MacBook purchase: Is the 14,2" MacBook Pro worthwhile for a casual user?

[Yeroh]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking at notebooks right now which I'll mainly use for general office tasks, browsing and maybe occasionally doing some light programming. I used to have a 2013 MacBook Air which I used in this same way, so naturally I started looking at Apple's current notebook lineup.

 

I initially felt like the MacBook Air would be enough for my use case, but upon configuring and comparing prices, I started to wonder if it might make more sense to go for the MacBook Pro instead. The configuration I'd likely be buying would be 512 GB storage / 16 GB RAM since I'd like to use the notebook for at least four to five years. When I look for the best deals on equal configurations of Apple's offerings, the prices currently come out as follows:

 

13,3" MacBook Air M1 (8 Core CPU, 7 Core GPU) - 1.499,00€

13,6" MacBook Air M2 (8 Core CPU, 8 Core GPU) - 1.799,00€

14,2" MacBook Pro M1 (8 Core CPU, 14 Core GPU) - 1.945,00€

 

Granted, the Pro variant is 446€ more expensive than the M1 Air, but I'd get a much more bright and modern screen (1000 Nits, 120 Hz), a faster CPU and GPU, a better speaker system and slightly better port selection (HDMI and SD-Card slot). The only downside seems to be that (according to Apple's own comparison page) the Pro has slightly worse battery life. But then again, I'm not worried about the battery life on any of these machines.

 

Considering my use case, I don't think the extra performance would be the main selling point of the 14,2" M1 Pro, but the screen, speakers and port selection seem like nice upgrades even for more casual applications. I'm aware that it's likely that a 14" M2 MacBook Pro will be available soon enough, so I'd likely wait with my purchase until then. Even if I end up buying the M1 Pro, it'll probably be cheaper by that time. If it then comes out to maybe 300€ between the two models, I'd be very tempted to go for the much more recent M1 Pro, since the M1 Air is a four year old design at this point.

 

What's your take, do you think the M1 Pro is worth the extra 450€ over the M1 Air? If not, at what point would you consider spending the extra? And I've already sort of ruled out or ignored the M2 Air because it's so close in price to the M1 Pro, but maybe there's an argument to be made for it?

 

I'd appreciate any input.

[jaslion]

I mean no. You are the user whete that 600€ asus ryzen oled notebook is aimed at.

 

Any of these is gonna last you basically till it dies. Or till apple pulls support.

 

So much extra doesnt seem worth at all.

[Paddo]

If you want to stay in the apple eco system I'd suggest the M1 Pro because of the better screen, connectivity and power. It will last you much longer and if you ever want to play games on it in the future you will be able to. But only if you can justify spending 2k€ on a laptop.

If you don't mind switching to Windows/Linux take a look at rtings.com it's the best site I've found so far for reviews. They test Laptops in many different categories so you can decide what's most important to you and choose the right system.
There are many much cheaper laptops that would fulfill your needs but there is nothing wrong in treating yourself to something a bit more overkill if it makes you more comfortable and happy with your decision.

[CyberneticTitan]

I bought the 14" MBP as a long time Windows laptop user. I will say that after experiencing the 120Hz ProMotion and Mini-LED display on it, it'll be hard to look at a 60FPS screen again. I also consume quite a bit of media on it, and it's also pretty fantastic for HDR content. The auto scaling of the screen refresh rate down to 24Hz when watching movies is fantastic and gives me great battery life.

 

The GPU on it is actually quite powerful and can handle a variety of games, even through Parallels/CrossOver, and you can play a small handful of iOS/iPadOS only games through sideloading.

 

Having a USB-C port on the right-side of the chassis has helped me quite a few times, just a nice to have.

 

All that said, these are quite worth the premium over the M2 Air, for sure. The screen alone is worth the >$200 markup in my opinion. Vs the M1 Air is more challenging, if all you do is browse the web and light work. I think you could get away with just 8GB and 256GB, and leverage external storage in some way.

 

My advice: Apple has a 15-day return period. Go buy a refurbished M1 Air, and see how it lives up to your expectations. (I say refurbished because I kinda feel bad buying a new product just so I can return it later). If it does go ahead and get yourself the M1 Air, if not then yeah wait for the next 14" Pros and re-evaluate then.

