The M2 MacBook Air: A Confusing Spot in the Lineup

Apple's latest iteration of the MacBook Air has left many users wondering whether they should upgrade from their current M1 model to the new M2 chip. While the M2 Air has its advantages, it also has some significant drawbacks that may make you question whether it's worth the investment.

One of the main differences between the M1 Air and the M2 Air is in terms of cooling systems. The M1 Air comes with a fan for active cooling, while neither the M1 Air nor the M2 Air have fans for an active cooling system. However, the M1 Air has a much thicker metal heat spreader, which helps to dissipate heat more efficiently. In contrast, the M2 Air has a very thin heat spreader, which means that it will run its chip hotter and will be more prone to thermal throttling.

This is particularly evident in CPU benchmarks, where the M2 Air performs moderately better than the M1 Air but nothing substantial. While it can still handle bursts of photo editing and video editing, sustained heavy loads will cause it to overheat. This can be improved by modifying the M2 Air with thermal pads inside to better transfer heat, but it's a complex process that requires some technical expertise.

It's also worth noting that the MacBook Air is not meant to be a workstation computer, so if you're planning to use it for heavy-duty tasks, it may not be the best choice. The larger 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros are likely better suited for such tasks, as they offer more power and efficiency at a higher price point.

However, the M2 Air does have one significant advantage over its predecessor: hardware video encoding and decoding. While the M1 chip had hardware acceleration for H.264 and H.265 encoding and decoding, the M2's improved Media Engine gains hardware acceleration for ProRes and ProRes RAW video as well. This is a big deal for video editors who want to work on the go or do some light video editing on their general laptop.

In terms of head-to-head comparison, the M2 Air can be configured with up to 24GB of RAM, which is more than the 16GB maximum of the M1 Air. However, this comes at an extra cost of $400 for the RAM upgrade alone. Considering that the 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro starts at $1800 and offers more power, efficiency, and expandability, it's likely a better value for most users.

If you're currently using an older Intel device and want to switch to Apple Silicon, the M2 Air may be a good option. However, even then, the M1 Air is still a great choice and starts at $800, which is $400 less than the starting price of the M2 Air. At this price point, the M1 Air is an insanely good deal for users who only need it for web browsing, document editing, video playback, and light photo editing.

In conclusion, whether or not to upgrade to the M2 MacBook Air depends on your specific needs and priorities. While it has some advantages over its predecessor, such as improved Media Engine performance and a more modern design with MagSafe, it also has significant drawbacks, including reduced cooling efficiency and higher prices. Ultimately, the decision comes down to whether you need the new chip's performance benefits or if you can get by with the M1 Air for most of your tasks.

Ultimately I'm going to choose this M2 MacBook Air configuration 16GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD. Well not that exact one I need to get that audio issue figured out first but that's my preference video if it helps you out and subscribe to the channel for more from nine to five mac

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ensince the m2 macbook air officially released i've had quite a bit of time to really go hands-on with the laptop and put simply i love it but it sits somewhat oddly in the middle of apple's laptop lineup which makes it a bit of a hard sell for most people so let's compare it to apple's previous entry level laptop the m1 macbook air which still remains in apple's lineup i have a lot i want to talk about and there are plenty of big changes to the air this time around including an all new design but there are tons of smaller changes that could still have an important impact on your daily use and i want to start off with the actual tactile experience of using it the keyboard and touch pad both have a different feel from the m1 air the most visually evident change here is of course the function row which now has full height keys i definitely prefer it and i find it most noticeable when i'm using the touch id sensor there was nothing wrong with the sensor on the m1 air but i like the round recessed sensor of the m2 air that makes it really easy to just set your finger on the m1 sensor by comparison covered the entire much smaller key again nothing wrong with that i just prefer the new one a bit harder to illustrate on camera is the new feel of the keyboard it just feels a bit softer than the previous one i wouldn't call the difference dramatic i probably wouldn't have even noticed if i hadn't used them side by side but the difference is there some people seem to prefer the feeling of the new keyboard while i can't say that i agree it also doesn't bother me either way and it's a fantastic keyboard for a laptop this thin the trackpad however did bother me apple has some of the best track pads this is still really high up there but i can't help but feel that apple took a step backwards with the haptics here it still tracks just fine and gestures work great but it's a much more hollow click than you got previously you can actually hear the difference between the m1 and m2 macbook airs it doesn't feel as realistic and even going into the settings to change the click