a lot of people have been saying that you should avoid this configuration of the M2 MacBook Air
well I disagree and I'll show you why I'm Alex and I do Down to Earth Tech videos and this is the M2
MacBook Air the 15 inch with 256 gig SSD and 16 gig of RAM and you might be asking why didn't you
go for the 512 gig everyone is complaining about how slow that is and how many problems that will
cause you in future or you could even be saying why didn't you go for the M1 MacBook Pro the 14
inch one because it's a similar price and to be fair there is a point in getting the MacBook Pro
if you can I'll discuss that later and the other aspect is cost if you can upgrade one
thing for me it has to be the memory most of any performance issues that I've seen in any computer
I've tested I'm you know in my 40s so I've seen a few computers all to do with low memory so 8GB is
an option for a lot of people but you know the minute you want to multitask and you want to do
a little bit more then the 16GB is the safest option there are many solutions out there many
Alternatives that I reviewed here in the channel as well for storage but there's not that many
solutions for memory right if you go for the 8GB RAM you know you're kind of stuck with that I just
don't like the dramatic aspect of some of these videos I think you know this these things cost a
lot of money and you got to be careful with your money there's definitely a level of truth that the
256GB SSD is going to be slower than the 512GB. that's what the benchmarks will show but you know
who the hell is out there using benchmarks right and I know there's lots of recommendations on
YouTube and lots of people criticizing whatever I'm gonna try to ignore that for the moment and
give you my honest opinion on my experience and show you some realistic scenarios not just in
this video but in my follow-ups as well where I'm using this machine probably in the same
way that you would and the second aspect is it's about you it's about what you prioritize right
I might prioritize portability for example you might prioritize performance and just to give
you an example right I did a quick test which I thought was going to take a lot longer I said
okay I've got all these raw images that I take as my thumbnails there's 900 of them in this folder
I said all in raw formats I said okay let's you know put them all into Lightroom classic
and import them and I thought well that was going to take a few minutes but in less than a minute
they were all imported and I was applying some pretty sets as well and then I thought okay well
maybe exporting will be slower right so I tried to export it to external storage and internal in the
internal hard drive you know the bad 256GB SSD it took 11 seconds so that's writing 900 images you
know in RAW format you know in 11 seconds you know you can talk about multitasking oh Alex you know
when it's exporting I want to go do something else in my case I was just in awe of how fast
it was it's like there was no time for me to think okay maybe I'll go browse the internet
and you know do my socials or something at the same time there was no time you know it exported
that quickly and I know you know real pros will probably be doing a lot more than what I'm doing
here but I wasn't really doing something mundane you know 900 images in RAW format is quite a lot
to process but I do appreciate that it might be merging photos you might be doing like panoramas
like sticking 15 photos together and kind of trying to export that I'm not going to do those
tests today like I did last year with a 13 inch MacBook Air I'll do exactly the same this year in
our day in the life sort of thing as a student as a graphic designer taking it outside not in
a controlled environment not using the same images you know not using the same website literally just
taking out a cafe and doing some proper work on it okay the other test that I wanted to do
just before I started recording this video was how long it would it take to export like a 18
minute video with multiple layers of 4K videos it's done almost an hour now 50 minutes and is
85 percent complete so yeah it's not great for exporting and look in the real world you know
what I would be doing whilst this is exporting is producing my thumbnail you know tidying up my
scripts and things like that before I worry about the export time you know but for me it's about the
experience in the edit itself you know when I was doing the cuts you know making things like slow-mo
and adding more layers of 4K you know adding some effects that experience was very smooth
in navigating the timeline was really smooth so from a performance perspective you know it's fine
the same video will probably take five minutes on the MacBook Pro but if you ask you know can
you edit videos on the MacBook Air absolutely and I've used the 13 inch it goes with me everywhere
when I go on holiday when I commute to work and to London I don't want to carry a heavy machine this
is perfect the MacBook Air is the perfect machine for that and I'm kind of amazed that even the 15
inch is so light it's so comfortable to to hold and to carry it I would have no problem taking
this with me and if it takes an hour to explore the video well you know so be it you know it's not
the end of the world for me because what I needed to do was edit the video that takes hours you know
and if that experience is choppy and it's kind of clunky you know that's going to be bad but it was
