch day and it’s getting noticeable. I haven’t had any performance issues with 8gb ram even though it does use about 3gb of swap on the norm but I never feel a slow down. Mainly using Microsoft office (a lot of PowerPoint) including MS Teams plus 20ish safari tabs and Apple mail. I usually buy base models and replace them every few years rather than “future proof” but the chatter here about slower ssd has me confused about the right configuration.
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Anyone ditching M1 MBP for M2 air?
- Thread starter spindude
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Wouldnt battery replacement be wiser choice that would serve you another year/year and a half?
13" Pro's battery at 85% might as well not be that much far from M2 Air's at 100%, given that Pro's battery is larger and M1 is slightly less hungry than M2?
Weight, however, is something where nothing can be done in regards to 13" Pro, if thats such important thing for you.
13" Pro's battery at 85% might as well not be that much far from M2 Air's at 100%, given that Pro's battery is larger and M1 is slightly less hungry than M2?
Weight, however, is something where nothing can be done in regards to 13" Pro, if thats such important thing for you.
its mostly weight combined with a new form factor.... I feel like I've had the same dang computer for a decade LOL also, I didn't think I would but I despise the Touch Bar.
It's likely you won't notice any difference in performance. Chasing the latest gimmicks is a fools game, you'll end up disappointed and frustrated, like most on this forum.
I guess it settles it then - you hate touchbar, its heavier than you would like and youre fed up with its ancient looks.
Now the next questions might arise - which config to order and what if 14 MBP is better value 😅!?
The SSD R/W performance is a fair bit slower since it is only one module in the M2s vs. two modules in the M1s (at 256GB), but if you don't hit the disk often, overall it might not be so noticeable.
Unless you regularly move tens of gigabytes, the slower SSD will not be noticeable, period. One possible exception might be if you put the machine heavy into swap / paging.
People get so wound up in the numbers on paper that they forget to do a little counting on fingers. Applications don't generally sequentially transfer a gigabyte at a time, and the smaller the transfer, the less that transfer time contributes to the overall time (due to overhead). And, supposing one does move a couple gigabytes, the faster SSD will do it in a second while the slower one takes two. Is that really all that subjectively important?
My personal experience with a machine with 500 MB/s SATA drives and a 6000 MB/s PCIe 4.0 drive says that the difference is subjectively nil except when I'm doing stuff unsuitable for an Air anyway, such as 2 hour long QA runs.
yeah I agree... I don't usually get wrapped up in looking deep into "pro" users usage as my use case is different BUT I do run 2-3gb of swap so I was considering upping the RAM to 16gb... really the only reason I think Im nervous is all mental going from a "pro" Mac to an air but I guess its really only pro in name. is there a way to clear the memory from time to time? I notice the swap increasing over time.
Just traded a 13 M1 MBP for a maxed out MBA M2. Different body style and color (starlight) and the 24GB were driving factors but mostly just because I want it.
Went from a 14” MBPro to the new Air and it’s great. Software producer & designer. Figma, Xcode, a bunch of garbage Electron applications, and haven’t noticed a blip other than crazy great battery life and the livable decrease in display quality. Not a single regret, the Air is sleek as hell.
isn't it abnormal to have your battery dropping so much battery in so little time ? did you charge it fuly everyday,twice at it ?
I charged it probably about 5 times per week. Being honest I never pay attention to the battery I would just randomly plug it in at times I wasn’t using it. It was unplugged while in use about 50% of the time.
I have a 16" M1 Max MBP with 64GB ram as my main squeeze... I also have a 13" M1 MBP that I tote around with me (I'm in IT). My wife needed a new machine, her Air is from like 2009 or so. She will get my 13" MBP and I will tote the air around with me when I'm in the field.
Hm.85 sounds abnormal then.whats the purchase date ?
How many cycles ??
I think on Mac if the battery is below 80 and within 1k cycles battery can be replaced for free , not sure if it requires ac+ for that tho
145 cycles. I bought it the day M1 pros were released so toward the end of 2020. I picked up and 8/256 air yesterday bc it’s all they had in stock. I LOVE the screen, trackpad and thinness so I ordered a 16/256 and will return this one. Just a little nervous about too little RAM as I was consistently using swap on my MPB with 8gb.
He is hitting swap on his current M1 MBP so the slow SSD of the M2 will be noticeable.
The OP should wait for the M3 MBA.
That's why I reordered one with 16gb ram. I have literally nothing on my hard drive except "optimized photos" and it appears my iMessages save to my Mac as well. everything is in one drive or iCloud. If I download documents or powerpoint from email or web I immediately work on them to send them out OR they get saved to a Cloud; either way there deleted off my Mac so I find no reason to upgrade the storage. I don't even consider myself a heavy user so it blows my mind that they sell a base $1200 laptop that can't handle normal office tasks but I digress. I'll upgrade it like I do my iPhone and smile and go on with my day. Sucks since I have this base one set up with all my personal settings I'm still torn if I should keep it LOL I typically keep them 2-3 years.