M2 Air Disappointing Thermal Design

[russell_314]

What is the benefit of not having a fan ?

As many have said no dust but even a quiet fan isn't as quiet as no fan. Also for those who like to set their laptop on the bed you don't have to worry about blocking the vents. On my new Air I was watching YouTube and for some reason the thought of am I blocking the vents came into my head... Then I realized no vents to block. I've done this on my gaming laptop and it was not happy 🤣

 

[netnative]

It is rumored that Apple could adopt a vapor chamber thermal system for the higher-end iPhone 14 models that are expected to be announced in September. I hope that it is so. But it would be ironic after having released in July a redesigned “supercharged” MacBook Air without even an ordinary heat spreader relying only on thermal paste and graphite tape to dissipate heat.

 

[EnigmaticZee]

Except that the M1 MBA was capable of FAR more than that. It can do it all. The worst throttling is 8% over the Pro. That is why people are disappointed. I can do anything needed, any workflow, with the MBA and not blink. It just might take longer. So, the M2 MBA should be able to do that but 18% faster? Instead it appears that trying to push the M1 that much further resulted in a thermal issue.

Edit: here is what I mean:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/qglp1u

https://towardsdatascience.com/apples-new-m1-chip-is-a-machine-learning-beast-70ca8bfa6203

MacBook Air M1 vs RTX 3090 Beast Rig For Editing Video

https://sundaysounds.com/blogs/news/gear-tutorial-2021-macbook-air-worship-keys-rig

There are soooo many more links. The M1 MBA was revolutionary. It's still amazing.

As I said, it is capable but it is not made for that. 14" and 16". Any fanless laptop at this point in time will not work at full strength under sustained load simple as that!

 

[Apple_Robert]

Look, I am not defending on Apple's behalf as to how this M2 Air is (too) inefficient in heat dissipation. In fact I think they aimed too low.

But my above statement on fanless design was more in a general computing point of view, where passive cooling has its place when power consumption and volume are a premium, which is the case on a thin and light laptop.

There is no actual proof the heat dissipation is insufficient.

 

[Chancha]

There is no actual proof the heat dissipation is insufficient.

Inefficient to a certain use case. Which is to be expected for a low end machine but then on the M1 Air this was not as drastic.

( I said inefficient in a more physical way, I didn’t say insufficient in a matter of fact way)

 

[fakestrawberryflavor]

These might be unpopular opinions but:
1) The Air is for users who won't even notice this kinda thermal throttling because they are just web browsers and music listeners and word processor typers. And if you are expecting something harder and sustained, you already know enough to look up to a MBP or something else honestly.

2) The chip runs super cool for the performance it gets, not really even needing a heatsink/heatpipe/vaporchamber/fan. The fact it can fire up and do anything at all without a cooler is already pretty impressive. Sure it can get to 108C or whatever with aggressive things like Cinebench, but that is not the intended use case for a device like this, and honestly 108c with no heatsink is crazy good. As a PC Gamer and PC builder, any Intel or AMD chip without a Heatsink will kill itself in minutes. The fact M2 can operate in all scenarios without dying is impressive IMO.

 

[Aka757]

These might be unpopular opinions but:
1) The Air is for users who won't even notice this kinda thermal throttling because they are just web browsers and music listeners and word processor typers. And if you are expecting something harder and sustained, you already know enough to look up to a MBP or something else honestly.

2) The chip runs super cool for the performance it gets, not really even needing a heatsink/heatpipe/vaporchamber/fan. The fact it can fire up and do anything at all without a cooler is already pretty impressive. Sure it can get to 108C or whatever with aggressive things like Cinebench, but that is not the intended use case for a device like this, and honestly 108c with no heatsink is crazy. As a PC Gamer and PC builder, any Intel or AMD chip without a Heatsink will kill itself in minutes. The fact M2 can operate in all scenarios without dying is impressive IMO.

Couldn't agree with you more. I was pretty surprised at all the YouTubers saying how bad the thermal performance is, and completely neglecting to talk about who the target demographic is for the MBA and why thermal performance will not even matter to this group. Only a few YouTubers were talking some sense, like AppleInsider, MobileTechReview, and MKBHD. Surprised to see the same sort of hoopla from a lot of users on here as well, I would think the MacRumors audience would kinda get that this is not a professional-grade laptop, and 90% of the buyers of this will do nothing more than listen to music, watch movies, write essays, check emails, browse the internet, etc.