to firm didn't really help me that much the trackpad is a bit wider though which is really nice especially with the excellent palm rejection that apple has one of the major changes apple has with the design here is the screen and it has a notch everyone was very critical of the macbook pro when it first gained a notch and i would include myself among those people and it seemed and if i'm honest still seems like they should have shrunk down that notch as much as possible with how small an area the camera takes up i wish they could have made the notch smaller like they planned to do with the planned pill-shaped cutout anticipated for the iphone 14. still most of the time it just blends into the display it's either just part of the top bar or the whole top bar is black in a full screen app so it really doesn't cause many issues in real world use most of the time i don't even notice it one complaint with a notch though is when i'm using premiere when there are enough menu items up top some of them get pushed to the other side of the notch and at that point it starts to feel really cluttered overall though this change is a good thing because while the laptop itself isn't bigger moving the top bar up around the camera like that and shrinking the bezels gives you more screen real estate to actually work with and it feels bigger when you're actually using it than i thought it would it's the same horizontal resolution of 2560 pixels as the m1 air but it has an extra 64 vertical pixels to knock down that top bezel it still has the wide p3 color gamut support and now has an extra 100 nits of brightness which is really noticeable it's not something you'll be using at max brightness all the time but when you're in a bright environment it'll be really helpful the m2 air still leaves the high refresh rate support and mini led display tech to the higher end macbooks though and that notch houses an improved camera apple switched from a 720p facetime camera to a 1080p facetime camera it's a step up but apple clearly knows that for those that want a really good webcam the built-in webcam just won't do but they wouldn't have introduced continuity camera with mac os ventura either way let's do a quick side by side so you can see and hear for yourself so this is the m1 macbook airs camera and audio while this is the m2 macbook air's camera and audio this is admittedly under pretty good conditions with some large soft light directly in front of my face but let me know what you think of the improvements to the m2 in the comments section down below while you're at it if you're enjoying the video so far consider clicking that like button now from the recording of audio to the playback macbooks have had pretty good built-in speakers with speaker grilles on either side of the keyboard with the m2 macbook air apple has done away with those grails they opted for a four-speaker array above the keyboard right by the screen instead of the previous two stereo speakers while they don't have the same base or quality as even my 2018 15 inch macbook pro that laptop has the advantage of size that the airs don't they're pretty good for laptop speakers all things considered while listening to a recording of the speakers won't really represent the laptops to their full potential hopefully it provides a relative comparison my while this base model laptop sounds great the second m2 air i got does not it didn't take long for me to hear an odd rattle or buzz sound whenever audio is playing specifically from the left side it's pretty distinct and distracting whether i'm listening to music podcasts or even just sending a text message i'll end up bringing this to the store to see if i can't get it fixed or else i'll replace it but i can't judge too much based on the small sample size of two and on my base model laptop they really are good speakers for a laptop of this size but if you're an audio file another change with the m2 air could help you out that's the improved headphone jack much like the mac studio and macbook pros the m2 macbook air's headphone jack has improved support for high impedance headphones without the need for an external dac for headphones with an impedance up to a thousand ohms the headphone jack can deliver up to three volts rather than 1.25 volts to be able to drive them without the need for an external amplifier most people won't make use of this but it'll be nice for those who do in terms of other ports of course it's gained the extra magsafe connector in addition to the two thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack i feel like apple should have moved one of the thunderbolt ports to the right hand side now i felt the same way with the m1 air that it would have been better if it had one thunderbolt port on each side but with the magsafe charger thrown in there also i feel even more strongly this way i am glad that we got the magsafe connector though if for no other reason then it frees up one of your thunderbolt ports whenever you're charging additionally i love having more ports i would have loved an sd card slot or an hdmi port but that's too much to ask from apple for what is their entry level laptop one thing that i don't think is too much to ask for though is support for more than one external display that's a really limiting factor up until this point i had always used two external displays with my laptop while on my desk it was just incredibly convenient but regardless of whether i use an m1 or m2 macbook i'm limited to just one external display if i want more i would have to upgrade to the 14-inch macbook pro i can live with the limitation for a mobile-first computer but it's definitely not ideal there are also a few workarounds to get the base level