This video is sponsored by Incogni We had a great time together, right?
I took you everywhere with me. Oh the fun we had!
But look at you, how can I say no to this? Do you know what? let's go create some memories
togetger!
It’s been two months since I got the 15” M2 MacBook Air and I gotta say… This is
turning out to be an absolute banger of a laptop!
But I have a big decision to make now. I don’t need two MacBook Airs…
I love when this happens though you know, I wasn’t really expecting much form the
15". I was quite happy with the 13 inch M2 MacBook Air!
And to be perfectly honest with you, I was kinda hoping we were gonna get an M3 chip
with this one but, for what I do… which is a bit of graphic designing and general
admin tasks…
Oh yes, and the odd video editing too - the M2 MacBook Air has been amazing. Sure the
M3 chip would have been even nicer, but I think this will serve me well for at least
a couple more years if not more.
Like I did with the 13”, I went again for 16GB RAM but only 256GB SSD.
Which if you are to believe YouTubers, this SSD is meant to be horrendous, right? But
in my experience, and as you will be able to see here today, that’s a load of nonsense.
Let me take you through how I use this laptop.. and hopefully my decision at the end will
help you too. There are couple of gotchas in this video though…so make sure you get
the context.
I am Alex and I do down to earth tech videos.
In a typical day, using the M2 MacBook Air, I am always on the move, right? If I am in
the office or in the studio all day, then the MacBook Air doesn’t get a lot of use,
I use my MacBook Pro for that.
This bad boy really comes to life when I am out and about. The fact I can chuck this in
my bag and not worry about the weight is fantastic.
And if I am going to a cafe or a place like this, I just use a sleeve like one, kind of
an envelope size thing, is perfect for me.
Actually this is from Harber London, they do amazing products, they keep all my MacBooks
in perfect condition, definitely worth a look.
Obviously, portability is 100% the strong suit of this laptop, but you may be wondering…
How far can you really push it?
And rather than showing you like a bunch of random benchmark results, let me just show
you my real workflow.
For a single product review like this, I only take about 20-30 shots. For thumbnails and
you know, kinda promiting the video. But occasionally I do end up taking about 50 and sometimes
up to 100 shots that I then import into LightRoom and choose the best ones for Instagram, Twitter
or my thumbnails.
So let’s do that, let’s load up 100 shots here and edit them.
I actually ended up importing 150 images (RAW) and the import itself didnt even touch the
disk, it was really really quick, less than 10 seconds probably. And for the photographers
out there, what I did notice, was that if you are scrolling through really quickly through
the images, and applying a preset which is something that you might do, you do notice
that it takes a little while, maybe a second, to actually catch-up and apply that preset.
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
A good example of how great the performance on this machine has been is with video editing.
I know this is a bit of cliche here on YouTube, but I won’t get your hopes up ok?
Because, a lot of reviewers will show you how it is possible to do video editing and
sure, that is true. The machine is very capable… but there are limitations. And I think they
are not exclusive to video editing.
When I say limitations, I mean in storage size, GPU, CPU and also memory. Let me show
you what I mean…
In my videos, I might have two tracks of talking head in a Multicam scenario like this one.
I am talking to this camera here, and that guy over there, right? Hello!
So that’s already two tracks of 4K 10bit 4:2:2 video.
In English: These are heavy files!
From here I then add b-roll shots, that’s again more 4K footage, in different frame
rates sometimes, usually 60fps for product shots and sometimes 120fps if I use for slow
motion.
Then I add music and sound effects, motion graphics, some with 3D tracking too, which
again… all add up to the load on the processing power… be that the CPU or GPU cores.
And from a file size perspective, we are talking over 100GB per video! Which may not sound
like a lot, but if you're doing this every week, you know it's going to add up quite
quickly.
So not much point in using local storage in my opinion, unless these are once in a blue
moon sort of thing.
If you’re really busy generating a lot of heavy files… then I’d say external storage
is still the best option for me.
And these external SSD drives have served me really well. I use them EVEN with my 2TB
MacBook Pro, the one with 2TB SSD, because they’re just so convenient.
