sky not falling

[Wokis]

Another article missing the point that the machine continues working very well when "throttling". Non-professionals.

...it looks like as a whole the thing is limited to 60-70% of it's potential under sustained load due to that air gap (rather than the heat spreader on the M1).

The air-gap annoys me even more. Just filling it with a thermal pad in there to move the heat about is giving you the same kind of gains that you would get from like four generations of intel chips. Why do this? I don't think anyone could argue extra 2-3 degrees on your lap under loads is a good trade off for this cost in performance. I think this decision was made to make the pseudo-pro TouchBar m2 look better in comparison. The M2 air was too good and they clipped it's wings.

If someone I knew was buying an M2 Air I would 100% force them to get 512GB. And if I personally was getting one I would also have to buy the thermal pad! And I hate that I have to say this or do this. I don't like new Apple products having these weird "don't buy this model" "don't get this config" choices hanging in the air.

M1 Air was easy - "buy whatever you want, they're all fine"

Apple has always, always, had an air gap between the initial heatspreader and the aluminium chassis. They usually top it off with insulating tape on the aluminium, even. The M1 did have an air gap as well. They are required to do so as the bottom plate would be too hot for this type of device. This goes for the low TDP M1 and M2's as well, if you put a pad there they get a LOT more toasty in the lap.

I know because I've tried the mod already (I am a sucker for all kinds of electronic mods), but I would recommend against it. I noticed almost no discernible performance gain in my renders. The greater concern is rather how much heat is getting transfered to radiate off closer to the battery.

I don't know where you're getting the "4 generations worth of gains" from. This chart?


maybe this one? Only 9 runs of cinebench, seems it hasn't completely heat soaked.


Ok, look, I found best/worst case scenario. Surely it's worth getting worried about ones warranty so you can fix this.


I find with that channel, that his words are eerily detached from his actual findings. It's better if he doesn't talk.

 

[canopic]

I don't know where you're getting the "4 generations worth of gains" from. This chart?

Yeah, I think I've been duped by that clickbait video a bit. Sigh.

"4 generations of gains" - I meant intel generations! Ok I guess I added hyperbole to the clickbait. But it was this chart from the video. 50% faster / 33% slower :-

As for what prompted me to reply initially. It was just the barrage of things he had that look really bad for the 256gb model:-

I know intuitively 8GB -> 16gb doesn't account for those kind of differences ever, at least on M1. So it piqued my interest. That said, as someone else pointed out, maybe an almost full 256gb SSD is the culprit more than the SSD speed itself.

 

[Wokis]

Yeah, I think I've been duped by that clickbait video a bit. Sigh.

"4 generations of gains" - I meant intel generations! Ok I guess I added hyperbole to the clickbait. But it was this chart from the video. 50% faster / 33% slower :-


View attachment 2040928

I guess in Intel generations it's all valid since I can't discern much of a difference between the 7980XE and the 10980XE

That's an interesting slide that I missed, though. Which of the videos at which timecode? I'd want to hear the context with the testing methodology.

 

[jdb8167]

I guess in Intel generations it's all valid since I can't discern much of a difference between the 7980XE and the 10980XE

That's an interesting slide that I missed, though. Which of the videos at which timecode? I'd want to hear the context with the testing methodology.

That one strikes me as reasonable. Exporting 50 42 MP photos isn't something that the MacBook Air is really designed for. It works but it'll be slower than a computer designed for sustained performance. Completely unsurprising.

 

[Wokis]

As for what prompted me to reply initially. It was just the barrage of things he had that look really bad for the 256gb model:-

View attachment 2040935

View attachment 2040936

I know intuitively 8GB -> 16gb doesn't account for those kind of differences ever, at least on M1. So it piqued my interest. That said, as someone else pointed out, maybe an almost full 256gb SSD is the culprit more than the SSD speed itself.

For the record I dislike what they did with the 256GB model. I don't think they should have one in their lineup, even, if they needed to gimp the speeds to make it in production. Base MBA M2 should have started with 512GB seeing as it's situated at a higher price point than the M1 MBA.

That one strikes me as reasonable. Exporting 50 42 MP photos isn't something that the MacBook Air is really designed for. It works but it'll be slower than a computer designed for sustained performance. Completely unsurprising.

I'm a bit suspicious that the thermal pad mod made such a great difference in that chart when it seemingly didn't anywhere else.

