The M2 MacBook Air: I was WRONG!

47 Comments

1. Has this video put you off buying the base model M2 MacBook Air?

2. Have a M2 13" air coming from the refurbished store with 512g and 16g ram, and the 10 core GPU. light weight portibility and plenty of capability for doing any editing I need it to do! The pros are nice but they do come with more heft making them more cumbersome to move around with IMO.

3. This should tell people, upgrade to 16 gigs of ram, and 512 SSD storage. That's what I did when I bought the 13.6 M2 MacBook Air. I'm a long time Windows desktop user since 1999, with Windows 98. My last Dell desktop had Window 7 pro with 2T hard drive, cause I used to have a website, building my own webpages. That is why I knew to upgrade ram and storage, especially cause of future proofing. If you're going to spend that kind of money for a good laptop, better to spend a bit more for best configuration. This is my first laptop, and I love it. Very user friendly, and portable. After my Mac class at Soho Apple Store, I checked out the new 15 inch Air, was not impressed. Screen resolution wasn't any better than my 13.6 M2 MacBook Air. I had them put Beach Boys "Wouldn't It Be Nice" to compare sound. It was louder, but not much better. I put my 13.6 Air in my crossbody laptop briefcase, and was able to walk around NYC with no strain on my shoulders. I've never done video editing, only photo editing for my product, and NYC photos. I'd like to learn to make better videos, and learn to edit them. That's one of the main reasons I got better ram memory and SSD storage. Some of the videos on here said not much difference with 8c GPU and 10, so I kept the 8 core. If you are a student or teacher, lugging a laptop back and fourth to school, the 13.6 Air is perfect. Besides, if you are looking for bigger screen, just add an external monitor to the laptop. I've had my Air now for 4 weeks, and I really like it. Now I'm not tide to a desk, I can sit in my couch with my legs up on the chaise with laptop on my lap. Best of all, unlike my Windows desktop, I don't have to shut it down after using it. I put it in sleep mode when I'm finished. My friend got me the fast charger too. Good video though, and no, it didn't put me off buying it, cause I'd already bought it, but not the base model. I did my research before I bought the Mac, to go with my iPhone 13 Pro. Most of the videos I watched on here recommended to upgrade to 16 gigs of ram, and 512 SSD storage. Don't rush to buy something, and get the base model. Wait until you have enough money to buy the better configuration. So great, that you admired to making a mistake to buy the base model. So many tech guys on here waxing poetic about it being just fine for base video editing and photo. Not to mention, not having enough storage for your videos, and photos.

4. So, to sum up Marc, what is your conclusion ? I understood you say : 4k editing (occasional in my case) is done very well on the Air M1 (256g ssd), but the performance is exactly the same on the Air M2 provided it is equipped with a 512g ssd. Tell me if I misunderstood.

   At the same time, you seem to say (towards the end of your presentation) that in your personal use you don't use macbook Air for your 4k edits.

   There is another French-speaking presenter (but you can translate the subtitles automatically into English in the youtube window) who did a test on the basic Air M2 (8g of RAM and 256g of ssd) by checking the export time of 14 minutes of one 4k video by final cut pro. He compared this export time with that of the 14 inch Macbook Pro of M1 chips (with the same 14 minute video in final cut pro). Result: the 14-inch Pro M1 exported faster than the basic Air M2, but only by 47 seconds ahead! So the Air M2 is very impressive.

   In addition, this same presenter also confirmed (like you) that the 256g ssd of the Air M2 is slower than that of the 256g ssd of the Air M1, he himself made an in-depth analysis of these 2 ssds and he was able to observe with certainty that the 256g of the Air M2 is twice as slow in writing as the ssd 256g of the Air M1 ! Despite this disadvantage, as I said above, exporting a 14-minute video in the Air M2 (with 8g/256g) was only 47 seconds slower than on the 14-inch Pro M1. So, impressive that this Air M2.