[Bombastinator]

The apple stuff is generally aimed at college students I think.  Good screens good keyboards good survivability, not a ton of power and not good at video games.  Their memory, storage, and repairs tend to be very expensive.  Becomes a question of what you need.  If memory, storage, and cost are the prime considerations, macs make less sense.  Finding an AMD64 machine with similar keyboard, trackpad and keyboard quality is doable but a lot more expensive generally. For ruggedness it’s even worse, though systems much more rugged than macs are available in AMD64.  Basically there’s just a lot more choice because there are a lot more manufacturers with AMD64. If you don’t care that much about screen quality but need a lot of memory or a big drive, it can be cheaper to get a PC. The screen won’t be as good of course.  If you need the things that the mac has advantages in it can absolutely bludgeon PCs price wise.  If you don’t though it becomes questionable.  Macs used to also have an advantage where they would run stuff PCs wouldn’t, or could do it much much better, so there wasn’t much option.  This is mostly gone though.  For myself, I was a Mac exclusive user, but I liked to play video games where PCs had a big advantage.  It sort of depends on what you need.  If the machine does nothing but sit on your desk and serve as a foldable desktop PC ruggedness doesn’t matter, but you have to buy it whether you want to or not with macs.  Likewise you can get lessor screen and keyboard quality if you’re using the thing as a desktop replacement anyway.  One weird niche macs still occupy is *nix machines.  If you use the command line macs roast PCs because they’re built off BSD. Places like NASA are wall-to-wall mac laptops.

[Yeroh]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

I mean no. You are the user whete that 600€ asus ryzen oled notebook is aimed at.

 

Any of these is gonna last you basically till it dies. Or till apple pulls support.

 

So much extra doesnt seem worth at all.

I could do most of what I mentioned on a 300€ iPad, but I wouldn't even consider it.

 

As I mentioned in the OP, I loved my old MacBook Air and have no problem paying a premium for a device that offers more than just the bare minimum performance required to accomplish these tasks. Probably like most of us on here, I spend a lot of time at my computer, so it might as well be a nice one. Apple certainly isn't the king of price to performance, but I've found their notebooks to be incredibly reliable, well-built and well-rounded. There's just no weak part of a MacBook, while a 600€ notebook will most likely come with some sort of caveat in the areas of speakers, build quality, reliability, support availability, you name it. And even 1500€ Windows machines like Dell's XPS doesn't quite match Apple in my experience - last time I tried them, their speakers were horrid.

 

1 hour ago, Paddo said:

If you want to stay in the apple eco system I'd suggest the M1 Pro because of the better screen, connectivity and power. It will last you much longer and if you ever want to play games on it in the future you will be able to. But only if you can justify spending 2k€ on a laptop.

If you don't mind switching to Windows/Linux take a look at rtings.com it's the best site I've found so far for reviews. They test Laptops in many different categories so you can decide what's most important to you and choose the right system.
There are many much cheaper laptops that would fulfill your needs but there is nothing wrong in treating yourself to something a bit more overkill if it makes you more comfortable and happy with your decision.

I already have a Windows desktop, so I'm not opposed to the idea of a Windows laptop, but I've had bad experiences with Windows notebooks in the past. In my experience they almost always come with some of the downsides I mentioned in my reply above. I just like that I don't have to wonder what component they have neglected with Apple's MacBooks. It comes at a price premium, no doubt, but I don't mind.

 

54 minutes ago, CyberneticTitan said:

I bought the 14" MBP as a long time Windows laptop user. I will say that after experiencing the 120Hz ProMotion and Mini-LED display on it, it'll be hard to look at a 60FPS screen again. I also consume quite a bit of media on it, and it's also pretty fantastic for HDR content. The auto scaling of the screen refresh rate down to 24Hz when watching movies is fantastic and gives me great battery life.

 

The GPU on it is actually quite powerful and can handle a variety of games, even through Parallels/CrossOver, and you can play a small handful of iOS/iPadOS only games through sideloading.

 

Having a USB-C port on the right-side of the chassis has helped me quite a few times, just a nice to have.

 

All that said, these are quite worth the premium over the M2 Air, for sure. The screen alone is worth the >$200 markup in my opinion. Vs the M1 Air is more challenging, if all you do is browse the web and light work. I think you could get away with just 8GB and 256GB, and leverage external storage in some way.

 

My advice: Apple has a 15-day return period. Go buy a refurbished M1 Air, and see how it lives up to your expectations. (I say refurbished because I kinda feel bad buying a new product just so I can return it later). If it does go ahead and get yourself the M1 Air, if not then yeah wait for the next 14" Pros and re-evaluate then.

Great points, and good to hear from someone who owns one. Also thanks for the advice, I tend to take advantage of the return periods whenever they're available and I'm not 100% sure with my purchase, but I'm certain I'd be happy with either of the two. So I think once I've ordered one I'll probably stick with whatever I end up getting unless there's something wrong with the device. I take it you'd be going for the 14" M1 if you had to make the decision again today?

 

Also, I considered the base model M1 Air, but I really think that the 256 GB / 8 GB RAM variant would become a bit of a bottleneck over time. I'd like to use this computer for a while, so the very least I'd consider would be a 256 GB / 16 GB RAM version. These are around 1250€, so a good 700€ cheaper than the 14" M1 Pro. At that point the savings would be considerable enough for me to choose the M1 Air, but I'm not sure how happy I'd be with 256 GBs of storage long-term.