Maybe there are greater benefits for GPU-accelerated workloads (note: random theory off the top off my head.. Cinebench is 100% CPU while lightroom classic can be set-up to use GPU-acceleration)

 

[canopic]

That's an interesting slide that I missed, though. Which of the videos at which timecode? I'd want to hear the context with the testing methodology.

About 8 mins in.

About 8 mins in.

He's certainly done a great job of making some things look bad for the M2 (especially 256gb) in some circumstances. After we had the previous generation of M1 Airs that really didn't operate much different if you had 16gb, 8gb, 256gb 516gb. I never saw much if any variance in benchmarks.

 

[Wokis]

About 8 mins in.

About 8 mins in.

Ok he was glossing over it *really* quickly there But I found it in the original thermal pad mod video as well, so he didn't squeeze in a new chart from nowhere, at least. I think he may have just found the sweet spot of extra burst performance before the bottom plate is completely heat-soaked, a 2 minute long workload.

Well then, that does point towards there being scenarios where it shows clear benefit. If I had a 1M youtube channel I'd make a workload scenario deep-dive while bothering to take the pad on and off in a lot more scenarios just to get a better feel of when you benefit from a longer "turbo-window". But seeing as that thin bottom is a nightmare to remove and carefully jank back in place, I'm gonna leave it be.

 

[Tdude96]

I know he's looking at 256gb/8GB vs 512GB/16GB here. We really need a 16GB/256GB or 8GB/512GB benchmark for clarity.

This video compares the 16/256 & 8/512 configurations. This is on the M2 13" MBP, but is still a relevant and valid comparison for the M2 MBA in those configurations.

 

[Droid13]

I've noticed that it's become common amongst the "advice" given here that certain people tend to advocate what they need, not what the person seeking advice needs. It's unfortunate that more can't separarte their needs or desires from that of the people looking for an honest assessment of a given machine for their needs.

It's what comes naturally to folks. Annoying as hell but easy to fall into and I am sure we all have done / will do it; much harder to place yourself in someone else's shoes based on a random internet post.

After watching that video though? Seems hamstrung, badly at times.

[...]

The air-gap annoys me even more.

I think this is more about how the design of the MacBook Air is balanced in terms of size, weight, battery life and raw power - different mixes lead to, in order of increasing maximum power under sustained load, the MBA, MBP 13", MBP 14" and MBP 16"...

 

[sjperformance]

This video compares the 16/256 & 8/512 configurations. This is on the M2 13" MBP, but is still a relevant and valid comparison for the M2 MBA in those configurations.

Art videos are better. He is more biased and full of knowledge.

 

[Mcdevidr]

good article on macworld about throttling/overheating on the M2 air. makes it's point well; that the M2 air is, simply, the next step in the evolution of that model.

but... why would i take the word of a reputable, long-established source over a kid on youtube?

(and the answer is: i would) 👍

Seems like a dig on Maxtech. They are not kids. They make money by doing what they do. Not like the rest of the world isn’t in the same crap show. They supplied some interesting comparisons and what not. Take from their videos what you can. I’ve found them useful. If one falls victim to clickbait stuff then thats on them. I mean there is a reason they used the 10 core gpu version for gaming it performs better even under throttling like notebook check said in their review. Anyways to some up my statement and everyone elses i offer one word. Whatever.

 

[fisherking]

Seems like a dig on Maxtech. They are not kids. They make money by doing what they do. Not like the rest of the world isn’t in the same crap show. They supplied some interesting comparisons and what not. Take from their videos what you can. I’ve found them useful. If one falls victim to clickbait stuff then thats on them. I mean there is a reason they used the 10 core gpu version for gaming it performs better even under throttling like notebook check said in their review. Anyways to some up my statement and everyone elses i offer one word. Whatever.

not at all a dig on anyone specifically! it's just a general observation... that i stand by.

 

[Toratek]

Meanwhile, in the real world, where work gets done, no one cares. The M2 MBA is an extremely useful tool that also happens to be completely silent, which can be a very big deal in a room full of quiet people watching a presentation.

 

[kasakka]

Meanwhile, in the real world, where work gets done, no one cares. The M2 MBA is an extremely useful tool that also happens to be completely silent, which can be a very big deal in a room full of quiet people watching a presentation.

Forget the room full of people, I'd love for my Macbook Pro to just stay silent as my 2019 Intel is blasting its fans doing exactly nothing but having an external monitor connected...

For me the big drawbacks of the M2 Air are that the base spec is pretty miserly. No laptop should come with 256 GB SSD these days when the OS alone eats a good chunk of that rather than leaving it all for user storage. The upgrades to a more respectable 512 GB / 16 GB RAM are also priced excessively high, as Apple always does. The limitation to one external screen is also very annoying and for me also the dealbreaker limitation.

