MacBook for occasional gamer

[Falcon1986]

I would like to get a reliable laptop for my sister who will be achieving a significant educational/professional milestone very soon.

 

Right now, she uses a very old Dell laptop that has essentially become a desktop due to lid malfunctions and poor battery life. But she uses it for light gaming (Left For Dead, AoEII, The Sims) and it barely keeps up, and general web browsing, Office, media consumption, Netflix, etc.

 

All of her other devices are in the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, Air Pods, Watch, iPad), so a MacBook would not be a bad idea. I was just wondering how the M1/M2 MacBooks perform when it comes to running such games. I’m considering an M2 MacBook Air for it’s portability, efficient and powerful Apple silicon, good screen, and overall good build. What do you think?

 

What are your recommendations? Or should I just stick to a Windows-based system? Budget is preferably under US$1000 and I have access to the usual online stores.

 

Thanks for any suggestions and insights.

[mMontana]

3 minutes ago, Falcon1986 said:

What do you think?

Currently, on Apple products with Mac OS the gaming experience is usually quite poor.

 

The ecosystem experience, however, might be much more interesting. Before taking any steps I suggest you to understand how much is important keep on gaming for her.

[igormp]

16 minutes ago, Falcon1986 said:

I’m considering an M2 MacBook Air for it’s portability, efficient and powerful Apple silicon, good screen, and overall good build. What do you think?

For the games you mentioned it should be more than fine, along with the other extras and considering how she's already into the ecosystem, I'd say your pick is a great one, she'll be plenty happy

[Donut417]

27 minutes ago, Falcon1986 said:

. I was just wondering how the M1/M2 MacBooks perform when it comes to running such games.

Starting with MacOS Catalina Apple choose to kill off 32 bit support. Also remember that its likely few or none of those games are ported to Apple Silicon meaning they have to run thru Rosetta 2, so you might want to do some research on how they will run. 

[igormp]

22 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Starting with MacOS Catalina Apple choose to kill off 32 bit support. Also remember that its likely few or none of those games are ported to Apple Silicon meaning they have to run thru Rosetta 2, so you might want to do some research on how they will run. 

There are tons of websites that do those "does it work" thingies for AS:

https://applesilicongames.com/

https://doesitarm.com/games/

https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Home

 

The games OP mentioned all seem to work fine

[Kvores Daniel]

I think she would be really happy. I am currently using the M2 13" MacBook Pro (8c/10c) and I am really satisfied with it. Out of the 3 games you mentioned I've only tried Sims briefly, but I worked well and iirc it's Apple Silicon native. I haven't tried the other games, but I have experience with others, like CS:GO, Metro Exodus, Minecraft, World Of Tanks, Hades. These all run as well as I would expect, although I am a very casual gamer.

In every other aspect this laptop is amazing. The battery life is outstanding, I charge it every 3 days or so, but if I really wanted to stretch it with low power mode, I could even get 5 days with. (after 2 full school days, albeit lighter ones, in low power mode, I ended the second day, with 73% percent left) 

Also, I am using macOS Sonoma Beta and the switching of AirPods between iPhone and Mac is so much faster than before.

[E-waste]

Apple is using Wine software now for some of their graphics stuff, and you can run Wine on Mac.  Also, if steam is available on Mac for the arm processor, then you can use the proton from steam to run Windows games.  It works great on Linux.