Should I buy the MBA M1 now?

[cygy2k]

Trade it in, or maybe even just eBay it off.

I had a 2020 Air with i7, 16GB, 512GB and did the trade-in around Christmas for the M1 Air with 8GB, 512GB and it's miles better. Just the fact I don't have to worry about putting it down on the couch, bed, blanket, etc and getting too hot or blocking the fan is amazing. I always baby my gadgets and for once I don't feel like I need to and find myself thus using it far more often. It is so much more responsive than the i7 ultra low power was by leaps and bounds.

If the 14" MBP comes out with an M1/M1X/M2 or whatever, I'll likely upgrade but not because of any shortcomings of the Air.

 

[fitcious]

I had a 2020 Air with i7, 16GB, 512GB and did the trade-in around Christmas for the M1 Air with 8GB, 512GB and it's miles better. Just the fact I don't have to worry about putting it down on the couch, bed, blanket, etc and getting too hot or blocking the fan is amazing. I always baby my gadgets and for once I don't feel like I need to and find myself thus using it far more often. It is so much more responsive than the i7 ultra low power was by leaps and bounds.

If the 14" MBP comes out with an M1/M1X/M2 or whatever, I'll likely upgrade but not because of any shortcomings of the Air.

The trade in value is crap right now for the machine ugh

 

[SaguaroSeven]

I had a 2020 Air with i7, 16GB, 512GB and did the trade-in around Christmas for the M1 Air with 8GB, 512GB and it's miles better. Just the fact I don't have to worry about putting it down on the couch, bed, blanket, etc and getting too hot or blocking the fan is amazing. I always baby my gadgets and for once I don't feel like I need to and find myself thus using it far more often. It is so much more responsive than the i7 ultra low power was by leaps and bounds.

If the 14" MBP comes out with an M1/M1X/M2 or whatever, I'll likely upgrade but not because of any shortcomings of the Air.

Very happy with M1, but would probably upgrade to 14" -- mostly because of extra ports -- whatever they might be!

 

[EuroChilli]

Short answer, yes, just do it, if you haven't already.

It just so happened that over the last few months my dear old 2011 MBP 13" has really been starting to finally show its age. So I decided now is the time and have been shopping around. I am as happy as a pig in $$it with my new MBA M1 which I just got last week. What's even better is it charges in the car! (using a Ugreen 24w USB-C cigarette charger from Amazon) However, considering you can watch movies for well over 12 hours on moderate screen brightness, you don't actually need to charge it that often.

Then there is the keyboard, screen res, sound quality....wow, just wow.

When it comes to 'excessive' writes/swap files, you first need to define exactly what excessive is. The M1 MBA is a little monster, but even then, it still has its limitations. So if you're a bona fide pro finalising hours of 4k footage every day, the Air is probably not for you. But for the average daily user, the M1 Air 8GB RAM is already more than enough. I considered the 16RAM, but could not justify the extra €320 it would cost. So yes, it does swap, but maybe 2GB a day, if I'm lucky. Internal storage is a bit of a moot point because external drives are cheap as chips, so I went for the 256GB, and it makes me think twice before I download/save anything. The junk I've collected on the 1TB internal of my MBP over the last 10 years is beyond me....

 

[slplss]

I really need to get a new laptop, being a lifelong windows user I really wanna try switch to Apple. Yet there are concerning issues that prevent me such as:

-MBA M1 owners reporting their laptop died and just will not turn on.
-SSD high writes. Been checking the below thread daily:

ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

I was wondering whether to do that as well! Thanks, will look into 8)

forums.macrumors.com

Yes, daily. For over a month.

Those two issues are the biggest concern for me.

What do you guys think?

It's like going over r/OLED on reddit and all you see are people having defects and issues with OLED TVs. While I have none. I believe they are the vocal minority. People with no issues stay away from forums and such.