M2 Air Disappointing Thermal Design

[Sowelu]

My M2 Air runs just as cool as my M1 Air with everyday normal tasks, which is what the Air is intended for. Can it do more? Absolutely, and when I need the extra power, it will be there. If you want a portable MacBook to do heavy video and photo editing for your job or business, the 14" MacBook Pro is for you.

And please, do not cite iFixit as a source of any kind of information (or confirmation) regarding Apple's thermal design (or alleged lack there of). They opened the M2 Air, pulled the thin thermal shielding off and without doing any testing or even knowing what it was and how it worked, they stated that 'there is no heatsink, it must run hot!'.

I honestly don't know what happened to iFixit. Their well-written tear downs with accompanying detailed high resolution photos were replaced with quick videos with a pompous voice-over reciting an overproduced script. The videos also lack detail and just jump to the next component. 'To open the bottom, be careful of those hooks and clips', but they don't show the process of opening the bottom cover, which way to slide it, and so on. It's more of an overproduced teardown summary.

Stills from these videos and transcripts of the video scripts now replace what were once the teardown write-ups. I guess when your content goes south and your business model relies on repair toolkits, hyperbolic ******** is the go-to.

 

[ipos]

U use it on your lap?

 

[Sowelu]

U use it on your lap?

The bottom of my M2 Air is cool to the touch at the moment - just as my M1 was with average use.

 

[Jackpaultechnab]

informative thread! thanks

 

[InspectHerGadget]

good luck -- insides of your M2 Air will melt after a year or so

We will see but then you need to wait a year or two. I hope/trust that Apple considers 108C acceptable as a peak temperature...only the famous philosopher f... nose for sure

 

[canadianpj]

Not sure how scientific it was but played 1hr 30min of World of Warcraft, high settings and it was cooler to the touch (still warm, don't get me wrong) than on my brother's 2019 Macbook Pro.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Fact check? The Max chip will obviously be more thermally constrained in the 14" than in the 16", but the 14" has widely been lauded as having excellent thermal management. The Pro chip is mostly dead silent.

It's the same SoCs in both notebooks. The cooling systems and batteries on the 16" were obviously what these SoCs were designed for given that the 14" has worse performance in both of these areas than both the 16" and the 13" (M1 model, at least). There are tons of video reviews that confirm this.

As for a fact check, where is the 14" "widely lauded" as having excellent thermal management? I'm not saying it's bad (nor as bad); but it's more reminiscent of the Intel era than any other M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max Apple Silicon Mac notebook has been thus far.

 

[Tagbert]

It's the same SoCs in both notebooks. The cooling systems and batteries on the 16" were obviously what these SoCs were designed for given that the 14" has worse performance in both of these areas than both the 16" and the 13" (M1 model, at least). There are tons of video reviews that confirm this.

As for a fact check, where is the 14" "widely lauded" as having excellent thermal management? I'm not saying it's bad (nor as bad); but it's more reminiscent of the Intel era than any other M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max Apple Silicon Mac notebook has been thus far.

None of the Apple Silicon machines have thermal issues like the Intel laptops. Those will heat up and run their fans doing almost any tasks. For the M-series chips you have to run some fairly intensive processes to get them to break a sweat.

 

[InspectHerGadget]

My M2 Air runs just as cool as my M1 Air with everyday normal tasks, which is what the Air is intended for. Can it do more? Absolutely, and when I need the extra power, it will be there. If you want a portable MacBook to do heavy video and photo editing for your job or business, the 14" MacBook Pro is for you.

And please, do not cite iFixit as a source of any kind of information (or confirmation) regarding Apple's thermal design (or alleged lack there of). They opened the M2 Air, pulled the thin thermal shielding off and without doing any testing or even knowing what it was and how it worked, they stated that 'there is no heatsink, it must run hot!'.

I honestly don't know what happened to iFixit. Their well-written tear downs with accompanying detailed high resolution photos were replaced with quick videos with a pompous voice-over reciting an overproduced script. The videos also lack detail and just jump to the next component. 'To open the bottom, be careful of those hooks and clips', but they don't show the process of opening the bottom cover, which way to slide it, and so on. It's more of an overproduced teardown summary.