 

[fakestrawberryflavor]

Couldn't agree with you more. I was pretty surprised at all the YouTubers saying how bad the thermal performance is, and completely neglecting to talk about who the target demographic is for the MBA and why thermal performance will not even matter to this group. Only a few YouTubers were talking some sense, like AppleInsider, MobileTechReview, and MKBHD. Surprised to see the same sort of hoopla from a lot of users on here as well, I would think the MacRumors audience would kinda get that this is not a professional-grade laptop, and 90% of the buyers of this will do nothing more than listen to music, watch movies, write essays, check emails, browse the internet, etc.

I think it's important as a standard suite of tests to do a temperature test and throttling test, noting wrong with reporting facts. But I agree it should be married with some context for a complete and holistic picture for the audience or consumer of that content. I can't speak to if this was or was not happening, as I have not watched everyone's reviews of the product, for I am not in the market for the M2 MBA - but wanted to get a general idea of performance because I am hoping to pick up the upcoming unannounced M2 iPad Pro.

 

[MK500]

The Air is for users who won't even notice this kinda thermal throttling because they are just web browsers and music listeners and word processor typers. And if you are expecting something harder and sustained, you already know enough to look up to a MBP or something else honestly.

This seems to be a pretty popular opinion (in this thread at least). My concern is that you are basically describing a chromebook. Do you see the Air as a chromebook competitor?

The MacBook Air is quite premium at $1200 (or really $1400 with the highly recommended 512GB). Nothing in Apple’s marketing will lead users to think this machine should only be used for web browsing and word processing.

 

[Aka757]

This seems to be a pretty popular opinion (in this thread at least). My concern is that you are basically describing a chromebook. Do you see the Air as a chromebook competitor?

The MacBook Air is quite premium at $1200 (or really $1400 with the highly recommended 512GB). Nothing in Apple’s marketing will lead users to think this machine should only be used for web browsing and word processing.

I see the MBA is a more capable Chromebook (as in, it's possible to do some light / infrequent photo editing and video editing, even if that's not its intended primary use case). But regardless, regardless of whether Apple positions and prices it as a Chromebook competitor or not, the fact of the matter is this is Apple's best-selling laptop, and that is how the vast majority of users will be using this machine. I would also argue that the purpose of marketing is not to inform users of what the laptop should be used for, but to sell the laptop. I'm thinking they show a variety of use cases to show buyers that it can be used for different things, but that is purely to attract a wider audience, and not to prove a point that it is capable of replacing a professional-grade machine.

 

[fakestrawberryflavor]

This seems to be a pretty popular opinion (in this thread at least). My concern is that you are basically describing a chromebook. Do you see the Air as a chromebook competitor?

The MacBook Air is quite premium at $1200 (or really $1400 with the highly recommended 512GB). Nothing in Apple’s marketing will lead users to think this machine should only be used for web browsing and word processing.

Agree its a premium price, but because its a 'Luxury' brand like Apple. Regardless of real dollars, the air is still their cheapest device. Their cheapest device is meant to do the cheapest tasks. No artificial limitation about what a user should or should not do with their machine, but realistically, this is how it is perceived. If you want to do more, you need to spend more. Pay to play.

Its not what I'm pushing for and not my belief that it should be this way, but it is how it is.

 

[MK500]

I would also argue that the purpose of marketing is not to inform users of what the laptop should be used for, but to sell the laptop.

Certainly true. I was speaking more in terms of market segment targeting. My sense is that Apple is going after the premium end of the $1000 general purpose laptop market with the Air vs. the chromebook market.

 

[netnative]

These might be unpopular opinions but:
1) The Air is for users who won't even notice this kinda thermal throttling because they are just web browsers and music listeners and word processor typers. And if you are expecting something harder and sustained, you already know enough to look up to a MBP or something else honestly.

2) The chip runs super cool for the performance it gets, not really even needing a heatsink/heatpipe/vaporchamber/fan. The fact it can fire up and do anything at all without a cooler is already pretty impressive. Sure it can get to 108C or whatever with aggressive things like Cinebench, but that is not the intended use case for a device like this, and honestly 108c with no heatsink is crazy. As a PC Gamer and PC builder, any Intel or AMD chip without a Heatsink will kill itself in minutes. The fact M2 can operate in all scenarios without dying is impressive IMO.

The M2 MacBook Air is an enchanting thin and light laptop. So much so that I have been considering a switch from my 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook even at the loss of XDR and Pro-Motion. I doubt that how I would use the M2 MacBook Air would result in thermal throttling. But that is besides the point.

The issue is that Apple could have provided the redesigned MacBook Air with better thermal management, but did not. Apple certainly has the engineering prowess to do it. Also, Apple could have installed faster SSDs, but did not. It appears that Apple deliberately curtailed the M2 MacBook Air. Is the M2 MacBook Air a good laptop? Arguably, yes. Could Apple have done better? Absolutely.