Now… I have to be real here because not everyone generates the amount of heavy files
that I do, and if that’s you, don't worry about spending more money on external storage,
if you are not generating those heavy files every week, you’re probably never gonna
need any external storage anyway.
Maybe for backups, but there are cheaper options for that.
There’s actually a word of caution though about upgrading storage which I will cover
a bit later in the video.
For me… it’s all about reliability. In the last 3 years of doing these videos, they
haven’t let me down a single time, love these things!
The other limitation on the M2 MacBook Air, as I said… is performance in CPU, GPU and
memory.
This one to me is less important when I am actively editing videos, but it will become
important when you are exporting the footage, and that may apply for things like you know,
exporting a lot of RAW images in Lightroom.
A 15 minute video will take me about 10 minutes to export on my maxed out M1 Max MacBook Pro…
The same 15 minute video on the M2 MacBook Air would take about 45 minutes to maybe an
hour… to export.
Yeah! Not many people will show you that, but here… you know I am not gonna hide that
from you.
What I love about this laptop is how I don’t really have to worry about the battery.
Sometimes I love to just go out and relax in a cafe, you know… a bit of change of
scene to get a different sort of inspiration.
I might be doing some of my 9 to 5 work calls, catching up with my emails or working on my
next script, and of course, respond to your lovely comments as well!
Sure I could use a tablet or my phone… but I don’t know… there’s something about
using a laptop that to me... gets you in the right mood you know to be more productive.
Yeah, the MacBook Air is the perfect laptop for that.
It's very convenient to carry around, and makes you look professional.
Oh yes, those 80,000 unread emails? I can explain… The amount of junk email I was
getting got so bad that I actually gave up on that Inbox and created a new one.
And even though it’s fun to see that huge number and have an internal competition to
see who’s gonna get to 100K first… …I think I found a better solution, you know?
This is where Incogni comes in. They are sponsoring
today's video, but they are brilliant! Because... If I am really honest, I don’t feel comfortable
knowing that all these companies have my details, and you know, my personal data floating around
without my consent, which could lead to identity theft and horrible things.
We are always hearing about these data breaches, right? And how sometimes even huge companies
get exposed and our personal data end up in the hands of these data brokers.
Oh and hitting Unsubscribe on those emails? In a lot of cases, hitting that unsubscribe
link will actually confirm to the sender that the mailbox is active and… yes you guessed
it… you’re gonna get even more junk!
These data brokers are everywhere, there’s no stopping them - selling our data turns
out to be very lucrative.
Honestly, it’s pretty amazing what they do, they will find (I will find you) and request
the data brokers on your behalf, to remove your information.
And if they object… Incogni will take care of that for you.
(Ihave a very particular set of skills)
Not gonna lie, I was very sceptical but if there was one bit of information I’d love
to see my data removed from these data brokers.
It was very easy to get going, I just created an account using the information that I wanted
removed, and granted Incogni permission to work on my behalf.
And like I am doing just now… I sat back and relaxed.
And this was really cool! Within a couple of minutes... Literally 2 minutes, I was already
able to see in the Incogni Dashboard that they discovered over 50 data brokers that
had my personal information.
Now check this out, three days after signing up, they already dealt with 37 requests.That
means 37 data brokers already started the process of removing my data. 16 of them already
confirmed they don't hold my data anymore.
This is incredible! I am feeling a lot more relaxed about my personal information out
there.
And the good news for you is that for the first 100 people who use the link below with
my code: ALEXG, Incogni will give you 60% OFF when you sign up.
Thanks Incogni for sponsoring and making today’s video possible.
One question you might be asking is, how good is that 15” display for entertainment?
As you can see here I am in a pretty bright space and the display is still pretty darn
good.
Sure you get some reflections like in any display and it’s not as contrasty as my
MacBook Pro Display, but it’s certainly no slouch!
Whether I am watching bright animated movies or darker ones like Batman for example, it’s
still performing really really well.
And talking about performance, how about the gaming experience. And you might be asking...Gaming
on a Mac? Don't be crazy! You must be mad!
No, I am pretty serious. Well, there are two types of gaming right?
Sure we can play games on the Mac itself but with a decent internet connection, we can
actually enjoy.. what I call “PROPER” gaming.