Stills from these videos and transcripts of the video scripts now replace what were once the teardown write-ups. I guess when your content goes south and your business model relies on repair toolkits, hyperbolic ******** is the go-to.

None of the Apple Silicon machines have thermal issues like the Intel laptops. Those will heat up and run their fans doing almost any tasks. For the M-series chips you have to run some fairly intensive processes to get them to break a sweat.

It is always funny to hear these cooling issues...I think reinventing the desktop. The 16 has disappointing dismal thermals compared to a nice desktop machine with two big radiators and liquid cooling. It is absolute RUBBISH.

OK, just kidding but it is funny to engage in the cooling arms race where, of course, bigger is going to be better but BIG is not always good, especially in a laptop.

I'm typing this on an M1 MBA...at least it has a proper heat sink unlike the M2 (which is thinner but at some cost to thermals)...my question is 95º was the limit I was told on Intel processors after which they would turn themselves down. Now on Apple silicon 108º seems to be meeehhh OK. Is it?

 

[CE3]

For the M-series chips you have to run some fairly intensive processes to get them to break a sweat.

Yet I’m always reading so much around here about the M1 & M2 Airs being for basic computing and the Pro being for anything intensive. Why? The M1 outperformed the very top spec 2019 MacBook Pro when it was released, so why wouldn’t these be great workstations for those who value the fanless design, extra portability and battery life, but also do photo editing, video editing, audio production, etc. Oh, that’s right, they are! Sure, if you do a lot of rendering all day, or if you’re working with tons of 8K footage, you’d be better suited with a MBP, but this new generation of MacBook Airs is more than capable of doing its share of heavy lifting when properly configured for your needs.

I have a pretty demanding photo editing workflow— I work with very large files, sometimes 15+ open in Photoshop, multiple layers— and my M1 Air continues to handle everything without issue. I barely use my 2020 iMac w/ its 8GB GPU and 64GB of RAM anymore. I don’t care what the “target demo” for the MacBook Air is, these machines are ready for a heck of a lot more than just email, homework, and web browsing.

 

[smoking monkey]

My wife has hundreds of tabs open in multiple browsers

I'm curious. Hundreds means 200+. 200+ tabs on multiple browsers... so about 50 tabs across 4 different browsers??? I can't imagine what requires 200 plus tabs open at the same time and how you'd handle all that on a 13.6inch screen. Is that workflow efficient? What does your wife do to need that many tabs? I'm not having a go, I'm honestly highly curious about the scenario that would require this situation. We all have our own workflows, so I'm just wondering what are the specifics of the scenario. If you don't want to say due to privacy of your wife's job, that's cool, but geez, you got my interest piqued...

 

[InspectHerGadget]

Yet I’m always reading so much around here about the M1 & M2 Airs being for basic computing and the Pro being for anything intensive. Why? The M1 outperformed the very top spec 2019 MacBook Pro when it was released, so why wouldn’t these be great workstations for those who value the fanless design, extra portability and battery life, but also do photo editing, video editing, audio production, etc. Oh, that’s right, they are! Sure, if you do a lot of rendering all day, or if you’re working with tons of 8K footage, you’d be better suited with a MBP, but this new generation of MacBook Airs is more than capable of doing its share of heavy lifting when properly configured for your needs.

I have a pretty demanding photo editing workflow— I work with very large files, sometimes 15+ open in Photoshop, multiple layers— and my M1 Air continues to handle everything without issue. I barely use my 2020 iMac w/ its 8GB GPU and 64GB of RAM anymore. I don’t care what the “target demo” for the MacBook Air is, these machines are ready for a heck of a lot more than just email, homework, and web browsing.

I fully agree.

The messaging has changed around the M2 hasn't it? Fascinating isn't it? Increased prices and increased heat. 108º is now fine whereas the M1 topped out at about 95º.

I think Apple figured the MBA M1 was too successful. It cannibalised the iPad Pro sales and the MBP 14 and 16 machines. So a price increase, a heatsink decrease resulting in the acceptable temperature going up to 108º for the CPU and a message that hey 'don't try this at home' type warning about doing too much work on it...

