Best M1 or M2 Macbook for Video Editing

[Mainiac]

My daughter will be a junior in high school this fall and she got accepted into a New Media program at a local regional vocation high school where she will spend half her days. One of the focuses of the program is video editing which is the career she is most currently interested in. They will be using Adobe Premiere but she also purchased her own copy of Final Cut Pro a few years back. She currently has a mid-2015 MB Pro with 16gb ram and 512gb storage and it still works OK for Final Cut Pro but isn't very fast and crashes occasionally.

I would like to get her a new M1 or M2 based Macbook. I was strongly leaning towards the new M2 Air but the fact that the read/write speeds are slower than the M1 Air since it only has the single storage chip concerns me. I assume for video editing I would want 512gb storage at a minimum anyways so I assume that version of the M2 Air would have 2x 256gb so that would take care of the read/write speeds. That would bring the price to $1400 from $1100. It irks me that it cost $300 for an extra 256gb (and a slightly better M2 chip) but if that is what it takes I'll do it. Of course then the question is does she need 16gb vs 8gb which adds another $200! If so I'm looking at $1600 and then it begs the question would I just be better off getting her a 14" MB Pro with the M1 Pro chip, 16gb and 512bgb for $2000 (currently $18000 at Best Buy)?

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[chrfr]

As someone who works at a school where video/design/etc. is taught, trying to do this with a computer that has only 256GB of storage would be an exercise in frustration. 512GB is the absolute bare minimum you should consider for video work. 16GB is also pretty necessary for video work.

 

[satcomer]

The Air IMHO is basic machine not made for serious audio/video work! The why you should get the M2 Mac Book Pro to do stuff like audio/video work!

 

[wakinghour]

If you edit a lot of video, do not do it on your Macbook's drive. It's best to do it on external drives. Reason is because if she's editing anything from a camera, it's likely going to be highly compressed and converted into Prores on Final Cut Pro which the files will be giant. It will tax the drive when it should be focused on running the OS and essential applications.

 

[Pugly]

The 14" Pro on sale has the best features and value, since the price of the Air gets close when the upgrades stack up.

Any M chip is good and can do a lot. I do audio work on an M1 Air, and have no issues at all. Editing is usually a very stop and start process, so you can get by without a fan. The fan helps when exporting large projects, you might have to wait an extra couple seconds or minutes depending on the project.

16GB and 512GB is the way to go for doing anything advanced. The M1 or M2 Air are as powerful as Pro Macs from even 2 years ago. And the Pro Macs now are about twice as fast as the base M1.

 

[Violet_Antelope]

I definitely would go pro for that. And at least 16GB, preferably more

 

[BanditoB]

Don't forget to shop the Apple Education store. It will shave about 10% off of the cost, plus right now you get a gift card as well over and above the discount.

 

[Gherkin]

It depends on how complex the movies are she'll be creating, what your budget is and how long you'd like the machine to last.

As she's just a freshman student, honestly an M1 Air upgraded to 16 GB RAM would suit her just fine.

Bump up to the M2 Air (16/512) if you can afford it.

Finally bump to 14" MBP (base model) if you can afford it.

You'll likely want to invest in a 4K external monitor as editing video on a small laptop screen can be frustrating.

For a student, I'd recommend the M2 Air 512 GB SSD/16 GB RAM w/ something like a 24" 4K monitor.

Super portable which is good for a student, super powerful. The only drawback to this laptop is no active cooling, but that's not super important unless she'll be frequently exporting 10+ minute videos.

 

[MacPoulet]

It depends on how complex the movies are she'll be creating, what your budget is and how long you'd like the machine to last.

As she's just a freshman student, honestly an M1 Air upgraded to 16 GB RAM would suit her just fine.

Bump up to the M2 Air (16/512) if you can afford it.

Finally bump to 14" MBP (base model) if you can afford it.

You'll likely want to invest in a 4K external monitor as editing video on a small laptop screen can be frustrating.

For a student, I'd recommend the M2 Air 512 GB SSD/16 GB RAM w/ something like a 24" 4K monitor.

Super portable which is good for a student, super powerful. The only drawback to this laptop is no active cooling, but that's not super important unless she'll be frequently exporting 10+ minute videos.

That’s a more powerful setup than I use, and I’m a new media prof at a university.

i would be very surprised if high schoolers are doing more than 1080p projects. At our institution, only our graduate students do 4k (and other faculty like myself).

I think an M2 Air is a solid choice, and 16gb of ram with 512gb SSD would be a powerful system that can probably take you into college. A 4K external monitor might be overkill, and I would sooner go with a really good 1440p monitor. In fact, that’s what I did for my home setup (a great Benq that I nabbed from Costco).

While great, I’d sooner get an external drive to edit with and a good pair of studio headphones over an external screen when you’re starting out. The high school may even have external monitors to use in the classroom.

 

[PsykX]

The base M2 has video encoders. The base M1 doesn't.
You have to get at least an M1 Pro if you go with the M1 line.

It makes a radical difference.