actually pretty decent okay I said I'm not gonna do benchmarks but I've got a machine there was a
lot of concern when I bought this machine about heat and as I'm holding here now this is It's
been exporting a video now for nearly an hour like I said it's done 87 and it's still running
so in theory this should be really really hot but there's nowhere on the machine I mean underneath
it right here in this area I can feel it a little bit warm but it is literally lukewarm it's not hot
at all so let's measure it so it's 91 degrees on the top here just above the keyboard which
is similar temperature towards underneath I presume there's a 92 yeah very similar so in
Celsius 33 degrees, 92 degrees in Fahrenheit it doesn't get hot right it's just you know
this is very manageable and like I said it's been exporting your video for an hour you'd expect it
to be a lot hotter now there are some limitations I'm not gonna lie and before I talk about that
you may have noticed that I'm using Ulysses and Alfred and other apps in here and don't
worry I will cover those in more detail in my next video you know about the best apps that I use for
this machine and accessories as well for it which brings me to my usual reminder if you're enjoying
this video give it a thumbs up it really means a lot it really helps me get the channel discovered
out there you know still kind of growing this Channel and after this video have a look around
if you enjoy my stuff it'll be awesome if you subscribed I'm here at least once a week with
a new down to Earth Tech video for you now when it comes to limitations the first one that came
to mind was using external monitors you can only connect one monitor which for me is okay there
are scenarios where I sometimes want to connect to but with a MacBook Air actually for what I do is
usually not even connecting to a monitor at all so if you're looking to connect to two monitors
you might need a display switch of some sort some sort of Hub out of the box is not going to support
it another thing that I was concerned about was you know file transfer speeds and things like that
and in this last few weeks of testing I managed to transfer hundreds and hundreds of gigs of data and
not once did I think oh wow this is too slow much the opposite the other limitation is the speakers
yes they improved and they are much better than the 13 inch for example last year but they are
still quite teeny in comparison with the MacBook Pro for example for me it's not a big deal and
I'm pretty sure for a lot of people it won't be a big deal either if I really want to enjoy music I
would never use the laptop speakers anyway even the MacBook Pro I'll probably use headphones or
plug my speakers in one question that I get a lot is you know should I get a low respect
MacBook Pro instead you know maybe the M1 the 14 inch mem1 which is kind of a very on par price
and for me it comes down to what you need to do I mean as you could see here today even though
the laptop isn't meant really for pros I could do some Pro workflows in here yes it took an hour to
explore a 20 minute video but you know exporting photos and things like that was a lot faster than
I thought it would be so yes there are some Pro workflows that you could totally do on the air
but I'd say if you rely on speed and processing power and multitasking abilities then of course
the pro is going to be the better option for you but if you're not expecting to use the machine to
those limits then I'd say this is shaping up to be one of the best laptops recently right I mean the
13 inch was amazing already I originally bought the 15 inch and I was honestly going to return it
but I've been really enjoying it so I think I'm gonna sell the 13 inch and keep the 15 because
I do prefer the larger screen I mean the display itself is is really good right for for a MacBook
Air is great it's not as good as an OLED display of course but it's pretty decent and bright enough
I haven't compared it with other laptops like a Windows laptop but I think for this price range
what you're getting here is actually not bad if you do decide to get a pro though what I
would say is you know check the certified program I've heard some really good things about you know
people getting MacBook Pros for a really decent price there what about the 13-inch MacBook Air
should you get that instead and I'd say only if your budget is limited and you really really value
portability right before I sell the 13 inch I'm definitely going to do a comparison between this
two but so far what I'm finding is the 15 inch actually doesn't feel like a compromise
on portability even though it's bigger I actually prefer that size because it lets me do more things
without compromising portability it's still a very very light laptop now what if you already have the
13 inch should you get this 15 inch I'd say not really because you know it's a lot of money that
you would spend for for an upgrade that is not really required yes there's going to be a tiny
difference in processing power because you know it got more CPU cores but it's going to be negligible
and I'll say only go for the 15 inch if you really really struggle with the 13 inch from a display
size perspective while you wait for my day in the life videos check out the 13 inch videos that I've
done over here and if you've seen those already check out my other videos over here see you soon