They want more wiggle room for their iPad Pro by increasing prices and halving the speed of the SSD on the base model MBA M2 to send a strong message 'this is a light use machine only'. They've thinned the chassis and reduced the heat sink capacity, increased the CPU allowable temperatures and thereby 'don't use this MBA for professional workloads'. Quite right too 108º may just cook these machines grievously misused by people who don't understand the purpose of the MBA...sending emails and messaging friends with occasionally sneaking in a 4K video. The MBA is now expensive enough of course, that surprise, surprise, selling your iPad Pro and overpriced Magic keyboard and having change left over to buy an MBA M2 is well...maybe not going to happen.

Of course if the MBA base model SSD concerns you then spend more and more, then you realise, hey I am better off buying the MBP M1 Pro 14. Great deal for someone...who might that be...not any of us.

 

[nikhsub1]

I fully agree.

The messaging has changed around the M2 hasn't it? Fascinating isn't it? Increased prices and increased heat. 108º is now fine whereas the M1 topped out at about 95º.

I think Apple figured the MBA M1 was too successful. It cannibalised the iPad Pro sales and the MBP 14 and 16 machines. So a price increase, a heatsink decrease resulting in the acceptable temperature going up to 108º for the CPU and a message that hey 'don't try this at home' type warning about doing too much work on it...

They want more wiggle room for their iPad Pro by increasing prices and halving the speed of the SSD on the base model MBA M2 to send a strong message 'this is a light use machine only'. They've thinned the chassis and reduced the heat sink capacity, increased the CPU allowable temperatures and thereby 'don't use this MBA for professional workloads'. Quite right too 108º may just cook these machines grievously misused by people who don't understand the purpose of the MBA...sending emails and messaging friends with occasionally sneaking in a 4K video. The MBA is now expensive enough of course, that surprise, surprise, selling your iPad Pro and overpriced Magic keyboard and having change left over to buy an MBA M2 is well...maybe not going to happen.

Of course if the MBA base model SSD concerns you then spend more and more, then you realise, hey I am better off buying the MBP M1 Pro 14. Great deal for someone...who might that be...not any of us.

Nonsense, all of what you are saying. Thermal capacities are set by the chip maker. There is always a max temp before shutdown (even iphones do this) and a max temp before throttling.

 

[Toratek]

After three straight days working with the M2 MBA, I would not be even slightly surprised if every single negative commenter in this thread had never touched one of these machines. Not even close to heating up, even working outdoors in 93ºF weather in the shade. 3D modeling, multilayer Pixelmator Pro, light video editing and more- hasn't once warmed up more than 5º over ambient conditions.

A very fast machine with incredible battery stamina.

 

[FattKingHugeman]

Yes as what i was always saying, people should try it for themselves before making comments based on stuff they read off the internet.
The M2 MBA, just like the M1 MBA is a winner. I feel like the M2 MBA is what the M1 should have been if they didn't re-used that old 2016-2018 design. The M1 MBA feels like a half-gen transit product now. I don't recommend people buying M1 MBA new unless it's deeply discounted or they could get a good condition used one at good discounted price.

 

[Tagbert]

Yet I’m always reading so much around here about the M1 & M2 Airs being for basic computing and the Pro being for anything intensive. Why? The M1 outperformed the very top spec 2019 MacBook Pro when it was released, so why wouldn’t these be great workstations for those who value the fanless design, extra portability and battery life, but also do photo editing, video editing, audio production, etc. Oh, that’s right, they are! Sure, if you do a lot of rendering all day, or if you’re working with tons of 8K footage, you’d be better suited with a MBP, but this new generation of MacBook Airs is more than capable of doing its share of heavy lifting when properly configured for your needs.

I have a pretty demanding photo editing workflow— I work with very large files, sometimes 15+ open in Photoshop, multiple layers— and my M1 Air continues to handle everything without issue. I barely use my 2020 iMac w/ its 8GB GPU and 64GB of RAM anymore. I don’t care what the “target demo” for the MacBook Air is, these machines are ready for a heck of a lot more than just email, homework, and web browsing.

the M2 MBA is even more powerful than the M1 MBA and is fully capable of pretty much any task you would throw at it. Certainly photo editing, even multiple photos and complex filters it handles with ease. The only limits it has are where some heavy processing tasks can exceed its thermal limits at which point it slows down by around 10-20%.