   The moment of the presentation where he compares the export speeds between the basic Air M2 with the Pro 14 inch M1 : https://youtu.be/_JwIrAhBT20?t=556

   the moment when it compares of ssd speed in Air M2 and Air M1 :
   https://youtu.be/_JwIrAhBT20?t=453

5. I know that 512 version is twice as fast as the 256 version, but should that really be the difference between 'complete dog' and 'performed excellent'?

6. Sold my M1 16gb/512Gb air and upgraded to M2 16gb/1Tb air and I am quite happy with it.

7. Is MBA M2 with 512gb ssd and 16gb ram worth buying over MBA M1 of same specs ? Planning to buy macbook for long term use 6-7 years

8. The MacBook Air is a very nice, premium email sender and web surfer.

9. I am happy using the base model for iOS development. I am planning to produce productivity apps, so m2 should work for me.

10. Now I do not know (again) which to buy. 🙂

11. I have bought the base model M2 Air. Have to admit the air is still the air and doing professional video editing or anything demanding is just not practical on the machine. But I am happy with my purchase as I won’t do demanding tasks on my MacBook Air. Good review, love to see YouTubers actually being honest in their reviews

12. Im still wondering, why bother with:
    8/256 base models
    super expensive 16/512 upgrades
    a „bad“ LCD screen
    no HDMI, SD card or ANYTHING regarding to ports

    When you can have a 14“ M1 Pro base model for nearly the same price as a new M2 Air?!

13. I came from a M1 Macbook pro but I sold it to my sister. I have M2, we'll how it fares to me

14. I have a base model m2 MBA and it's great but I'm gonna guess ventura was the issue, I think it's much worse than previous versions and changes have been made that shouldn’t of been, for example system settings the old layout was much clearer.

15. Does the 512GB model with 8 GB of ram eliminate the problem you are discussing?

16. Been contemplating getting m1 air, getting a refurb for £849. Either that or replace my 2017 ipad pro. Im a basic user but really contemplating studying in the future and cant guarantee all apps i might need will work on the ipad. Love ipads though.

17. My trousers need a fire extinguisher.

18. Don't beat yourself up too much. I still value your opinion on this stuff. I will be getting the Air M2 512 here shortly and I'm sure I'll love it.

19. My old T470 seems even more capable without a dedicated gpu 😂

20. Really like your honest reassessment of your earlier analysis based on newer data. I am a researcher and a lot of times we have to backtrack in the face of new data. Swallowing one’s pride and following what the data tells you, makes you a stellar researcher, not an apologist.

21. Hi Mark.. Unfortunately i am also a Canon shooter who needs to deal with HEVC 442 10 bit codec 4k. I was just about to buy the base 256gb model.. But you know 256 gb would never be enough anyway so I was planning to keep my footage/project files on a fast external drive. Do you think using a faster external drive would be fine? In the end only premiere core files will be read from the local ssd. My main workflow is 4k 10bit hevc video editing. Maybe I should go with a M1 mini instead?

22. Does anyone have any issues with this one? I just bought this one just for fun. I have my main desktop with a 3090 ti for gaming. But i want the air m2 for schools work and e-commerce.
    I’m still on time to return it. What y’all think?

23. Weird comment but you have a very beautiful voice.

24. I implore you to learn about technology if you're going to review it. The issue with the nand chip is that computers as far back as 2017 have been able to read and write from multiple nand chips at once. The reason the 512gb doesn't have this problem is it has two chips, both 256gb . So theoretically twice the throughput. Most modern computers can actually do more than two at once for even faster speeds. A good analogy would be imagine you're trying to fill a pool up and you have one hose and then you're trying to fill another pool up and you have two hoses. The one with two hoses will fill up much faster.

25. I have the 32 GB ram and 512 GB SSD of M2 MacBook Air. It sucks. My IDEs such as IntelliJ or PyCharm feel laggy at times. Also, it heats up sometimes. To the apple fanboys who are gonna shout that M2 Macbook Air is not for heavy use, you should know that writing basic code on IntelliJ and PyCharm is not heavy use. So save yourselves the effort.

