on the face of it there’s so few big differences between the m1 macbook air and the m1 macbook pro how do you decide between both of them well one of them is right for you and in today’s video i’m going to help you decide which one to buy welcome back to marketless reviews thank you for subscribing if you have if you haven’t just click the button super simple it’s free and you’ll never miss an episode so i’ve been using the m1 macbook air now for several weeks and i absolutely love it it’s perfect for what i need it for but my time with that machine has given me an insight into where it’s lacking slightly and where i think it’s lacking slightly for other people people who will actually need the pro version of the m1 macbook as i mentioned in the intro it’s such small differences seemingly between these two machines and throughout the content i’ve done previously about the the m1 air and anything to do with the the m1 chip the most consistent question i’ve had from viewers and from readers of my blog has been which one should i choose which one’s right for me this isn’t really helped by the fact that the m1 is so powerful and even
that bass level m1 air mine for example beat my 16 inch macbook pro that i spent three and a half thousand pounds on in a rendering test that doesn’t help things but there are differences between the m1 macbook air and the m1 macbook pro that actually when you start to think about it you can narrow down the choice to one of those machines for yourself so as always let’s get into it let’s take a look at the key differences between the two i’ve got them on the screen so i’m going to keep referring to it bear with me so the price first of all there’s a 300 difference if you’re looking at the us price it’s the same for the uk actually 300 difference between the air and the pro the air is 999 and the pro is 1299 fairly significant difference it’s enough of a difference not to make this an easy choice the base spec air also has one less graphics call than the macbook pro so the macbook pro they both have an eight-core normal cpu but the bass level air has a seven core gpu within that m1 chip whereas the pro has an eight core gpu one core less the pro has a fan to call down the cpu the macbook air is completely fabulous no matter
which version of that computer you buy the pro has a slightly brighter screen which is measured in something called knits no one knows what it is but the pro has a 100 more than the air battery now the air has 15 hours of web browsing battery whereas the pro has 17 hours so you get two extra hours from the pro the speakers and mic are slightly better on the pro that kind of called studio quality on apple’s website the air just has normal speakers and a mic there’s very little in it weight wise the air weighs 2.8 pounds and the pro weighs three pounds and lastly the air looks slightly different it has this tapered design um and that does mean although it’s very thin at one point the thickest part of the air is actually thicker than the macbook pro overall but everything else you know the ports the configurable memory they both go up to 16 gig the storage options they can go both go up to two terabytes keyboard the facetime camera everything else is absolutely identical so where do you go from here well you ask yourself the following five questions so the first
question is do you undertake long consistently process intensive workloads and this is quite an open book when it comes to how you define that but i think there are three very common examples one of them is video editing so if for example you do lots of 4k or god forbid 8k video editing then that is pretty processor intensive because it will be doing rendering for consistently long periods of time and if you export those videos that will take a long time as well by long time we’re talking about 10 15 minutes of non-stop intensive processor use bear that in mind the other example is audio editing music production for example if you use logic and you consistently have projects that have 100 tracks in them use loads of effects loads of plugins that is going to be pretty processor intensive and the third one which i can’t really get into much myself because i’m not a programmer is development you know if you’re a developer and you do lots of coding that’s that asks a lot of the cpu so again if you think you fall into any of those brackets or another bracket potentially maybe computer science or something where you rely a lot on on sustained heavy workloads where you’re really putting that computer to task so for example if you have a macbook at the moment and the current version of that if it’s not an m1 for example if that constantly gets warm when you’re doing things and the fans come on a lot you’re
probably doing some intensive work if that’s the case the pro wins hands down just by the pro it has the fan which means it doesn’t have to consistently throttle the cpu i think a lot of the tests that people have done have revealed that it’s very difficult to get it to throttle it at all but the air is completely fanless there’s no passive sorry there’s no active cooling in there it’s uh and because of that if you make it do a lot of work consistently it will have to ramp down the process of speed and the net result of that is that things will take longer to complete and you may get a few crashes the next question is do you care about the touch bar this is a very divisive topic i have used the touch bar now on my 16-inch macbook pro for quite a while and when i say use i mean it’s been there and i’ve accidentally hit it quite a few times and i occasionally use it to lower and you know raise the volume and the screen brightness i don’t really use it for anything else for me it’s pointless i do know however that a lot of people love it a lot of people actually want it they have perhaps haven’t even tried it yet and they love the idea of this fancy new thing on the