One more thing. Apple's marketing of the M2 MacBook Air appeals to power users and not just to "web browsers and music listeners and word processor typers." Apple described the M2 MacBook Air as "Supercharged" and told potential users "Don't take it lightly." Moreover, Apple stated that it is "[d]esigned to dramatically speed up video workflows" and has "even more performance" to handle "intensive workloads" --not light, but intensive.

 

[MacStreamer]

MacBook Air wasn’t designed for people who run those kind of workloads. The MacBook Pro is.

Most people rarely if at all do those kind of sustained workloads. Apple recognizes this and made a laptop that fits their needs very well. All while having zero fan noise.

While I agree that it’s good to be critical of Apple when they screw up, it doesn’t really make sense to criticize the Air for being bad at things it wasn’t designed for.

That $1199 starting price might cause some people to think it would handle those kind of workloads.

 

[netnative]

That $1199 starting price might cause some people to think it would handle those kind of workloads.

Apple appealed to power users by describing the M2 MacBook Air as "Supercharged" and telling them "Don't take it lightly." Moreover, Apple stated that the M2 MacBook Air is "[d]esigned to dramatically speed up video workflows" and has "even more performance" to handle "intensive workloads."

 

[fakestrawberryflavor]

It is very clear that Apple purposefully is segmenting their product line, as any normal company would do. Nerf what's possible to still get away with it, provide incremental step up options so consumers are conflicted enough to consider a more expensive option.

Business strategy, by design.

 

[nikhsub1]

man you guys are just waaaaayyyyyy overthinking this. The air is fanless. ipads and iphones are fanless. 99% of the folks who use a laptop do word processing, email, web browsing, maybe light photo editing etc. The air is more than fine for all of that. In fact, the only folks that would or should go to a pro machine, besides the obvious better screen, more available cores/ram etc, are people who do prolonged rendering and super prolonged high cpu/gpu tasks.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Inefficient to a certain use case. Which is to be expected for a low end machine but then on the M1 Air this was not as drastic.

( I said inefficient in a more physical way, I didn’t say insufficient in a matter of fact way)

The fact that it throttles is not a defect. The only thing lacking with the new M2 is a better price.

 

[turbineseaplane]

These might be unpopular opinions but:
1) The Air is for users who won't even notice this kinda thermal throttling because they are just web browsers and music listeners and word processor typers. And if you are expecting something harder and sustained, you already know enough to look up to a MBP or something else honestly.

Then Apple should not market and benchmark it like this and then tout the results in this way... nor show all the screenshots of folks using various audio and video editing programs either..

Can you tell Apple that?
Look at all the things they highlight in their advertising benchmarks on the MBA M2 page..

View attachment 2031792

 

[clevins]

I see the MBA is a more capable Chromebook (as in, it's possible to do some light / infrequent photo editing and video editing, even if that's not its intended primary use case). But regardless, regardless of whether Apple positions and prices it as a Chromebook competitor or not, the fact of the matter is this is Apple's best-selling laptop, and that is how the vast majority of users will be using this machine. I would also argue that the purpose of marketing is not to inform users of what the laptop should be used for, but to sell the laptop. I'm thinking they show a variety of use cases to show buyers that it can be used for different things, but that is purely to attract a wider audience, and not to prove a point that it is capable of replacing a professional-grade machine.

This is an idiotic take. The M1 Air I'm typing this on is faster than the right before it generation of Intel Macbook Pros.

Some of you need to get over the simplistic viewpoint that there are high end power users and people who do nothing but surf the web and listen to music. It's embarrassing to read this and think that an adult wrote it.

The Air can apply quite a lot of computing power to tasks, especially if those tasks are bursty in nature vs needing very high resources for a very long time... and guess what, that describes quite a lot of pro uses. But you'll ignore this and maintain your simplistic, uninformed worldview that has room for only 2 camps.

 

[nikhsub1]

This is an idiotic take. The M1 Air I'm typing this on is faster than the right before it generation of Intel Macbook Pros.

Some of you need to get over the simplistic viewpoint that there are high end power users and people who do nothing but surf the web and listen to music. It's embarrassing to read this and think that an adult wrote it.

The Air can apply quite a lot of computing power to tasks, especially if those tasks are bursty in nature vs needing very high resources for a very long time... and guess what, that describes quite a lot of pro uses. But you'll ignore this and maintain your simplistic, uninformed worldview that has room for only 2 camps.

This ^^

For SUSTAINED max CPU usage the Air is not the proper machine.

 

[Aka757]

This is an idiotic take. The M1 Air I'm typing this on is faster than the right before it generation of Intel Macbook Pros.

Some of you need to get over the simplistic viewpoint that there are high end power users and people who do nothing but surf the web and listen to music. It's embarrassing to read this and think that an adult wrote it.