apple silicon machines working with external monitors so let me know if that's something you'd be interested in a video about the m2 pulled some design cues from the higher end macbook pros in addition to the notch i mentioned previously the m2 air has more of a squared off design in place of the curved wedge shape of the m1 air i like the design overall it's a bit thinner at its thickest location than the m1 macbook air but there is one minor annoyance that has annoyed me from day one it's hard to pick up one-handed off a flat surface i know that seems like an incredibly minor complaint but that's something i'd gotten accustomed to with the m1 air both the laptops are incredibly light and easy to carry around one-handed and the wedge shape of the m1 air made it really easy to lift up the front of the laptop and grab it with one hand by comparison the front of the m2 air is flat so i can't really get my hand underneath it to grab a hold of it and if i try to it just slides back because the feet of the laptop don't have a ton of grip again i know how minor and nitpicky of a complaint that seems but if i'm holding a camera or something in my other hand it can be a real annoyance now a more positive note the color options which are pretty good i have the space grey and starlight m2 macbook airs here but there's also the midnight and silver options while almost everyone wanted the midnight m2 air leading up to launch myself included in the time since midnight has shown to be a real fingerprint magnet and prone to scratches that can show off the silver color underneath so that's something to be aware of as you choose your colors the m1 macbook air by comparison comes in silver space gray or gold i've talked a lot about the outside of the laptop and general user experience but there are two rather large elephants in the room this time around on the inside a slower ssd and overheating let's start off with a slower ssd as apple moved from the m1 chip to the m2 it switched the nand flash that it uses for its ssd from 128 gigabyte chips to 256 gigabyte chips while that sounds like an upgrade it means the base level m2 macbook air and bass level m2 macbook pro have slower ssds than their m1 counterparts that's because in the base 256 gigabyte model there's only one nand chip so the load isn't able to be spread across multiple chips leading to a dramatic decrease in your ssd's read and write speed thankfully stepping it up to the 512 gigabyte version does away with that issue but why does it actually matter when according to benchmarks at least the speed is still very good well the base model of the macbook air pro have just eight gigabytes of ram that's not a lot by modern standards and it means that once that ram is filled up it will begin using your ssd to swap out the information that should be going to the ram that's one location but you could see some slowdown as a result of the slower ssd and small amount of ram going from the m1 air to the m2 air you're paying 200 more for a laptop that depending on your use case will perform worse and it's not just the ssd slowing down the m2 air the cooling system for the more powerful chip is also worse that's elephant in the room number two while neither the m1 air or the m2 air have fans for an active cooling system the m1 air had a much thicker metal heat spreader while the m2 air has a very thin heat spreader so yes the m2 air will run its chip hot it'll get hot quickly and it will then thermal throttle in cpu benchmarks the m2 air performed moderately better than the m1 air but nothing substantial it can still handle bursts of photo editing video editing and the like but yes when put under a high sustained load it will overheat now this can be improved by modifying the m2 air in a similar fashion to the m1 air by putting thermal pads inside to better transfer the heat but it's important to put all this in the context of what the macbook air is meant to be it's not meant to be a workstation computer while this switch to apple silicon has brought a lot more power and efficiency to the machines they are still thin in lights and it's probably worth stepping it up to the larger 14 or 16 inch macbook pros if you're worried about a heavy workload while the m2 air is at a confusing spot in the lineup this time price-wise it's not the pro laptop if you're considering upping the ram and storage you're dangerously close to the price of a discounted 14-inch m1 pro macbook pro which is more powerful larger and has more i o while it's not as small thin or light as the m2 air if performance is what you care about most that's definitely the way to go the m2 does have a good leg up on the base m1 in one way though that's hardware video encoding and decoding while the m1 chip had hardware accelerated encoding and decoding for h.264 and h.265 the m2's improved media engine gains hardware acceleration for prores and prores raw video as well this came to the upgraded 14 and 16 inch macbook pros but was a bit of a surprise to arrive on the base level m2 chip this could be a big help for video editors who just want a small machine for on the go or individuals who just want to do a bit of video work on their general laptop let's take a look at how the two compare head to head encoding prores raw footage with some color adjustments into prores 422 through premiere of course having that prores hardware encoder really helps the m2 devices here but if you aren't shooting prores you won't really see a major difference in performance the m2r can also be configured with more ram than the m1 air can at up to 24 gigabytes rather than the 16 gigabyte maximum of the m1 air by that point though you're spending an extra 400 for the ram upgrade alone so i