keyboard so if the touch bar is something that you absolutely want and it’s a big deal for you you have to get the pro because the air doesn’t have it yeah they both have touch id which is great fantastic but only the pro has touch bar so if the touch bar is a big thing for you get the pro third question is whether or not you do a lot of work out and about and if you don’t want to have the hassle of continually taking a charger with you now a caveat with this is the fact that the air still has ridiculous battery life it’s the battery life when you’re using it and also the idle battery life when it’s closed and it’s not doing anything is just unbelievable i’ve never owned a laptop like this one it’s just incredible the macbook pro has two extra hours they’ve managed to squeeze more power out of it i think the battery’s slightly bigger and that could mean a lot if you are on the road a lot and you really don’t want to have to think about charging those two extra hours you need to ask yourself what can i get done in those two hours you know if it came to it and at the end of a very busy day and you had a really important report or perhaps a piece of content
you had to create and you had to get it done it’s the difference between getting a contract and not getting a contract if the air died at that point that’s a big deal whereas the pro would carry on from for another two hours so if that’s the case the pro could be the one to go for the other one relates to those hundred nits of brightness that you get the extra brightness that you get on the on the pro and the only time you’re ever really gonna benefit from that is if you work outside a lot so if you unlike me you don’t live in the uk you can enjoy you know the outside more than we do you might actually benefit from that slightly brighter screen it’s a minor thing this i the air still has a fantastic perfectly good screen to use outside but if you live in a country where it’s very sunny and you’re out and about a lot firstly i’m jealous but also that 100 nits of brightness might help i wouldn’t use that as a clinch between the two but if that marries up with some of the other things i’ve just asked you and it seems to be leaning towards the pro the pro would be the one to get the last one is do you just like the idea of having a macbook pro if you do that’s absolutely fine just get one you know if you can afford it get it you know i i like the idea of having a pro laptop i always have them if i’m completely
honest and the same goes for the air if you just love the idea of being a macbook air owner that laptop has got a lot of fans it’s got a lot of it always has ever since it was first revealed years ago it’s it’s an iconic design and people love their airs and if you just love the idea of having a macbook air and you’re willing to accept the fact that even if you you know you perhaps do do 4k video editing it’s occasionally going to struggle and you know sweat and pants and complain a little bit but you just want an air that’s fine too it doesn’t matter it’s entirely up to you so yeah if you really want a pro just because it’s a pro get the pro if you really want the air because you want to be in that little air club a bit like i do go for it that’s it and you’ll notice that as within those five questions i haven’t kind of covered all of those major differences between the two machines that’s because the mics you know the speakers the weight the color choices those differences are so negligible even the color choices okay you get a gold color for the air that you don’t get with the pro but
classic apple it’s not particularly exciting gold and it doesn’t go beyond that you know if they offered a blue one on the green one the pink one maybe that might sway your decision a bit more but these little differences you know the mic i’ve talked about this before they waffled on for ages about this studio quality mic and you know in reality and the same thing with the speakers actually they’re good don’t get me wrong both of those things are good and it’s nice to have that if you’re a pro user you will not use one the speakers to properly monitor the audio that you’re creating and two you wouldn’t rely on the laptop’s mic for proper production ready stuff you just you just wouldn’t so it’s just a negligible difference that would not make a difference same thing with the weight they pretty much weigh the same to be honest they’re pretty much the same form factor the things i’ve mentioned are the things which will
make a tangible difference to your life that is completely what i’m about when i use technology it’s why i created this channel so that’s it you know those five questions if you need to go back and watch them again just to get your head around it go for it if you’ve got any other questions about it then ask me in the comments other people always get involved it’s fantastic and if i have managed to give you an idea of which one you’re going to go for again which one is it let us know in the comments keep watching for my completely unfiltered reaction to the m1 macbook air and two weeks i spent with it because that if that is the one that you’re thinking about that may help you well it will sway you one way or the other definitely so keep watching for a link to that but in the meantime thank you so so much for and i will catch you next time
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