The Air can apply quite a lot of computing power to tasks, especially if those tasks are bursty in nature vs needing very high resources for a very long time... and guess what, that describes quite a lot of pro uses. But you'll ignore this and maintain your simplistic, uninformed worldview that has room for only 2 camps.

What point are you trying to make? I feel like we are ultimately making the same point. The M2 MBA is capable of doing some light productivity? I don't disagree; I said as much in my post.

My point is not about what kind of users there are in the market, it's more that most folks that buy this thing will be from the demographic that does nothing more than web browsing, watching movies, etc. Clearly there is a huge middle ground of users who will dabble in a bit of productivity, but still use this machine casually. I get that. The point is, the demographic that will do nothing more than simple tasks is enormous, and it is extremely profitable to make a device that caters to that use-case. Additionally, Apple is obviously making their devices to cater to a variety of consumers, given the variety of devices they have and their differing price points. They are very deliberate in their decisions regarding pricing and performance, and it is all designed to target very specific segments of the market. The fact that the MacBook Air is their best selling laptop, shows that they know exactly what the demographic of their buyers is, and they do a good job in selling to that demographic. Doesn't mean no one can or should use airs for anything other than simple tasks; it just means the vast, vast majority of buyers will not. Think about it: if Apple ends up selling 5 million units of this M2 MacBook Air, even if only 5% of buyers do any type of productivity, that's still 250,000 people, not exactly a small number. I really think most people are both overestimating how many people do productivity tasks on a fanless machine, and underestimating how many people are buying MacBook Airs.

 

[karen999]

I see the MBA is a more capable Chromebook (as in, it's possible to do some light / infrequent photo editing and video editing, even if that's not its intended primary use case). But regardless, regardless of whether Apple positions and prices it as a Chromebook competitor or not, the fact of the matter is this is Apple's best-selling laptop, and that is how the vast majority of users will be using this machine. I would also argue that the purpose of marketing is not to inform users of what the laptop should be used for, but to sell the laptop. I'm thinking they show a variety of use cases to show buyers that it can be used for different things, but that is purely to attract a wider audience, and not to prove a point that it is capable of replacing a professional-grade machine.

Chromebook? You are severely underestimating how average people are using the Air. I know tons of people using their Air for development, music production, photo editing and light video editing. At the end of day, all of us here are going to buy many more Apple products. I don't see why holding Apple to a high standard is worse than making excuse for every cost cutting they made.

 

[Aka757]

Chromebook? You are severely underestimating how average people are using the Air. I know tons of people using their Air for development, music production, photo editing and light video editing. At the end of day, all of us here are going to buy many more Apple products. I don't see why holding Apple to a high standard is worse than making excuse for every cost cutting they made.

I've never had a Chromebook so perhaps that wasn't the best wording, I'll admit.

If some people use an Air for those kinds of uses, that's great. I still maintain that the vast majority of people that buy this machine are not doing any of those things. Remember, anecdotal evidence doesn't really matter when you are talking about a device that is as popular as this is. You don't sell millions of laptops by exclusively targeting those users; you sell millions by targeting an average consumer that just needs a laptop to get basic stuff done.

In no way am I defending cost cutting choices that Apple has made, not sure how that came across in my post. My commentary is simply regarding the market segment they are targeting.

 

[yitwail]

I see the MBA is a more capable Chromebook (as in, it's possible to do some light / infrequent photo editing and video editing, even if that's not its intended primary use case).

I don't see it that way. As far as I can tell, Chromebooks only display a maximum of 2 windows at a time, and I regularly use more than 2, and it's inefficient having to adjust my work flow to accommodate this OS limitation. For the same reason, I wouldn't switch from MBA to an iPad Pro.

Another area where an MBA is more capable is local storage. I have 1TB of it, and that's overkill, but point is I can access files in the absence of a working internet connection, and have it backed up to an external SSD, and it's all available more or less instantly.

Then there's also the convenience of macOS integration with iOS. It's handy being able to answer the phone from the computer when I can't find the phone. And being a web developer, it's very useful being able to use desktop Safari Web Inspector on an iPhone Safari browser tab.

This post will be TLDR if I keep writing about all the things I do regularly, but here's a list of apps I use daily:
VS Code, Slack, Discord, Edge, Chrome, Safari, Terminal, Upwork (that's a freelancing site time tracking app that's not available in ChromeOS). There are 3 browsers because a web developer has to support all 3, and probably Firefox as well. Some other apps I use frequently are Photoshop Elements, Preview, Pages, Cyberduck (FTP), iOS Simulator, and it's not uncommon that I have to use 3 apps simultaneously on a given task.