definitely think the 14 inch pro would make more sense for most people considering that so i guess the question remains does the m2 macbook air make sense and i would say yes with a few solid caveats if you have the m1 macbook air you have almost no reason to upgrade unless you really want the new design the magsafe is nice but the performance isn't going to blow you away if you really want a bit more power and performance you should step up to the 14-inch m1 pro macbook pro which is selling for less than eighteen hundred dollars on a regular basis that will be more powerful at its base configuration with more expandability it starts with a 512 gigabyte ssd and 16 gigabytes of ram alongside that faster m1 pro chip i think the m2r makes the most sense if you're on an older intel device and you want to move to apple silicon but even then the m1 air still puts up a great fight and starts at 200 less you can save even more by going with a used m1 macbook air for somewhere around eight hundred dollars a full four hundred dollars less than the starting price of the m2 macbook air at eight hundred dollars the m1 air is an insanely good deal if all you do is web browsing document editing video playback and even light photo editing the base model of the m1 air should be more than enough for you so it's the new design and magsafe worth that 200 more price jump with m2 that's up for you to decide there's no one definitive answer for what device to go with so let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below as for me i think i'm going with this an m2 macbook air with 16 gigabytes of ram and a 512 gigabyte ssd well not this exact one i need to get that audio issue figured out first but this configuration like this video if it helped you out and subscribe to the channel for more from nine to five mac yousince the m2 macbook air officially released i've had quite a bit of time to really go hands-on with the laptop and put simply i love it but it sits somewhat oddly in the middle of apple's laptop lineup which makes it a bit of a hard sell for most people so let's compare it to apple's previous entry level laptop the m1 macbook air which still remains in apple's lineup i have a lot i want to talk about and there are plenty of big changes to the air this time around including an all new design but there are tons of smaller changes that could still have an important impact on your daily use and i want to start off with the actual tactile experience of using it the keyboard and touch pad both have a different feel from the m1 air the most visually evident change here is of course the function row which now has full height keys i definitely prefer it and i find it most noticeable when i'm using the touch id sensor there was nothing wrong with the sensor on the m1 air but i like the round recessed sensor of the m2 air that makes it really easy to just set your finger on the m1 sensor by comparison covered the entire much smaller key again nothing wrong with that i just prefer the new one a bit harder to illustrate on camera is the new feel of the keyboard it just feels a bit softer than the previous one i wouldn't call the difference dramatic i probably wouldn't have even noticed if i hadn't used them side by side but the difference is there some people seem to prefer the feeling of the new keyboard while i can't say that i agree it also doesn't bother me either way and it's a fantastic keyboard for a laptop this thin the trackpad however did bother me apple has some of the best track pads this is still really high up there but i can't help but feel that apple took a step backwards with the haptics here it still tracks just fine and gestures work great but it's a much more hollow click than you got previously you can actually hear the difference between the m1 and m2 macbook airs it doesn't feel as realistic and even going into the settings to change the click to firm didn't really help me that much the trackpad is a bit wider though which is really nice especially with the excellent palm rejection that apple has one of the major changes apple has with the design here is the screen and it has a notch everyone was very critical of the macbook pro when it first gained a notch and i would include myself among those people and it seemed and if i'm honest still seems like they should have shrunk down that notch as much as possible with how small an area the camera takes up i wish they could have made the notch smaller like they planned to do with the planned pill-shaped cutout anticipated for the iphone 14. still most of the time it just blends into the display it's either just part of the top bar or the whole top bar is black in a full screen app so it really doesn't cause many issues in real world use most of the time i don't even notice it one complaint with a notch though is when i'm using premiere when there are enough menu items up top some of them get pushed to the other side of the notch and at that point it starts to feel really cluttered overall though this change is a good thing because while the laptop itself isn't bigger moving the top bar up around the camera like that and shrinking the bezels gives you more screen real estate to actually work with and it feels bigger when you're actually using it than i thought it would it's the same horizontal resolution of 2560 pixels as the m1 air but it has an extra 64 vertical pixels to knock down that top bezel it still has the wide p3 color gamut support and now has an extra 100 nits of brightness which is really noticeable it's not something you'll be using at max brightness all the time but when you're in a bright environment it'll be really helpful the m2 air still leaves the high refresh rate support and mini