What Mac(Book) to buy?

TMPVC · June 6

Okay,

so I'm in the market for a new MacBook. I got one from Mid 2015, which now doesn't even handle Lightroom to well, and will need a new battery in the upcoming months. Recently I just used it to copy pictures from my SD cards to my external drives. Since it will not receive any new versions of MacOS, and the performance is basically not good enough anymore, I don't see a reason to replace the battery and might just go for a new one.
At the same time, I already have a beefy Windows machine (Ryzen 5950X, 3080Ti, 128GB RAM), which is working fine, but is just running slow in some tasks, since Adobe still is not able to use the full power of a machine for their apps (Premiere and Lightroom rarely use anything above 25%). I have been thinking of switching to a mac when I bought the Windows machine, but at that time, an equally fast Mac would've cost me at least double, that's why I was going for Windows - just a few months before Apple released the M1 chip.

Since I'm already working with ProRes RAW (therefore Final Cut would be a nice touch to use instead of Premiere; DaVinci is out as long as they don't support PRR) and large RAW picture files, I might just go full in, and go for a 16" M2 MacBook Pro (M2 Max with 30 core GPU and 64GB RAM). However, the price for this machine is.. Well. Expensive. So expensive in fact, that it would be viable to just put another 300€ on the counter and buy the new Mac Studio M2 with the same specs as the mentioned 16" MBPro to replace my Windows machine, AND a 15" MacBook Air on top of that.

The question I have is, how viable you think will the 15" M2 Air be for video and photo editing. I will need a machine that is at least able to edit normal ProRes 422HQ footage on a regular basis, and it even should be able to, in a rare emergency, edit some 8K ProResRAW. Photos will be no problem for sure, I just am a little bit concerned for video though.

Basically it's just a thought at this point, I need a new Laptop anyways, but as I mentioned, at this point I might just replace the last non-apple device in my house as well. I would use the MacBook Pro for stationary video editing anyways, this is why the price brought me to the thought of just getting a Studio and an Air.

I'd like to hear what you guys think, some pros and cons would be appreciated.

Shimejii · June 6

Macbook Air to me is a "if you need a quick edit while also using the computer. If you are doing any serious editing, Get a Macbook pro, especially with the footage you are editing at.

You could get the Studio and switch between the main pc for other workloads and that one. But its gonna be quite expensive as you mentioned. Laptop is at least portable on the go, and would be the better usecase.

Commodus · June 7

19 hours ago, TMPVC said:

Okay,

so I'm in the market for a new MacBook. I got one from Mid 2015, which now doesn't even handle Lightroom to well, and will need a new battery in the upcoming months. Recently I just used it to copy pictures from my SD cards to my external drives. Since it will not receive any new versions of MacOS, and the performance is basically not good enough anymore, I don't see a reason to replace the battery and might just go for a new one.
At the same time, I already have a beefy Windows machine (Ryzen 5950X, 3080Ti, 128GB RAM), which is working fine, but is just running slow in some tasks, since Adobe still is not able to use the full power of a machine for their apps (Premiere and Lightroom rarely use anything above 25%). I have been thinking of switching to a mac when I bought the Windows machine, but at that time, an equally fast Mac would've cost me at least double, that's why I was going for Windows - just a few months before Apple released the M1 chip.

Since I'm already working with ProRes RAW (therefore Final Cut would be a nice touch to use instead of Premiere; DaVinci is out as long as they don't support PRR) and large RAW picture files, I might just go full in, and go for a 16" M2 MacBook Pro (M2 Max with 30 core GPU and 64GB RAM). However, the price for this machine is.. Well. Expensive. So expensive in fact, that it would be viable to just put another 300€ on the counter and buy the new Mac Studio M2 with the same specs as the mentioned 16" MBPro to replace my Windows machine, AND a 15" MacBook Air on top of that.

The question I have is, how viable you think will the 15" M2 Air be for video and photo editing. I will need a machine that is at least able to edit normal ProRes 422HQ footage on a regular basis, and it even should be able to, in a rare emergency, edit some 8K ProResRAW. Photos will be no problem for sure, I just am a little bit concerned for video though.

Basically it's just a thought at this point, I need a new Laptop anyways, but as I mentioned, at this point I might just replace the last non-apple device in my house as well. I would use the MacBook Pro for stationary video editing anyways, this is why the price brought me to the thought of just getting a Studio and an Air.

I'd like to hear what you guys think, some pros and cons would be appreciated.

I'd consider a 14-inch MacBook Pro if you want to consolidate around one machine. You could roll the savings from two systems into the CPU and RAM you want. That and you'll probably appreciate the extra I/O when you're away from your desk. The base M2 can handle photo and 4K video editing surprisingly well, by all accounts, but 8K ProRes RAW? That'd be pushing it. I'd want an M2 Pro or Max and gobs of RAM to be truly comfortable.

If you'd rather have two systems, you could always save some money by getting the 13-inch Air as the companion laptop. It shouldn't be any slower than the 15-inch, it'll just have a smaller screen.

ToboRobot · June 7

I think with video editing it will come down to how long are your render times. If you are just pumping out quick videos, that's one thing, but if you are trying to render a feature length film or longer projects, the cooling on the Pro models may be valuable.