Is the standard MacBook Air M5 16/512 sufficient for normal use with FCP and LRC?

[1st-Replicant]

Hi everyone,
I recently sold my Mac mini M4 16/256 because the internal SSD was too small for my needs.

Since a Mac Mini M4 16/512 currently costs €949.00 in Germany (only available new directly from Apple), I’m wondering if the standard MacBook Air 13" M5 16/512 for €997.00 new (reputable dealers) isn’t significantly more attractive.
A Mac mini M5 isn’t expected anytime soon. Even if it’s announced at WWDC, I think the likely base configuration of 16/512 will still cost around €949.00.

Even though I’d use it at home with the Apple Studio Display and “only” take it with me when traveling. However, I also have an iPad Pro M2 11-inch for vacation, couch surfing etc., which has been more than enough so far.
But for virtually the same price, instead of a desktop Mac, I get a fully-fledged mobile device with a display, keyboard, and trackpad.

My main uses:
Office, web browsing, standard 4K video editing in FCP, standard photo editing in Lightroom Classic. So I think I can easily do without the missing fan on the MBA.

SSD Storage:
Although I can connect an external 4TB SSD via Thunderbolt 4, I’ve read here several times that the internal SSD is still significantly faster.
In my opinion, 512 GB of internal SSD should be sufficient, or does the 1TB version offer a noticeable performance gain?

GPU Cores:
I can just ignore the 2 extra GPU cores in the 16/1TB model, right?

RAM:
The RAM issue is a hotly debated topic here, so I’ll leave that out for now.

 

[snipr125]

Others may go in to more detail, but the base model MBA M5 is more than sufficient for FCP/LRC, 4K video editing etc. The P3 display is very colour accurate, and the internal SSDs are blazing fast, so don't worry about that.

 

[1BadManVan]

i would definitely grab the M5 air over the M4 mini considering their prices are almost the same. You still get a faster chip, its 8 core gpu is actually faster than the 10 core gpu in the M4 so you're not missing out there either. The SSD is over twice as fast in the M5's and there's not really a performance bump in ssd speed going to the 1tb model so if you don't need the storage, you're not benefiting.

Plus if you're going to use any of the Ai features in those apps, the M5 has a big advantage with a Neural Accelerator in each gpu core.

Grab the M5 and enjoy the upgrade, just set the battery charge limit to 80% if you're going to mostly used it docked and it will save the battery health

 

[Yebubbleman]

Hi everyone,
I recently sold my Mac mini M4 16/256 because the internal SSD was too small for my needs.

Since a Mac Mini M4 16/512 currently costs €949.00 in Germany (only available new directly from Apple), I’m wondering if the standard MacBook Air 13" M5 16/512 for €997.00 new (reputable dealers) isn’t significantly more attractive.
A Mac mini M5 isn’t expected anytime soon. Even if it’s announced at WWDC, I think the likely base configuration of 16/512 will still cost around €949.00.

Even though I’d use it at home with the Apple Studio Display and “only” take it with me when traveling. However, I also have an iPad Pro M2 11-inch for vacation, couch surfing etc., which has been more than enough so far.
But for virtually the same price, instead of a desktop Mac, I get a fully-fledged mobile device with a display, keyboard, and trackpad.

My main uses:
Office, web browsing, standard 4K video editing in FCP, standard photo editing in Lightroom Classic. So I think I can easily do without the missing fan on the MBA.

SSD Storage:
Although I can connect an external 4TB SSD via Thunderbolt 4, I’ve read here several times that the internal SSD is still significantly faster.
In my opinion, 512 GB of internal SSD should be sufficient, or does the 1TB version offer a noticeable performance gain?

GPU Cores:
I can just ignore the 2 extra GPU cores in the 16/1TB model, right?

RAM:
The RAM issue is a hotly debated topic here, so I’ll leave that out for now.

Get more RAM. 16GB is quickly becoming what 8GB was three years ago (which is to say, not great if you do any significant amount of multitasking [or any RAM intensive tasks at all]). 24GB of RAM is good; maxing out at 32GB is better (and even if you don't need it today, it will definitely benefit you tomorrow and contribute to a longer useable lifespan for the Mac). The counter-arguments to this all are some flavor of "I don't feel performance degradation at all" and completely sidestep the notion that, while Apple Silicon does a good job of providing the "painkiller", the underlying problem and its effects still exist because RAM is still RAM (even when it is unified). If you care about this computer you are to go out and buy, I would pay them no heed.

I'd go one storage size larger than you think you'll need; though, if video editing is the main thing that will eat up your storage, it isn't uncommon to work off of external drives designated for projects. You can't upgrade either after the fact. A 512GB SSD could work fine; a 1TB drive might be better. I don't really have enough info about how you are going to use this machine to say for certain. This is more use-case subjective; though my advice of going one capacity larger than you think you'll need still stands, especially since you cannot upgrade anything on it after the fact.

One thing to consider about the base M5 MacBook Air is that you have two fewer GPU cores compared to literally every other model of M5 MacBook Air (said model is fixed at 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD; make one change and you're automatically having to upgrade to the version of the base M5 that has the full 10 GPU cores in tow). I'm not saying you'll necessarily notice the performance difference, especially coming from an M4; but were it me, I'd opt for the greater GPU cores; especially since any machine-learning-enhanced task in FCP will benefit greatly (given that M5 has neural accelerators for each GPU core).

For what it's worth, I am in agreement that an M5 MacBook Air will be plenty powerful for what you want to do with it, so long as you spec it appropriately.