I love my M2 MBA - perfect 13.6" screen, weight and size fits into my backpack.
I already have a 16" MBP that I don't use much due to the weight, size and battery life & high fan heat.
I originally pre-ordered a 14" M1 MBP. I didn't like it. Speakers on the unit I had were not very good in terms of top volume. Got a 16" MBP M1 Pro base. Returned it and got a 16" M1 Max MBP and stayed with that config for a while.
It was a beautiful machine in every way and I adored it BUT I had two issues. The weight was just ridiculous if you tried to actually use it like a laptop and the slick surfaces mean that it slides easily on surfaces which isn't good. After an hour on my lap it would be uncomfortable. I think it has to do with the distribution of weight on the MBP. I mean it is a solid laptop and perfect for a performance driven laptop. It was everything I wanted in a Pro MacBook I just didn't expect the ergonomics to be so bad for me. I also hated the blooming on the mini led. For 75%-80% of the time it is fine and beautiful but there are these odd situations where you get like a fog effect and it can be isolated to a small image or affect the entire screen. I really didn't like the effect when I saw it.
So I decided to go to the Apple Store and take a look at a M2 MacBook Air. I immediately fell in love with it but I had a lot of concerns if I was going to switch over from my MBP. Would I be happy with the performance of an 'Air"? Would I be happy with the much smaller screen? Would I be okay with the speaker downgrade and the loss of ports......And all of the people on MacRumors who constantly said how much better VALUE the MacBook Pro was over the M2 MacBook Air and I would be an idiot to even consider anything else. Despite all of that after testing the MBA in the store I was pretty confident I would be happy with it. At the time Apple was offering gift cards on purchases and I got an Edu discount. I decided to sell my 16" on Swappa and buy a BTO m2 MBA.
Man I was not expecting to love a laptop as much as I do the M2 MBA. It is lacking in a few key areas compared to the Pro's no doubt but that doesn't mean that what you get is bad or inferior it is just a different tech. The IPS 60hz display is actually really nice and surprisingly smooth with little tearing even when moving or scrolling. Of course a Pro motion or 120hz with the same display would be much better but what we have is not bad at all. If fact, I would rather deal with less contrast ratio than blooming but I am in the minority. The speakers are louder to my ears than the 14" MBP and although the specs do not show this to be true I think it has to do with the frequency response of the speakers and my age. If you are under 40 years old then you may not experience the same issue. But basically the Pro's are tuned with a lot of bass and low on the high end response so voices and other low sounds sound muted while on the air it is more tuned for miss and high end so you hear sounds more clearly even though the 14" has a higher max volume. The lack of ports is kind of a non issue since I have dongles from my previous 13" M1 MBP.
BUT what has really changed how I use a laptop is the FANLESS design. I should add a fan less design with some serious horsepower. When you thought of a MacBook Air from the Intel days it was a machine that could do basic tasks. It could not do anything at all intensive and graphics wise it was a joke. Doing video editing on an Air? Forget it. Having battery life over 6 hours SOT- forget it. So the air was a very restricted device but it was ultra light and portable for the time.
Now with m2 and m3 we have the power of a gaming cpu and decent integrated graphics without even needing a fan! Obviously for heavy sustained loads the air is simply not designed for but for burst loads it is perfect. For the kind of work I do I need speed in bursts. I don't do heavy sustained loads for more than 30 minutes or so. I bought the Pro to get performance I didn't really need or use. The M1 Max was a great CPU but not the most efficient even for m series. The heavy ram bandwidth was a battery hog. But if you needed to push that cpu for 2 hours the 16" would barely spin a fan. So the Pros are finally seriously made for actual 'Pro"s who use their devices to do tasks related to providing a finished product to a client and push their devices to the limit. I use my laptop for work but I don't do anything that isn't cpu bound and it doesn't ever push the cpu to its limits. When I had the 16" I realized I had paid for all this power I wasn't using.
When I got the Air the first thing that surprised me was the size of the screen. I didn't feel like it was too small. The performance was amazing. The speakers and display look and sound great. Battery life is insane. Being able to use the laptop anywhere without worrying about blocking vents or overheating the laptop. The weight is comfortable for hours at a time on my lap. The flexibility of the air is what makes it so special. You can push it and with a laptop cooler or frozen block with a towel and it acts almost as if it were actively cooled. But in day to day use there has never been a situation where my laptop has slowed down yet. As long as my performance is fast then I am happy. So I have a lot more flexibility and freedom on how and where I use my laptop. It isn't a burden to carry or use. It is fun.
Which is why the more I got to thinking about the 15" I decided that I am happy with the current size of my air. I am happy so far with the performance. I would love an M3 Air 13.6" and if the money Gods align and gift me with an M3 MBA I would be elated but I doubt I can afford to upgrade unless it would cost under $300. I doubt I could sell mine and buy a new one on the same config and get away only spending few hundred. So I think it would be better as others have said as to wait for some more significant changes either in design, components(OLED), or much better cpu and then upgrade.
It was really powerful for an "Air" at its time thanks to Ivy Bridge's ULV-CPUs getting a decent clock speed increase as well as HD4000 being a successful overhaul of the previous underwhelming HD3000.
