M1 MacBook Air 16GB Ram 512GB SSD vs. M2 MacBook Air 16GB Ram 256GB SSD

[Gabby Cashew]

Hi!

 

I'm looking to buy a new MacBook Air as my new daily computer. I do a lot of document and spreadsheet processing in the day, and attend classes at night, so I found the MacBooks to fit my needs, most specifically, the long battery life.

 

Also, during my free days, I sneak a game of CSGO, DOTA 2, or Minecraft. I also plan on installing Parallels since I sometimes use apps that run on Windows.

 

I am now having difficulties picking between these two specs (as my budget is limited while my purchase has to be done soon):

a) MacBook Air M1 with 16 GB Ram and 512 GB SSD

b) MacBook Air M2 with 16 GB Ram and 256 GB SSD

 

I already have a 1 TB external SSD, so idk if this will affect my purchase.

 

Open to hearing everyone's thoughts!

[Crunchy Dragon]

I will usually recommend the option with the larger storage. I'm not currently aware that there's enough of a performance difference with M2 vs M1, but the less you have to have an external drive connected, the longer your battery will last.

 

Additionally, it's always nicer to just have files you need to access saved locally and not have to dig up your external drive.

[Zando_]

19 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I'm not currently aware that there's enough of a performance difference with M2 vs M1,

Yeah, IIRC the difference is pretty small. The main pro of the M2 is the updated design, bit better screen etc.

32 minutes ago, Goppz Legacion said:

I also plan on installing Parallels since I sometimes use apps that run on Windows.

On ARM windows? Parallels cannot run x86 Windows on M-series CPUs. You must run the ARM version and AFAIK there's pretty poor support for that with most apps. I believe there are some emulators (different thing to virtualization) that would be able to emulate x86 Windows, but it will run so terribly that it's unusable outside proof of concept.

 

Also, be sure to have a backup - either on an external drive or in the cloud - for your important files. The SSDs in Mac laptops are soldered so if anything on the logic board fails, bye bye your data (outside super niche stuff like sending it to someone who can desolder the flash chips and manually rip the data off them, which I assume to be incredibly expensive).

[Gabby Cashew]

3 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Yeah, IIRC the difference is pretty small. The main pro of the M2 is the updated design, bit better screen etc.

 

On ARM windows? Parallels cannot run x86 Windows on M-series CPUs. You must run the ARM version and AFAIK there's pretty poor support for that with most apps. I believe there are some emulators (different thing to virtualization) that would be able to emulate x86 Windows, but it will run so terribly that it's unusable outside proof of concept.

Had the same thoughts too as regards the differences of the M1 and M2 macbooks, so it's nice to get some validation 

 

As regards the software, my country's tax filing software has been tested with Parallels, so that's a big relief. My university also uses an exam software and works both natively on m1 or through Parallels.

 

29 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

"the less you have to have an external drive connected, the longer your battery will last."

Thanks for this!! I think this becomes a factor since I plan to make the macbook last as long as it can before needing to plug it back in the wall.

[Alex Atkin UK]

37 minutes ago, Goppz Legacion said:

Had the same thoughts too as regards the differences of the M1 and M2 macbooks, so it's nice to get some validation 

 

As regards the software, my country's tax filing software has been tested with Parallels, so that's a big relief. My university also uses an exam software and works both natively on m1 or through Parallels.

 

Thanks for this!! I think this becomes a factor since I plan to make the macbook last as long as it can before needing to plug it back in the wall.

Well according to Macworld:
 

Quote

The M2 MacBook Air has a larger battery than its predecessor: a 52.6-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery rather than the 49.9-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery of the previous generation.

 

Apple states that battery life is the same 18 hours.  In our own battery tests the battery lasted 17.5 hours, which was very close enough to Apple’s 18-hour claim.

 

In our tests the M2 MacBook Air battery beat the M1 MacBook Air and M2 MacBook Pro by almost an hour and a half.

So make of that what you will.

[Darkseth]

18 hours ago, Zando_ said:

and AFAIK there's pretty poor support for that with most apps. I believe there are some emulators (different thing to virtualization) that would be able to emulate x86 Windows, but it will run so terribly that it's unusable outside proof of concept.

I did exactly that (ARM Windows 11) on my M1 Macbook Pro 13.3", because i had to use a few applications.

Windows 11 itself has an emulator built in, that translates 32bit and 64 bit applications to ARM.

I used SAP S/4 Hana, and a little finfance Game (of course, no support, but it ran just fine).

For Business Intelligence i used Microsoft Server Data Tools 2017 standalone, BI Modeler, Power BI, Microsoft Server Management Studio and DBeaver.

 

Everything ran flawlessly, i haven't even noticed ANY performance issues. Well, not like those Applications need any performance to begin with.

Even BI Modeller ran, while it didn't ran on my Windows Desktop (apparently there are issues if Winrar is installed).

 

I've had an issue lately tho: Newer version of SSDT, we switched to Visual Studio 2022, which i could install, however, i could not install the addon "data preparation and analysis", it just wasn't available (probably, ARM Version of VIsual Studio doesn't have that).

 

 

From my experience, at least 95% of all Applications will run well, while some special ones might cause issues.

My overall Windows experience within Parallels (all ARM) was better, faster and more stable than every business-notebook from Work i've ever had - because my Mac managed to stay silent even while working inside the VM.

 

Even a Nintendo DS Emulator ran just fine or that little Tool that modified the Rom.
I really never notived anything negative from the emulator, aside from that data preparation and analysis missing in Visual Studio 2022.

 

 

Also, according to Geekbench 5.3 (which ran natively as ARM version, there was an arm runtime in the installation path), the Performance inside the VM was similar to a native Tiger Lake Laptop (like 1135G7~).

Which is still more performance than most ARM-Windows Laptops have natively.

[Zando_]

2 hours ago, Darkseth said:

Also, according to Geekbench 5.3 (which ran natively as ARM version, there was an arm runtime in the installation path), the Performance inside the VM was similar to a native Tiger Lake Laptop (like 1135G7~).

Which is still more performance than most ARM-Windows Laptops have natively.

Awesome! I knew Windows for ARM had its own emulator/translation layer, I had assumed it would chug when run inside a VM though. Good to hear that's not the case!

[seanondemand]

3 hours ago, Zando_ said:

Awesome! I knew Windows for ARM had its own emulator/translation layer, I had assumed it would chug when run inside a VM though. Good to hear that's not the case!

Windows arm on parallels has come a long way in a pretty short period. 
 

also, I’d buy the m2. MagSafe, nicer display, new design, a little better performance. For the relatively small extra outlay, worth it. External storage has also gotten hilariously cheap, and actually pretty fast.