I'm still considering picking up a M2 at some point if its price goes down, but more as a replacement for an iPad Pro as I've decided the iPad Pro is dead to me - too slow iPad OS progress, gating features behind specific models and more.

 

[Ethosik]

The 256 GB SSD is undoubtably slower in sequential writes because it uses a single flash module instead of two so misses out on some parallelism. But apparently much of the slowdowns the MaxTech has been showing is because the 256 GB drive he is using is mostly full. You lose a lot of performance on an SSD when space gets below a certain threshold because the SSD controller has to do garbage collection to find empty blocks.

For most uses you care about random reads and writes. Those writes will be highly impacted by how full the SSD is. If you can't keep 50 GB or so available either get a larger SSD or expect some slowdowns.

And this precisely is why you need to be extra cautious on storage. Does 256 still have uses? Yes. For the last 10 years my parent Mac only had a max of 90GB used. So the new M1 iMac we got them is still 256.

My bare bones test system is using a whopping 70 GB of 256.

 

[fisherking]

And this precisely is why you need to be extra cautious on storage. Does 256 still have uses? Yes. For the last 10 years my parent Mac only had a max of 90GB used. So the new M1 iMac we got them is still 256.

My bare bones test system is using a whopping 70 GB of 256.

after 6 years, i had 100GB used on my 256GB macbook (i archive a lot of work to an external). we need what we need, use what we have, and life goes on...

 

[generationfourth]

after 6 years, i had 100GB used on my 256GB macbook (i archive a lot of work to an external). we need what we need, use what we have, and life goes on...

Back in 2015 I ended up with a MBP with only 256gb of storage. I’m a designer/photographer with a ton of files and I got along just fine. iCloud optimization helped a lot, and I had a reasonably fast TB drive.

Nowadays it’s even easier as the speed of external drives are much faster and cheaper. A lot of my apps/programs are now cloud based- heck even adobe I can have my whole photo library and all my files in the cloud taking up 0 HD space (obviously there are other costs, but with careful strategy I make good use of the included 100gb in my adobe plan).

It’s shocking how little storage I use nowadays.

On a desktop machine I’d never upgrade storage as the stationary setup is not annoying at all with external drives. On a portable- 512 is doable, 1gb is probably all I’d ever need. I could see the average user doing just fine with 256gb nowadays.

 

[generationfourth]

Another article missing the point that the machine continues working very well when "throttling". Non-professionals.

Apple has always, always, had an air gap between the initial heatspreader and the aluminium chassis. They usually top it off with insulating tape on the aluminium, even. The M1 did have an air gap as well. They are required to do so as the bottom plate would be too hot for this type of device. This goes for the low TDP M1 and M2's as well, if you put a pad there they get a LOT more toasty in the lap.

I know because I've tried the mod already (I am a sucker for all kinds of electronic mods), but I would recommend against it. I noticed almost no discernible performance gain in my renders. The greater concern is rather how much heat is getting transfered to radiate off closer to the battery.

I don't know where you're getting the "4 generations worth of gains" from. This chart?
View attachment 2040922

maybe this one? Only 9 runs of cinebench, seems it hasn't completely heat soaked.
View attachment 2040921

Ok, look, I found best/worst case scenario. Surely it's worth getting worried about ones warranty so you can fix this.
View attachment 2040917

I find with that channel, that his words are eerily detached from his actual findings. It's better if he doesn't talk.

Yes the thermal tape transfers heat to the bottom of the case and to other parts of the machine like the battery. The battery can in turn swell from the extra heat. If it were a viable option apple would’ve done it.

 

[Ethosik]

after 6 years, i had 100GB used on my 256GB macbook (i archive a lot of work to an external). we need what we need, use what we have, and life goes on...

Exactly. I have a 1TB M1 Mac Mini, 2TB 16” MacBook Pro, 4TB Mac Studio, 12 TB Windows desktop, 256GB windows laptop, 256GB 2010 Mac Pro (which is SATA 2 speeds BTW).

 

[Tagbert]

Controversy sells. It's all about clicks. We live in a click society, but I'd like to think that most people can see through it and rationalize the Air's place in the world. It's an awesome machine. I'd be all over it if I needed a ~13 inch screen laptop.