I’ve been using both the Xbox cloud app and the NVIDIA GeForceNOW app and all I can
say is… I can’t believe this possible now.
Hooking the MacBook Air up to a larger monitor or a TV and adding a gaming controller…
and there you go, Triple A gaming experience. On a Mac!
I wouldn't say this is a "battle station" right? For competitive gaming.But it's pretty
good right!
For a more casual gaming setup you can of course enjoy some the games that we have on
Appel Arcade. I know what you're thinking, right, they are rubbish!
Well, they are getting better to be fair but feels like decades away still from something
decent.
What I did notice though, when I wasn’t wearing my earbuds or headphones… is that
the speakers are a lot better now.
To give you an idea, here is short comparison between the 13”, 15” and also the MacBook
Pro speakers as well, not for a comparison, but for a reference.
Idon't know if you could notice it, but to me is a big improvement.
Something else I get to do a lot for my 9 to 5 work is use Microsoft Windows.
The beauty with any Macs is that you can run virtual machines with Windows 11 even, without
any compatibility issues.
There’s a few options out there, for mad people like me, who wants to run Windows,
but the best software for that in my opinion is Parallels. They actually released a new
version too, taking advantage of the new MacOS Sonoma that is coming.
I’ve used them for many years, because I’ve always used Macs at work, but worked with
Windows applications a lot… and they just make the whole process of building a virtual
machine and managing the resources a lot easier. Can't recommend enough.
Oh and thank you so much for everyone who sent their questions, let's go through some
of them here.
How does the MacBook Air hold up against the MacBook Pro?
Which MacBook would you buy for yourself? the 15 inch. I will explain later.
Syed asks. Can you install Windows? Yes, I run Windows 11 on all my Macs and I
use Parallels for that.
He's asking if it's worth buying the MacBook Air for coding and creative work.
Absolutely, I will leave you some links down below as well, for the day in the life videos
that I did, one of them was a Graphic Designer day in the life, so it might be worth watching
that.
But if I was to summarise those videos, one recommendation that I would give is, upgrade
the memory to 16GB.
Will's Tech is asking: What is your favourite thing about the MacBook Air 15"? And I'd say
it's definitely the screen, it's all about that extra space, without adding much to the
weight.
Stefan is asking which one is better for video editing
100% the 15 inch. Not so much because of the performance, because they are pretty much
the same, but that extra bit of display real estate, will definitley help you. It means
you don't have to zoom in and out of the timeline too much, and you can see more of the timeline.
And that's always going to be useful.
And thanks so much everyone for saying hello here! I responded to all of you there as well!
Decision time!
Right, decision time… Which one am I going to keep and (Who cares about that right?)
more importantly…
Which one would I recommend and why? The highlight of these two months of course,
for me has been the portability.
Like I said in my initial review, I didn't want to keep this laptop at all, because Ilike
my 13 inch, but I really enjoyed having this extra real estate on the display, without
adding much of weight.
It's almost like having the best of every single world, right? Performance, portability,
a big display.
It’s really a thing of beauty now and going back to the original MacBook Air, it's always
been a favourite of mine, for portability. But having used this 15 inch, I don't see
myself going back to the 13 inch after this.
The other reason I love this laptop is the price. At this configuration, which for me
is a decent sweetspot, it’s a fantastic value for money.
Hard to beat actually.
Which is where my word of caution from earlier comes into play a little bit.
If you start adding more storage and memory to this laptop you run the risk of entering
the 14” MacBook Pro realm. And that to me, is a better overall laptop.
It's getting on a little bit now right? But it's still a Pro machine and it's gonna give
you more bang for your buck. I think!
But if you still prefer the portability of the 15” then I would say, just be very intentional
with your upgrades.
For instance, you may not want to buy another laptop for a few years and that longevity
aspect is gonna be really important to you. In that case, the upgrade to maybe 512GB or
even 1TB might make sense to you.
I certainly wouldn’t want to go near or past US$ 2,000 on a MacBook Air, but that’s
just me.
Now if you don’t care about that extra real estate on the display… Save a few hundred
and get the 13” because... it's an even better deal right now.
See you soon!