26. Bravo, Mark. Glad I can still go out and buy an M2 without remorse and I think that's all thanks to your excellent stories!

27. Hi I am a HR and I need to buy a laptop , my most work will eb documents , Word files , Pdf etc and i will be browsing at a time like in 15-20 multiple windows with heavy ATS software running
    what would you suggest M1 mabook air or M2 air

28. I already decided I will buy the second basic MacBook Air 520 Gb because of the reason you described. But now what about the discussion 8 vs 16 Gb RAM? I will use the MacBook for the basic stuff, but I usually have a lot of apps running in parallel. On my iMac with 24 Gb RAM I can see it usually uses about 12Gb RAM. The only real RAM consumer is Lightroom. I may use Lr sometimes while traveling like you do. Than buy the 16Gb you may say. However, the base models one can buy with 10-16% discount. The 16Gb version at Apple only: the difference is about €400, just because I want more RAM. What should I do, and not regret afterwards?

29. Well I watched your vid and went out and purchased MBA M2 Base Model. Disappointed now that it is not as good as MBA M1 which I also could of purchased instead. Maybe make sure what you are disclaiming before creating the video. I cannot change this now. As in most of us normal people can’t afford more than one laptop at a time. Not really good enough to come back and say ah wait I’ve changed my mind. These products are seriously expensive.

30. Well, the problem you ran into with video editing on the M2 MBA could be related to SSD being a single chip in this machine, but the macOS version can play a role too here. It is probably a combination of factors, the main being the SSD.

    The same story is repeated now with the base configuration of the new 14-inch M2 Pro MacBook Pro. Max Tech already demonstrated that it has half the SSD speed of the corresponding M1 model. Really cheap from Apple's part because this is a premium machine. Ridiculous.

31. IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING BUYING A MACBOOK AIR M2 READ THIS FIRST!

    I have owned the M2 Air for 1 month and now have horizontal and vertical lines flickering on the screen, making it impossible to use. I was replacing a M1 MacBook Air that had the same display issue within months of buying it. They made me send the M1 in for repair twice and it failed again a third time right after the warranty expired. This was a new laptop! They refused to issue a new laptop to replace the reject I bought and since the warranty expired they expected me to pay to have it fixed again, when they didn’t fix it properly the first 2 times! The second time they falsely claimed I dropped it but they fixed it and shortly after the screen quit working completely.

    So… stupidly I bought an M2 Air thinking the problems were with the M1 only. Nope! I have the same display issue with the new model after 1 month!!! Apple isn't owning up to the display issues of the M Series MacBooks. In the past year I've spent almost $3,000 for 2 MacBook Airs that are now useless. I've wasted so much time sending it in for repairs, reloading apps and being without a computer while they try to fix their issues, which they obviously can't do… or won’t do because they’ll “fix” the issue, until the warranty runs out and leave you to pay for the failed laptop afterwards. It’s a trap. That’s what they did to me with the M1 and now it’s happening again with the M2.

    If you have a serious problem with your Mac you’ll never get a replacement; you’ll never get your money back and your work will constantly be disrupted with getting it repaired. Good Luck to you if you spend your money on one. As a long time Apple buyer/user, I now recommend you don't as it appears that Apple is not being responsible for the ones that have display issues.

    Additionally, if you do gamble and buy an M2 be sure to also add the additional $300.00 for the Apple warranty or you may get stuck with a large repair bill shortly after the factory warranty runs out. I feel scammed.

32. Coffee shop got the machine warm, so it throttled, that’s why you were facing the interesting experience

33. It's possible that the variation you noticed was due to thermals. Theoretically, if it was an issue with the SSD configuration then it should remain consistent. You shouldn't be doing it fine one day and slow the next. Macbook Air has notoriously poor thermal control, and when the processor heats up, the computer will throttle down the processing speed. The M1 Air has slightly better cooling than the M2 due to a larger/thicker metal plate to dissapate heat. I would be very interested to see if people notice this issue on the M2 Mac Mini, which has a fan-cooled system.