I don’t know. I’ve seen several people on this forum posting that they were planning to get a new MBA but now are worried because they heard it throttles. Since they already hate the “throttling” on their older Intel macbook, they don’t want to get another one that “throttles”.

When we see that we explain to them that this is only throttling under special circumstances, not on a daily basis like an older laptop. Still, how many people saw those youtube videos or the pinecones posting about the youtube reviews and just got turned off without posting any questions?

 

[Tdude96]

I don’t know. I’ve seen several people on this forum posting that they were planning to get a new MBA but now are worried because they heard it throttles. Since they already hate the “throttling” on their older Intel macbook, they don’t want to get another one that “throttles”.

When we see that we explain to them that this is only throttling under special circumstances, not on a daily basis like an older laptop. Still, how many people saw those youtube videos or the pinecones posting about the youtube reviews and just got turned off without posting any questions?

That had me worried. There was so much talk about throttling I started re-thinking my plan to purchase. I wound up really delving into the "problem" before continuing. Some people might not, either deciding to wait for the next model or deciding to pony up more cash to buy a larger form factor they may not want.

 

[Toratek]

My experience with the machine tells me that the vast majority of the YouTube shills have imposed a great disservice to their viewers.

 

[Droid13]

When we see that we explain to them that this is only throttling under special circumstances, not on a daily basis like an older laptop. Still, how many people saw those youtube videos or the pinecones posting about the youtube reviews and just got turned off without posting any questions?

If it helps anyone reading this:

My 2013 MBP hovers around the 60C mark doing what I would class as normal work (up to a dozen Safari tabs, some music/audiobook, Teams, Outlook, VMWare Horizon) and occasionally ramps up to 85C so that I can enjoy the soothing hiss of the fans.

Doing the same work on my MBA M2, the device is hovering around the 30C mark and occasionally ramps up to 35C.

The specs of both machines are in the signature line.

Note: If my job involved editing down hours of high resolution video and audio footage then exporting the same over and over, I would worry about the suitability of the MBA (and at that point I would skip past 13" and 14" to jump up to an MBP 16"). But it doesn't. So I have an MBA.

 

[Barham]

Back in 2015 I ended up with a MBP with only 256gb of storage. I’m a designer/photographer with a ton of files and I got along just fine. iCloud optimization helped a lot, and I had a reasonably fast TB drive.

Nowadays it’s even easier as the speed of external drives are much faster and cheaper. A lot of my apps/programs are now cloud based- heck even adobe I can have my whole photo library and all my files in the cloud taking up 0 HD space (obviously there are other costs, but with careful strategy I make good use of the included 100gb in my adobe plan).

It’s shocking how little storage I use nowadays.

On a desktop machine I’d never upgrade storage as the stationary setup is not annoying at all with external drives. On a portable- 512 is doable, 1gb is probably all I’d ever need. I could see the average user doing just fine with 256gb nowadays.

I use and love computers more than literally anyone I've ever met (with the one exception in "use" being my school's tech director) and my new M2 Air has 66GB on it right now. That's mostly because I don't game on Macs, don't do video or pro photo work, though I do voice over work with many audio files of various sizes. However, iCloud optimization means that my new machine isn't keeping any of those old audio projects on the device itself until I need them. And my new projects will get shuffled off in the background when the computer needs more space.

If it doesn't, I can just dump that whole folder to iCloud-only by removing the downloads.

I will say that I expect this to be my last 256GB notebook, but we'll see how that goes in a few years (I'm hoping to get 4 out of this machine).

The comparison video above has certainly got me feeling better about my purchase (16GB RAM, 256GB Storage) because to my general use, it feels perceivably faster at everything than my M1 Air.

 

[generationfourth]

I use and love computers more than literally anyone I've ever met (with the one exception in "use" being my school's tech director) and my new M2 Air has 66GB on it right now. That's mostly because I don't game on Macs, don't do video or pro photo work, though I do voice over work with many audio files of various sizes. However, iCloud optimization means that my new machine isn't keeping any of those old audio projects on the device itself until I need them. And my new projects will get shuffled off in the background when the computer needs more space.

If it doesn't, I can just dump that whole folder to iCloud-only by removing the downloads.

I will say that I expect this to be my last 256GB notebook, but we'll see how that goes in a few years (I'm hoping to get 4 out of this machine).

The comparison video above has certainly got me feeling better about my purchase (16GB RAM, 256GB Storage) because to my general use, it feels perceivably faster at everything than my M1 Air.

Yes! The other thing I forgot to mention is I no longer have 100-1,000s gb of media anymore. Everything is streamed!