 

50 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The apple stuff is generally aimed at college students I think.  Good screens good keyboards good survivability, not a ton of power and not good at video games.  Their memory, storage, and repairs tend to be very expensive.  Becomes a question of what you need.  If memory, storage, and cost are the prime considerations, macs make less sense.  Finding an AMD64 machine with similar keyboard, trackpad and keyboard quality is doable but a lot more expensive generally. For ruggedness it’s even worse, though systems much more rugged than macs are available in AMD64.  Basically there’s just a lot more choice because there are a lot more manufacturers with AMD64. If you don’t care that much about screen quality but need a lot of memory or a big drive, it can be cheaper to get a PC. The screen won’t be as good of course.  If you need the things that the mac has advantages in it can absolutely bludgeon PCs price wise.  If you don’t though it becomes questionable.  Macs used to also have an advantage where they would run stuff PCs wouldn’t, or could do it much much better, so there wasn’t much option.  This is mostly gone though.  For myself, I was a Mac exclusive user, but I liked to play video games where PCs had a big advantage.  It sort of depends on what you need.  If the machine does nothing but sit on your desk and serve as a foldable desktop PC ruggedness doesn’t matter, but you have to buy it whether you want to or not with macs.  Likewise you can get lessor screen and keyboard quality if you’re using the thing as a desktop replacement anyway.  One weird niche macs still occupy is *nix machines.  If you use the command line macs roast PCs because they’re built off BSD. Places like NASA are wall-to-wall mac laptops.

As I mentioned in the other reply, in this particular case I'm not really comparing the MacBooks against a Windows offering, I'm primarily looking at just MacBooks.

[Bombastinator]

55 minutes ago, Yeroh said:

I could do most of what I mentioned on a 300€ iPad, but I wouldn't even consider it.

 

As I mentioned in the OP, I loved my old MacBook Air and have no problem paying a premium for a device that offers more than just the bare minimum performance required to accomplish these tasks. Probably like most of us on here, I spend a lot of time at my computer, so it might as well be a nice one. Apple certainly isn't the king of price to performance, but I've found their notebooks to be incredibly reliable, well-built and well-rounded. There's just no weak part of a MacBook, while a 600€ notebook will most likely come with some sort of caveat in the areas of speakers, build quality, reliability, support availability, you name it. And even 1500€ Windows machines like Dell's XPS doesn't quite match Apple in my experience - last time I tried them, their speakers were horrid.

 

I already have a Windows desktop, so I'm not opposed to the idea of a Windows laptop, but I've had bad experiences with Windows notebooks in the past. In my experience they almost always come with some of the downsides I mentioned in my reply above. I just like that I don't have to wonder what component they have neglected with Apple's MacBooks. It comes at a price premium, no doubt, but I don't mind.

 

Great points, and good to hear from someone who owns one. Also thanks for the advice, I tend to take advantage of the return periods whenever they're available and I'm not 100% sure with my purchase, but I'm certain I'd be happy with either of the two. So I think once I've ordered one I'll probably stick with whatever I end up getting unless there's something wrong with the device. I take it you'd be going for the 14" M1 if you had to make the decision again today?

 

Also, I considered the base model M1 Air, but I really think that the 256 GB / 8 GB RAM variant would become a bit of a bottleneck over time. I'd like to use this computer for a while, so the very least I'd consider would be a 256 GB / 16 GB RAM version. These are around 1250€, so a good 700€ cheaper than the 14" M1 Pro. At that point the savings would be considerable enough for me to choose the M1 Air, but I'm not sure how happy I'd be with 256 GBs of storage long-term.

 

As I mentioned in the other reply, in this particular case I'm not really comparing the MacBooks against a Windows offering, I'm primarily looking at just MacBooks.

Ah.  Then unless there’s something you absolutely have to have internal, a base m1 air is enough.  Basically everything you do is potato, and the Mac OS is better with memory than windows.  Storage doesn’t have to be super fast, but even if you do need it there is a thunderbolt port. Use the main (overly small imho) drive for the OS and clean it out regularly with an external drive which also gets your Time Machine. You can do everything except memory increases with external crap, and you don’t need one of those.  The base model drive is big enough for the OS and basic desktop space.

 

if you don’t actually use it on your lap and don’t mind the bottom getting hot, there’s a neat trick in one of the older LTT videos about putting a thermal pad between the cpu pcb and the bottom of the case that more or less turns an m1 air into an M1 Pro performance wise.  You’re unlikely to have a lot of use for it though.  Too much of your stuff is too low effort.  The occasional big compile maybe.

 

I wold likely go base m1 air, some sort of usb key styl ssd enclosure such as the one by ugreen (it’s slow b&m sata but still more than you need and it will take everything) and a low end SSD of whatever size you want.  Total likely far less than a hundred bucks.  And the drive issue is 90% solved.  If you really want fast, there’s a thunderbolt3 enclosure from envoy for like $80.  It’s cable only though if you want as cheap as possible I’m seeing things for unde $15 for the enclosure.  I wouldn’t even go new. Just an original m1 air on eBay or something.  Under a grand.