34. and the 8 gb version will also die soon:
    Not enough RAM and a short life non replaçeable SSD:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZuv4TIjk-I&ab_channel=iBoffRCC

35. Hi Mark. Keep doing what you do! I got the base MacBook Air M2, 8Gb unified memory, 256 Gb SSD. I did hesitated to upgrade it to 16Gb unified memory and 512 Gb SSD but decided to stick with the base model which made more financial sense to me. Upgrading was coming too close of the price of a MacBook Pro 14 inch, and I would have made the jump the latest. And then, what I really wanted was the 16 inch, so I would had invest even more money, way more than I felt comfortable to do. So I just kept it simple, to the base model, and hoped it would meet my needs just fine. And it did. I was blown away by the beauty, the build quality and the portability of this machine. I should let you know that it's my fist Mac. However, I knew what I was getting into because I got my wife a MacBook Pro for her birthday a year ago: 14 inch, 16Gb unified memory, 1 Tb SSD, 10 core CPU, 16 core GPU. Everything is just perfect with this laptop. It was love at first sight. But it was my wife computer and I needed to get my own to salvage my marriage!!! (I was using it to often according to her) . It didn't make sense to me to get exactly the same computer in the house, buying it twice! So I went for the MacBook air. I'm somewhat an average user, keeping it's computers until they die (+10 years). I'm still using an old Toshiba 17 inch laptop, Intel I3, purchased with windows 7. Over the years, I upgraded it to Windows 8, and later to Windows 10. These days, it become quite slow and is calling for a well deserved retirement… THE FACTS: A week after getting my new starlight MacBook air M2, I successfully brought it to a dead halt, and Chrome app crashed. I had to restart the program and went to check in the activity window: I was using a total of 17 GB of memory, and 9GB of it was swap memory. What did I do? 56 Chrome tabs open (2 of which were my 2 Gmail accounts, and 4 or 5 of them were YouTube tabs on pause; not playing) + 8 Safari tabs, + 2 more Safari tabs on an other window + Mail + Outlook + Excel + YouTube app playing in the background (I downloaded the app, but I think it's just an icon) + Photos + Map + Weather. I think that's all… a total of 9 programs were opened. Was I disappointed after it came to a halt? Definitively yes. Before the crash, It was acting slightly slower, and it would take a good half a second to open a Chrome tab. Than 15-30 seconds later, it became totally unresponsive, and then crashed. At that moment, I was quickly scrolling through pictures on TripAdvisor. I was just shopping… normal average stuff…, except I was doing a lot at the same time. I'm not into photo or video editing. The only apps I installed on my MacBook was Microsoft Office suite. Do I regret my purchase? No. But there is now a real scratch on the perfect happiness I was experiencing with my new MacBook Air M2. Would I trade it for a 16 inch MacBook pro? Absolutely. The big screen is too appealing to me. But I'm not ready to put that kind of money (again…!) into a laptop. I just hope that my MacBook Air will last more than 5 years. Maybe 10? We'll see in 2034! From now on, I've just have to keep a few tab less in Chrome, and no more than 4 or 5 apps open at once. PS: I did the same on my wife's MacBook Pro 14 in. and it never slowed down… Loved her MacBook at that time, and still loving it even more today. As for my MacBook Air: It's not a bad choice because I kept it to the base model; but I don't expect it to run like a MacBook Pro (14 or 16 inch). I get what I paid for: an entry level MacBook! Thanks for your great reviews Mark, and I hope my comment will help some of your readers.

