Thoughts on m2 Air for astrophotography processing? Personal hobby usage

[vwes]

As in the thread title, this is for personal hobby use. Those with experience I am wondering how the air would handle this as well as longevity. I am not a person who can or would replace a computer every few years or so. My intent is to try and have it for several years. For other basic usage I am not worrying about whether the computer will handle everything I would need. I am thinking also about the M1 basic pro, both refurbished. If I consider the pro route then I will likely hold off a few months until M2 Pro becomes available on Apples refurbished site.
Thanks in advance for opinions.

 

[raythompsontn]

M2 Airs are available on the refurbished site. I think that any of the current Apple laptops would work just fine. I use my MBA M2 for processing digital images without issue. Some things work better and faster than my desktop, I9, 64 gig, 4TB SSD.

 

[Wolfpup]

It might depend on what programs you need to run or that sort of thing, I have no idea what programs this would involve, and Apple doesn’t have obviously the same program support as Windows, but this may not be an issue for this.

The pro has active cooling, which if this is something that runs for a long time will make the pro have better performance, even with the same chip.

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

The only reason I might consider the 14” macbook pro in your case is the better display, for astrophotography the darker blacks and higher resolution might be nice

 

[RogerWilco]

INDIGO is supported on Mac OS, and most modern mounts and cameras connect wirelessly. On the processing side you shouldn’t have an issue either. If you absolutely need to run astro Windows apps, there is always Parallels but it really works best on a machine with 16GB.

 

[Kayakphotos]

I don't do astro, but I'm a photographer. I use an m1 air with 16gb of RAM and it works great in real world use. I do quite a bit of focus stacking for macro and landscape images using a Sony a7rIII with 42mp sensor. The stacking is the only time there is a delay, but it is still better than my previous computer (2011 iMac with 24GB ram, SSD swap and i5.) The computer works great with photoshop and the Nik suite. If I was a pro I'd probably go with a Macbook Pro with 32gb RAM, but as a hobbiest I like the portability of the air and cheaper price.