When doing their reviews, YouTube channels did processes like their Final Cut Pro 8K renders to test the performance. As we have seen a task like that will hit the limits and the MBA will slow down but will continue to do the job and will do it faster than the M1.

For some reason, some of those reviewers looked at this and called it out as a failure of the MBA and of Apple because of the ”extreme” heat and “dire“ slowdown. Some did tear downs where they looked at the heat spreader on the M2 and dismissed it as any kind of thermal control. One even saying it was just an RF shield. They said that it was thinner than the heat spreader that the M1 had. They ignored that the heat spreader on the M2 was bigger with a larger surface area to release heat and that it had a graphene thermal conductor attached to it.

It’s not clear why they had such a negative take on the M2 Air when it was faster than the M1 and was working as designed for a thin, light, portable laptop with great battery life. Somehow it became a failure as a laptop and of Apple’s engineering. Perhaps those kinds of headlines drive more traffic to sites that thrive on traffic?

When people here saw those reviews they posted how Apple had lost its way; how the M2 MBA was throttling like crazy like the old Intel MacBook line; that Apple should have put a fan into the MBA so that it never, ever throttled.

Others started posting the the MBA was not designed to do those kinds of tasks. That it was only for web browsing and word processing and other light tasks. That if someone wanted to do more, they should get a MBP.

As you know, neither of those takes are really true. The MBA is perfectly capable of doing the light tasks but it is also capable of doing more involved tasks like your photo editing, like programming, like video editing. And most people doing those tasks will be amazed at how quickly it does those tasks. The only caveat is that if you are doing the heavier tasks on a daily basis and if you need maximum performance while doing them, this is probably not the right tool for you. You’ll want something that is better optimized for those kinds of heavy processes. Not because it can’t do them but because another tool would be faster.

 

[1@@@]

the M2 MBA is even more powerful than the M1 MBA and is fully capable of pretty much any task you would throw at it. Certainly photo editing, even multiple photos and complex filters it handles with ease. The only limits it has are where some heavy processing tasks can exceed its thermal limits at which point it slows down by around 10-20%.

When doing their reviews, YouTube channels did processes like their Final Cut Pro 8K renders to test the performance. As we have seen a task like that will hit the limits and the MBA will slow down but will continue to do the job and will do it faster than the M1.

For some reason, some of those reviewers looks at this and called it out as a failure of the MBA and of Apple because of the ”extreme” heat and “dire“ slowdown. Some did tear downs where they looked at the heat spreader on the M2 and dismissed it as any kind of thermal control. One even saying it was just an RF shield. They said that it was thinner than the heat spreader that the M1 had. They ignored that the heat spreader on the M2 was bigger with a larger surface area to release heat and that it had a graphene thermal conductor attached to it.

It’s not clear why they had such a negative take on the M2 Air when it was faster than the M1 and was working as designed for a thin, light, portable laptop with great battery life. Somehow it became a failure as a laptop and of Apple’s engineering. Perhaps those kinds of headlines drive more traffic to sites that thrive on traffic?

When people here saw those reviews they posted how Apple had lost its way; how the M2 MBA was throttling like crazy like the old Intel MacBook line; that Apple should have put a fan into the MBA so that it never, ever throttled.

Others started posting the the MBA was not designed to do those kinds of tasks. That it was only for web browsing and word processing and other light tasks. That if someone wanted to do more, they should get a MBP.

As you know, neither of those takes are really true. The MBA is perfectly capable of doing the light tasks but it is also capable of doing more involved tasks like your photo editing, like programming, like video editing. And most people doing those tasks will be amazed at how quickly it does those tasks. The only caveat is that if you are doing the heavier tasks on a daily basis and if you need maximum performance while doing them, this is probably not the right tool for you. You’ll want something that is better optimized for those kinds of heavy processes. Not because it can’t do them but because another tool would be faster.

 

[1BadManVan]

the M2 MBA is even more powerful than the M1 MBA and is fully capable of pretty much any task you would throw at it. Certainly photo editing, even multiple photos and complex filters it handles with ease. The only limits it has are where some heavy processing tasks can exceed its thermal limits at which point it slows down by around 10-20%.

