Is the M1 13" MBA really today's best-value-for-money Air at the moment?

[ignatius345]

Hello everyone

My wife has been using her 11" MBA since new in 2011 but it's no longer charging so she's looking to upgrade. She uses her computer for word processing, email and internet, thus nothing very taxing.

I checked Everymac to get an idea about the differences between the M1, M2 and M3 MBA models.

It seems the M1 is the best value for money, could that be? They aren't far from each other in Geekbench, battery is more or less the same and there are only very small differences in connectivity.

It feels like I've missed something a 4 year old M1 shouldn't be so competitive, but is it?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Philip

The only issue I have with my M1 Air is that I want an M3 Air but I can't justify buying one because the M1 is performing so damn well still. My use case for it is 95% just email/web/writing, etc and it tackles all that with ease and great battery life. The other 5% of the time I use it when travelling and working remotely doing graphic design. Once I plug in a portable monitor (which draws resources) and fire up Illustrator, InDesign etc it does start to feel a bit less zippy, but still handles it all. If I was doing graphic design on a lot more the time with an external display I would probably get an M3 Air just for speed. But I just don't truly need it.

The one thing I'd recommend if getting an M1 Air would be to get 16GB RAM. I had one with 8GB RAM before -- and while it was still shockingly good, even with big Illustrator docs, the extra RAM keeps things responsive with more stuff running.

Given how cheaply you can get an M1 Air, I would agree the bang:buck ratio is excellent. That said, if she's in the habit of keeping Macs running for many years (as with that 11" Air, 13 years) I would consider spending a few hundred bucks more and having something that much more future-proof.

So tell me more about the longevity of M chips. Are they meant to be competitive (if that's the right term) longer than the Intel chips?

Yes. They ran circles around the Intel Macs they replaced and did so drawing like 1/3 the power (meaning 2-3x better battery life). The clock is ticking for Intel support both with MacOS and third-party software.

 

[sadoering]

I would recommend the M3 16/512 as a great "sweet spot" for the current Air - especially at Black Friday pricing of $1049 currently - for these reasons based on having a 16/256 then exchanging for the 16/512:

• I like knowing I have a bit more "breathing room" with 512 long term vs 256 - especially with an SSD.
• The SSD read/write speeds are improved on the 512 when compared to the 16/256 Air. Not night and day but significant - clearly measurable with a speed test. How much real world difference does it make - not sure?
• The GPU has 10 cores vs 8 in the 16/256 - again - measurable but will it make a difference?
• The charger is a little better at 35 watts and 2 USB-C ports... slight improvement.

The totality of these small improvements made it worth it for me - I would like to keep this one long term as much as possible. The SSD space was the main reason - but the other spec bumps were appreciated.

 

[pullman]

Thank you, this is very interesting to read. We unboxed the M3 this evening and it certainly feels very snappy. It's performance-wise an overkill for what she needs it for but that's not the reason she bought it.

Increments like that – 15-30% instead of 5% – is a massive leap. I suppose it has something to do with technology having moved on from the time when the 12" models were produced? Perhaps at that point in time it wasn't possible to produce that power in chip, I mean. Or it's a combination of better technology and Apple being able to design the chips based on their own needs.

On a design note, I personally think the new boxier Air design is rather boring and very un-Air-like. It looks like a MBP now, or in fact almost every other laptop. The M1 Air looks much nicer. I'm partial to the tapered design, having a last of the line 2015 11" MBA CTO, which I love. I'd even consider getting the M1 Air because it's the last of the line.

Too early to tell but the signs so far is that they are extremely competitive ; the M1 series was a massive, massive leap from intel performance, heat and noise. The m2, m3 and m4 are more incremental improvements, but those increments are say 15-30% per year - previously with intel we'd get 5% annually.

The M1 chips are still FAST and if they were guaranteed to get long term software support I'd still recommend people buy them. But based on prior history, that's less likely, hence the recommendation for something more current.


Seriously though if you haven't run an M chip before and are coming from intel.... it's almost like these are the chips apple was expecting from intel when they started their ultra thin line of machines like the MacBook 12" - and intel just failed to deliver the product apple was promised to fit into those ultra thin machines.

 

[pullman]

Thank you for describing the M1 to me. It does seem to be a terrific machine. I found this comparison which seems to me to suggest that the M1 is really a very strong machine when compared with the M2.

The only issue I have with my M1 Air is that I want an M3 Air but I can't justify buying one because the M1 is performing so damn well still. My use case for it is 95% just email/web/writing, etc and it tackles all that with ease and great battery life. The other 5% of the time I use it when travelling and working remotely doing graphic design. Once I plug in a portable monitor (which draws resources) and fire up Illustrator, InDesign etc it does start to feel a bit less zippy, but still handles it all. If I was doing graphic design on a lot more the time with an external display I would probably get an M3 Air just for speed. But I just don't truly need it.

The one thing I'd recommend if getting an M1 Air would be to get 16GB RAM. I had one with 8GB RAM before -- and while it was still shockingly good, even with big Illustrator docs, the extra RAM keeps things responsive with more stuff running.

Given how cheaply you can get an M1 Air, I would agree the bang:buck ratio is excellent. That said, if she's in the habit of keeping Macs running for many years (as with that 11" Air, 13 years) I would consider spending a few hundred bucks more and having something that much more future-proof.


Yes. They ran circles around the Intel Macs they replaced and did so drawing like 1/3 the power (meaning 2-3x better battery life). The clock is ticking for Intel support both with MacOS and third-party software.

 

[ignatius345]

On a design note, I personally think the new boxier Air design is rather boring and very un-Air-like. It looks like a MBP now, or in fact almost every other laptop. The M1 Air looks much nicer. I'm partial to the tapered design, having a last of the line 2015 11" MBA CTO, which I love. I'd even consider getting the M1 Air because it's the last of the line.

Yeah, I like the taper as well. Maybe some of it is nostalgia from the decades of Airs I've had (starting with that 11" one, which I had two generations of). I think it feels very comfortable in the hand, and like you I'm less sold on the newer design.

 

[pullman]

I can definitely see that as a logical choice for longevity. The reason we went for the smaller SSD was that she's not using much space at all for her documents and other stuff (<5GB in total). Plus if there would ever be a need to expand the fast ports would make it easy to do that with an external drive, which could even be a large USB stick. And those cost considerably less than the premium Apple adds for upping space to 512GB. So we tried to be a bit practical while also striving for longevity. I suppose we'll se in another decade+ how well the computer did haha.

I would recommend the M3 16/512 as a great "sweet spot" for the current Air - especially at Black Friday pricing of $1049 currently - for these reasons based on having a 16/256 then exchanging for the 16/512:

• I like knowing I have a bit more "breathing room" with 512 long term vs 256 - especially with an SSD.
• The SSD read/write speeds are improved on the 512 when compared to the 16/256 Air. Not night and day but significant - clearly measurable with a speed test. How much real world difference does it make - not sure?
• The GPU has 10 cores vs 8 in the 16/256 - again - measurable but will it make a difference?
• The charger is a little better at 35 watts and 2 USB-C ports... slight improvement.

The totality of these small improvements made it worth it for me - I would like to keep this one long term as much as possible. The SSD space was the main reason - but the other spec bumps were appreciated.

 

[AlexTypea93]

I like M2, for the MagSafe charger if nothing else (2 USB plus charger, vs. two INCLUDING charger on M1)

thanks for the tip

 

[weasel_solid]

i am still using my M1 Air for automated testing and task related for coding

 

[DeepSix]

So what do people say is the value on used M3 Airs with 8Gb?