I just wanted to share this for anyone who is on the fence about whether they should consider switching to the 15' M2 MBA from a 2016-2018 era 15" MBP. I had used a 2018 15' 6 core i7 16gb RAM 512 SSD Radeon 560 from (mid 2018 model) from late 2018 up until recently. I use my laptop religiously for all sorts of things including work and streaming and school (Basic STEM stuff, mediu size data sets in excel, ppt). The 15' MBP is perfectly serviceable but it was clearly slowing down to a noticeable level along with some minor physical wear. I didnt NEED to upgrade, but I wanted something faster after 5 good years of hard service (I use my laptop 10-12 hrs daily) because I just started to study to take the MCAT exam and thought it would be a good time to upgrade.
I was stuck in the dilemma of wondering if i should have upgraded to the 15'MBA or either the 14/16' MBP. I ruled out the 14 inch because I simply could not justify having a smaller screen as I am a window crammer and im mused to 15' screen now. I was worried that if I chose the MBA 15 then I wouldnt have "pro" capabilities" and that I should just keep my 2018 a little longer. I was afraid that I would no longer have a "pro" level device". Keep in mind that the MBP 15 i had was speced above avg, it had the 2.6ghz CPU (vs 2.2) and Radeon 560X. Knowing this i did not expect a performance upgrade when getting a 15' MBA M2.
It turns out that the 15 MBA M2, which I configured with 24 gb ram because I enjoy the flexibility of not having to close programs or running many (75+) tabs on firefox when I do research for grad school is faster than the 2018 MBP, almost incomprehensibly so. It felt like I had just upgradded from a 2010 notebook. Every app opens almost instantly. The responsiveness of the system has no perceptible lag time AT ALL, i am not even exaggeration. I tried the MBA 15 M2 alongside the old 2018 mbp opening the same apps, files, etc, and the MBA absolutely destroyed it. It has gotton to the point where I dont think I could manage using my old 2018 MBP knowing how slow it really was. Its a backuip computer I use if i need an extra screen at this point.
With regards to RAM, again I am a (serious) tab hog because I am a little neurotic about closing things before they are done. I had appx 75 tabs open in Firefox, imesssage, mail, and notes app and had ZERO swap. With the MBP 16gb RAM I would routinely have tens of gb of swap used even after closing out of programs. I know it might sound crazy but sometimes I legitimately have 150 tabs open split between 4 spaces. Is it normal practice? No. But it is however my use case so I work around that as a need and decided to splurge on the 24gb RAM.
The Macbook Air 15' will crush any 2016-2018 MBP even though its not called "Pro". I am very happy with my decision not to consider the 16' MBP because its honestly to heavy for a student and medical assistant worker to carry with them. Its lighter but the dimensions are almost exactly the same as the 2018 era MBP 15, and said dimensions were EXACTLY what i was looking for. I think kits the perfect size for a laptop in general (for me at least). That being said, my workflow does not demand any greater computing power than the 15'MBA gives me, but this doesnt your use case might legitimate require a 14/16 MBP.
That is my input, please feel free to ask any questions.
I was stuck in the dilemma of wondering if i should have upgraded to the 15'MBA or either the 14/16' MBP. I ruled out the 14 inch because I simply could not justify having a smaller screen as I am a window crammer and im mused to 15' screen now. I was worried that if I chose the MBA 15 then I wouldnt have "pro" capabilities" and that I should just keep my 2018 a little longer. I was afraid that I would no longer have a "pro" level device". Keep in mind that the MBP 15 i had was speced above avg, it had the 2.6ghz CPU (vs 2.2) and Radeon 560X. Knowing this i did not expect a performance upgrade when getting a 15' MBA M2.
It turns out that the 15 MBA M2, which I configured with 24 gb ram because I enjoy the flexibility of not having to close programs or running many (75+) tabs on firefox when I do research for grad school is faster than the 2018 MBP, almost incomprehensibly so. It felt like I had just upgradded from a 2010 notebook. Every app opens almost instantly. The responsiveness of the system has no perceptible lag time AT ALL, i am not even exaggeration. I tried the MBA 15 M2 alongside the old 2018 mbp opening the same apps, files, etc, and the MBA absolutely destroyed it. It has gotton to the point where I dont think I could manage using my old 2018 MBP knowing how slow it really was. Its a backuip computer I use if i need an extra screen at this point.
With regards to RAM, again I am a (serious) tab hog because I am a little neurotic about closing things before they are done. I had appx 75 tabs open in Firefox, imesssage, mail, and notes app and had ZERO swap. With the MBP 16gb RAM I would routinely have tens of gb of swap used even after closing out of programs. I know it might sound crazy but sometimes I legitimately have 150 tabs open split between 4 spaces. Is it normal practice? No. But it is however my use case so I work around that as a need and decided to splurge on the 24gb RAM.
The Macbook Air 15' will crush any 2016-2018 MBP even though its not called "Pro". I am very happy with my decision not to consider the 16' MBP because its honestly to heavy for a student and medical assistant worker to carry with them. Its lighter but the dimensions are almost exactly the same as the 2018 era MBP 15, and said dimensions were EXACTLY what i was looking for. I think kits the perfect size for a laptop in general (for me at least). That being said, my workflow does not demand any greater computing power than the 15'MBA gives me, but this doesnt your use case might legitimate require a 14/16 MBP.
That is my input, please feel free to ask any questions.