When doing their reviews, YouTube channels did processes like their Final Cut Pro 8K renders to test the performance. As we have seen a task like that will hit the limits and the MBA will slow down but will continue to do the job and will do it faster than the M1.

For some reason, some of those reviewers looks at this and called it out as a failure of the MBA and of Apple because of the ”extreme” heat and “dire“ slowdown. Some did tear downs where they looked at the heat spreader on the M2 and dismissed it as any kind of thermal control. One even saying it was just an RF shield. They said that it was thinner than the heat spreader that the M1 had. They ignored that the heat spreader on the M2 was bigger with a larger surface area to release heat and that it had a graphene thermal conductor attached to it.

It’s not clear why they had such a negative take on the M2 Air when it was faster than the M1 and was working as designed for a thin, light, portable laptop with great battery life. Somehow it became a failure as a laptop and of Apple’s engineering. Perhaps those kinds of headlines drive more traffic to sites that thrive on traffic?

When people here saw those reviews they posted how Apple had lost its way; how the M2 MBA was throttling like crazy like the old Intel MacBook line; that Apple should have put a fan into the MBA so that it never, ever throttled.

Others started posting the the MBA was not designed to do those kinds of tasks. That it was only for web browsing and word processing and other light tasks. That if someone wanted to do more, they should get a MBP.

As you know, neither of those takes are really true. The MBA is perfectly capable of doing the light tasks but it is also capable of doing more involved tasks like your photo editing, like programming, like video editing. And most people doing those tasks will be amazed at how quickly it does those tasks. The only caveat is that if you are doing the heavier tasks on a daily basis and if you need maximum performance while doing them, this is probably not the right tool for you. You’ll want something that is better optimized for those kinds of heavy processes. Not because it can’t do them but because another tool would be faster.

YouTubers that put out that kind of crap should get a letter from apples lawyers for spreading such fake news over this whole thing. You wanna call them out for the ssd downgrade on the base model? Go ahead. But some big tech reviewers really blew it out of proportion and painted such an ugly picture on such a capable machine.

Slowly you’re seeing them put out some more positive reviews when they actually use it for real world tasks. Magically it seems to do amazing again after spending weeks crapping all over it

Lost some faith in some of those channels after seeing all that. It’s funny that even with all the negativity, I still felt apple did such an awesome job that I bought my first ever MacBook.

Took awhile to sift through the bs I admit as I was already nervous to move to macOS. I probably would already have mine delivered by now if it wasn’t for all that. Took me one trip down to a Best Buy to test one out and I went home to place my custom order on one.

 

[ascender]

YouTubers that put out that kind of crap should get a letter from apples lawyers for spreading such fake news over this whole thing. You wanna call them out for the ssd downgrade on the base model? Go ahead. But some big tech reviewers really blew it out of proportion and painted such an ugly picture on such a capable machine.

That's just what the internet is these days though. You have to have a clickbait title along with a cheesy thumbnail preview image for your video on Youtube to get the hits.

Context? Who needs it. Everybody knows that you just have to insert the name of the latest Apple product along with some sensational headline which suggests its the new BEST THING EVER or WORST THING EVERY and you're good to go.

Off the back of these you get people re-posting opinions as facts on here and it just snowballs.

Then once the dust settles, actual people get the machines and post actual real world experiences and the whole thing calms down until the next new product comes along.

 

[unrigestered]

Context? Who needs it. Everybody knows that you just have to insert the name of the latest Apple product along with some sensational headline which suggests its the new BEST THING EVER or WORST THING EVERY and you're good to go.

you forgot the best one IMO: "STOP DOING THIS!! - DO THIS INSTEAD !!!!!!!!!!!"

only bad thing is nowadays you can't differentiate from good and bad channels anymore, before watching the actual content, since even "good" channels have adapted to these clickbait sh*t headlines

 

[Seanm87]

Ridiculous thread. If thermals are even a word in your head when buying a MacBook then you clearly need one with a fan Ala the pro.