led display tech to the higher end macbooks though and that notch houses an improved camera apple switched from a 720p facetime camera to a 1080p facetime camera it's a step up but apple clearly knows that for those that want a really good webcam the built-in webcam just won't do but they wouldn't have introduced continuity camera with mac os ventura either way let's do a quick side by side so you can see and hear for yourself so this is the m1 macbook airs camera and audio while this is the m2 macbook air's camera and audio this is admittedly under pretty good conditions with some large soft light directly in front of my face but let me know what you think of the improvements to the m2 in the comments section down below while you're at it if you're enjoying the video so far consider clicking that like button now from the recording of audio to the playback macbooks have had pretty good built-in speakers with speaker grilles on either side of the keyboard with the m2 macbook air apple has done away with those grails they opted for a four-speaker array above the keyboard right by the screen instead of the previous two stereo speakers while they don't have the same base or quality as even my 2018 15 inch macbook pro that laptop has the advantage of size that the airs don't they're pretty good for laptop speakers all things considered while listening to a recording of the speakers won't really represent the laptops to their full potential hopefully it provides a relative comparison my while this base model laptop sounds great the second m2 air i got does not it didn't take long for me to hear an odd rattle or buzz sound whenever audio is playing specifically from the left side it's pretty distinct and distracting whether i'm listening to music podcasts or even just sending a text message i'll end up bringing this to the store to see if i can't get it fixed or else i'll replace it but i can't judge too much based on the small sample size of two and on my base model laptop they really are good speakers for a laptop of this size but if you're an audio file another change with the m2 air could help you out that's the improved headphone jack much like the mac studio and macbook pros the m2 macbook air's headphone jack has improved support for high impedance headphones without the need for an external dac for headphones with an impedance up to a thousand ohms the headphone jack can deliver up to three volts rather than 1.25 volts to be able to drive them without the need for an external amplifier most people won't make use of this but it'll be nice for those who do in terms of other ports of course it's gained the extra magsafe connector in addition to the two thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack i feel like apple should have moved one of the thunderbolt ports to the right hand side now i felt the same way with the m1 air that it would have been better if it had one thunderbolt port on each side but with the magsafe charger thrown in there also i feel even more strongly this way i am glad that we got the magsafe connector though if for no other reason then it frees up one of your thunderbolt ports whenever you're charging additionally i love having more ports i would have loved an sd card slot or an hdmi port but that's too much to ask from apple for what is their entry level laptop one thing that i don't think is too much to ask for though is support for more than one external display that's a really limiting factor up until this point i had always used two external displays with my laptop while on my desk it was just incredibly convenient but regardless of whether i use an m1 or m2 macbook i'm limited to just one external display if i want more i would have to upgrade to the 14-inch macbook pro i can live with the limitation for a mobile-first computer but it's definitely not ideal there are also a few workarounds to get the base level apple silicon machines working with external monitors so let me know if that's something you'd be interested in a video about the m2 pulled some design cues from the higher end macbook pros in addition to the notch i mentioned previously the m2 air has more of a squared off design in place of the curved wedge shape of the m1 air i like the design overall it's a bit thinner at its thickest location than the m1 macbook air but there is one minor annoyance that has annoyed me from day one it's hard to pick up one-handed off a flat surface i know that seems like an incredibly minor complaint but that's something i'd gotten accustomed to with the m1 air both the laptops are incredibly light and easy to carry around one-handed and the wedge shape of the m1 air made it really easy to lift up the front of the laptop and grab it with one hand by comparison the front of the m2 air is flat so i can't really get my hand underneath it to grab a hold of it and if i try to it just slides back because the feet of the laptop don't have a ton of grip again i know how minor and nitpicky of a complaint that seems but if i'm holding a camera or something in my other hand it can be a real annoyance now a more positive note the color options which are pretty good i have the space grey and starlight m2 macbook airs here but there's also the midnight and silver options while almost everyone wanted the midnight m2 air leading up to launch myself included in the time since midnight has shown to be a real fingerprint magnet and prone to scratches that can show off the silver color underneath so that's something to be aware of as you choose your colors the m1 macbook air by comparison comes in silver space gray or gold i've talked a lot about the outside of the laptop and general user experience but there are two rather large elephants