36. You should have an interest in benchmarking. You can’t do proper reviews of new machines without benchmarking.

37. It’s a very bad idea to buy the base model with the 256GB drive and 8GB of RAM. The RAM amount alone will limit the usefulness of the laptop immediately, but much more so down the road. Half the speed for the 256GB drive is also ridiculous.

38. trade it in for a 512 version to see the difference …thanks for the homework tho…my next macbook will be the m2 air with 512 and 16 gb ram

39. Love your reviews and in this case admitting you got something wrong. No fuss, no fanfare just a very useful step back and revisit. The honesty and direct dealing with everything is why we all come here.
    One slight tip if I may. You were bobbing a bit close to the camera at times which is slightly "disturbing" . Especially when I can see right up your nose 😱

40. 3 months ago I purchased a M1 Mac book air from a neighbour at a very good price (Eu600) because he had got the M2 version – 3 months on he is indeed no so happy with his choice – indeed for one who has used Macs on and off their memory policy is at best difficult and opaque.

41. It is essential to buy a bigger SSD for an extra $200 in any Mac that you buy. This is because Mac SSDs are now none upgradable which means that you have to decide on maximum lifetime storage when you first buy any M1/M2 Mac. If you ever intend to game on a Mac, bear in mind that most new AAA games on PCs and Consoles are now around 100 Gb in size. The 256 Gb base model of an M2 MacBook Air is a particularly bad buy. This is because is only features a single 256 Gb flash module. By comparison all other M1/M2 macs have two flash modules. This means that the 256 Gb base M2 MacBook Air has slower I/O to its SSD than any other M1/M2 Mac.

    I bought an as new customer return iPhone SE 2020 this year for £229. This is a great buy. However, I was forced to buy the 64 Gb model because it was the only one that this company had sold. By contrast almost all Android phones, even those costing as little as £120, come with 128 Gb as standard. This is because an extra 64 Gb of flash memory costs so little that Android manufacturers simply choose to supply it by default. Apple really is committed to supplying too little flash memory in their base models to force people in the know to pay an extra £50 to £200 for every device that they sell.

    The RAM is the second most important thing that you should upgrade, but only if you are playing games.

42. The base M2 AIR is not great on many levels, apart of the problems with the split SSD, if you upgrade, you're better of getting the base M1 Pro, which is much better in every aspect! You let your viewers down with your initial review!

43. macbook air m2 base model + mateview 28.2 = i love it

44. I believe the reason why you experienced a slow down with the M2 during video editing is because of the storage (SSD) speed.

    Because the base M2 uses a single NAND chip the SSD runs half as fast as the M1 which uses two NAND chips.

    8GB of memory is just enough for day to day usage, once you do anything moderate (ie video editing, 20+ tabs) 8GB of ram isn’t enough and your mac is forced to use swap memory, which is essentially using your storage as memory.

    Because the M2 SSD is half as fast, when it is using swap memory it is no surprise the machine will stutter compared to the M1 which is twice as fast.

    Contrary to your advice given at the end of the video, from a performance standpoint if you wanted to upgrade your M2 Mac, I’d op for the 16GB RAM upgrade over a 512GB ssd upgrade. Having swap memory only covers up a problem which is a lack of memory, you can eliminate the problem to begin with with more memory in the first place.

    It is also practise for future proofing if you decide to hold on to your mac longer than say 5 years. As memory requirements increase over time.

45. Good to see a genuine admission of error! After seeing your video, I bought a M1 with 256GB a few days ago, simply because it was cheaper & more than good enough for my purposes. I love it to bits – its so snappy & it sips power. I'm waiting for the 15" MBA to come out – that's what I want next a larger screen but I don't want to pay the earth for a Pro.

46. A huge problem value-wise in your assessment to get up-speced M2 is that if you go for the upgraded M2 you are at 14" MacBook Pro territory, which is a far better computer than the M2 in every way. The M2 has no reason to exist.

47. I got the M2 base 256 gb MacBook Air when it was launched. Don’t regret even a bit for my use case! So you ain’t completely wrong!