 

[1@@@]

you forgot the best one IMO: "STOP DOING THIS!! - DO THIS INSTEAD !!!!!!!!!!!"

only bad thing is nowadays you can't differentiate from good and bad channels anymore, before watching the actual content, since even "good" channels have adapted to these clickbait sh*t headlines

My favourite is when they do a big, exaggerated, stupid-faced pose of pointing at whatever thing the video is about, combined with a bunch of arrow graphics also pointing at the thing, and the title saying what the thing is.

I think the next logical step here, is for youtubers to come over to our houses, physically grab our skulls and make us look in the right place on the graphic.

I for one don't want to misunderstand what they're trying to say.

 

[MK500]

I'm curious. Hundreds means 200+. 200+ tabs on multiple browsers... so about 50 tabs across 4 different browsers??? I can't imagine what requires 200 plus tabs open at the same time and how you'd handle all that on a 13.6inch screen. Is that workflow efficient? What does your wife do to need that many tabs? I'm not having a go, I'm honestly highly curious about the scenario that would require this situation. We all have our own workflows, so I'm just wondering what are the specifics of the scenario. If you don't want to say due to privacy of your wife's job, that's cool, but geez, you got my interest piqued...

She generally has Firefox and Safari running. Most of the tabs are open across many windows (a bunch of related tabs each) in Firefox. It's not the way I would work; or recommend working. But she does a lot of business/finance/travel research and multitasks a lot of projects (one window each full of tabs). Then she also has some tabs and windows open in Safari; but I'm not sure exactly what she is doing there. It's a secondary browser for her. Then she has her productivity apps open as well, and sometimes Photoshop. She runs Mojave to keep 32 bit support for some accounting apps and her old PS. It also is just a very stable OS that rarely needs a reboot.

I sometimes wonder how she even finds the right window among that many, but she moves through them very fast, and always seems to have whatever information people are asking her for at her fingertips.

I've found a surprising number of users work this way. I don't really get it either, but people have a lot of different ways of working. The first time I saw someone working this way I was surprised the machine wasn't just crawling to a standstill. But even her 2013 Air seems to handle it quite well. The RAM and CPU are top spec BTO from that year, so I'm sure happy we made that choice.

I've seen even stranger working methodologies in the earlier years of GUI. Like people who used their desktop as a literal visual desktop full of stacks of files and folders and found everything visually. Imagine hundreds of icons in various locations over and underneath each other. Looked like some kind of insane collage to any passerby, but it worked for them. And if anyone from IT moved even a single icon while fixing something they would often be extremely annoyed

These days auto-snap, screen resizing, and other automatic UI features has pretty much killed this way of working (things get moved around by the OS too often for it to work).

 

[InspectHerGadget]

Nonsense, all of what you are saying. Thermal capacities are set by the chip maker. There is always a max temp before shutdown (even iphones do this) and a max temp before throttling.

I think the reviewers are quite right to stress the MBA, yes it will throttle under a continuous workload but I think is should be an open issue at this point...the why of it getting to 108º which from what I have understood would be the absolute thermal limit of the CPU.

Apple may detune the MBA in the future via software upgrades but reviewers are quite right to call this out.

I understand people are sensitive if they have just spent a small fortune on one of these and missed the base model and spent more due to the slow SSD (fact not fiction).

Any early adopters have to put 100% faith in Apple engineers. I prefer to wait a while and see.

 

[nikhsub1]

I think the reviewers are quite right to stress the MBA, yes it will throttle under a continuous workload but I think is should be an open issue at this point...the why of it getting to 108º which from what I have understood would be the absolute thermal limit of the CPU.

Apple may detune the MBA in the future via software upgrades but reviewers are quite right to call this out.

I understand people are sensitive if they have just spent a small fortune on one of these and missed the base model and spent more due to the slow SSD (fact not fiction).

Any early adopters have to put 100% faith in Apple engineers. I prefer to wait a while and see.

Here's the thing, it isn't a 'pro' machine. If you have it render for hours on end, it's gonna throttle and possibly shut down. It isn't designed for that - the reviewers are mostly being obtuse in some of the things they are 'testing' with the Air. It's no secret that the air doesn't have active cooling, if you need sustained high cpu usage, the air is not the machine for it, period.