in the room this time around on the inside a slower ssd and overheating let's start off with a slower ssd as apple moved from the m1 chip to the m2 it switched the nand flash that it uses for its ssd from 128 gigabyte chips to 256 gigabyte chips while that sounds like an upgrade it means the base level m2 macbook air and bass level m2 macbook pro have slower ssds than their m1 counterparts that's because in the base 256 gigabyte model there's only one nand chip so the load isn't able to be spread across multiple chips leading to a dramatic decrease in your ssd's read and write speed thankfully stepping it up to the 512 gigabyte version does away with that issue but why does it actually matter when according to benchmarks at least the speed is still very good well the base model of the macbook air pro have just eight gigabytes of ram that's not a lot by modern standards and it means that once that ram is filled up it will begin using your ssd to swap out the information that should be going to the ram that's one location but you could see some slowdown as a result of the slower ssd and small amount of ram going from the m1 air to the m2 air you're paying 200 more for a laptop that depending on your use case will perform worse and it's not just the ssd slowing down the m2 air the cooling system for the more powerful chip is also worse that's elephant in the room number two while neither the m1 air or the m2 air have fans for an active cooling system the m1 air had a much thicker metal heat spreader while the m2 air has a very thin heat spreader so yes the m2 air will run its chip hot it'll get hot quickly and it will then thermal throttle in cpu benchmarks the m2 air performed moderately better than the m1 air but nothing substantial it can still handle bursts of photo editing video editing and the like but yes when put under a high sustained load it will overheat now this can be improved by modifying the m2 air in a similar fashion to the m1 air by putting thermal pads inside to better transfer the heat but it's important to put all this in the context of what the macbook air is meant to be it's not meant to be a workstation computer while this switch to apple silicon has brought a lot more power and efficiency to the machines they are still thin in lights and it's probably worth stepping it up to the larger 14 or 16 inch macbook pros if you're worried about a heavy workload while the m2 air is at a confusing spot in the lineup this time price-wise it's not the pro laptop if you're considering upping the ram and storage you're dangerously close to the price of a discounted 14-inch m1 pro macbook pro which is more powerful larger and has more i o while it's not as small thin or light as the m2 air if performance is what you care about most that's definitely the way to go the m2 does have a good leg up on the base m1 in one way though that's hardware video encoding and decoding while the m1 chip had hardware accelerated encoding and decoding for h.264 and h.265 the m2's improved media engine gains hardware acceleration for prores and prores raw video as well this came to the upgraded 14 and 16 inch macbook pros but was a bit of a surprise to arrive on the base level m2 chip this could be a big help for video editors who just want a small machine for on the go or individuals who just want to do a bit of video work on their general laptop let's take a look at how the two compare head to head encoding prores raw footage with some color adjustments into prores 422 through premiere of course having that prores hardware encoder really helps the m2 devices here but if you aren't shooting prores you won't really see a major difference in performance the m2r can also be configured with more ram than the m1 air can at up to 24 gigabytes rather than the 16 gigabyte maximum of the m1 air by that point though you're spending an extra 400 for the ram upgrade alone so i definitely think the 14 inch pro would make more sense for most people considering that so i guess the question remains does the m2 macbook air make sense and i would say yes with a few solid caveats if you have the m1 macbook air you have almost no reason to upgrade unless you really want the new design the magsafe is nice but the performance isn't going to blow you away if you really want a bit more power and performance you should step up to the 14-inch m1 pro macbook pro which is selling for less than eighteen hundred dollars on a regular basis that will be more powerful at its base configuration with more expandability it starts with a 512 gigabyte ssd and 16 gigabytes of ram alongside that faster m1 pro chip i think the m2r makes the most sense if you're on an older intel device and you want to move to apple silicon but even then the m1 air still puts up a great fight and starts at 200 less you can save even more by going with a used m1 macbook air for somewhere around eight hundred dollars a full four hundred dollars less than the starting price of the m2 macbook air at eight hundred dollars the m1 air is an insanely good deal if all you do is web browsing document editing video playback and even light photo editing the base model of the m1 air should be more than enough for you so it's the new design and magsafe worth that 200 more price jump with m2 that's up for you to decide there's no one definitive answer for what device to go with so let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below as for me i think i'm going with this an m2 macbook air with 16 gigabytes of ram and a 512 gigabyte ssd well not this exact one i need to get that audio issue figured out first but this configuration like this video if it helped you out and subscribe to the channel for more from nine to five mac you\n"