it's been almost a month since the m2 macbook air was released and now that
the hype is settled down let's get real is it really worth spending way more
money on the 14-inch macbook pro well today i'm gonna compare everything from
a honest real world perspective and keep it short and sweet after five years
apple finally redesigned the macbook air and looks modern but a bit retro at the
same time the 14-inch looks like a chunkier version of the air but the
extra thickness brings features that can make a real difference in usability
since i mentioned design let's start with that the pro looks bigger bulkier
and a bit meaner where the air is thin and sleek the wet shape is now gone and
personally i'm a bit sad about it since it was so iconic and it didn't dig into
your wrist for really long typing sessions but in the real world the new
design is still thin enough not to matter one weird thing is that online
they look very similar and the specs seem so close but in the real world you
really notice the weight difference and the thickness i personally find that the
thicker pro can dig into your wrists and even though the keyboards have the same
name the airs feels better in my opinion having a bit more feedback so if you do
a lot of typing you'll prefer the m2 air one disappointment though with the new
air are the speakers apple made a huge deal about the quad speakers with
dedicated woofers so we had high expectations but in reality they got
quieter and with less steer separation as they got rid of the speaker holes on
the sides and instead they fire towards the display the 14-inch on the other
hand has the best speakers in any laptop of this size go ahead and take a
listen [Music]
the difference is shocking with a huge difference in volume and bass and if
you're somebody that will constantly be playing them at full blast you will
really enjoy them i know i do now with that said if i'm being honest if you are
not comparing them side by side the air speakers still sound good and for most
people they are much better than the laptop that it will replace with that we
have new ports which your current laptop may or may not have now i love that
magsafe is back on both of these and on the air that means that the two
thunderbolt ports are free to use at any time now yes the 14-inch has one more
thunderbolt and it's more powerful as well as hdmi and a card reader so if
yours has that now i would track how often you use those things now for me
most of the time i just use usb type c and even though dongles suck you should
really ask yourself is it really worth spending the extra cash to have them
built in instead of buying a cheap multi-adapter i'll link this one in the
description it's been working great and i just keep it in my laptop bag now as
for the webcams based on specs they seem the same being 1080p but we definitely
noticed a difference this is the new 1080p webcam in the m2 macbook air now
it did get a lot better compared to the 720p but the 14 inch macbook pro that
also has a 1080p webcam has less noise a bit more detail so i think it must be
just the camera module that apple is using after webcams now is a really good
time to talk about fan noise or lack thereof if you're somebody who
constantly does zoom meetings and your current laptop might get annoying
because after a while the fans will spin up and keep it cool as it processes that
video feed which was a huge issue with the intel macbook air and that also
impacted audio quality the m2 air is fanless so it is silent but if you might
be worried about the 14-inch pro because it does have dual fans thankfully for
most tasks the fans are literally turned off thanks to apple silicon being very
efficient and since the heat pipes pull away heat from the processors even if
the fans are off now if you're doing tough tasks yes they will spin up but
they are still very quiet some people have mentioned that the m2 air's bottom
case can get really hot with extended loads and that is true the 14 inch
exhausts the heat upwards away from you but the fanless m2 air's bottom case can
reach 47 degrees celsius since the heat is literally trapped in there and up to
108 degrees celsius internally which is much hotter than the 14 inch if you're
wondering how this impacts performance without a fan well in our detailed
testing we found that it can lose 17 of its performance after about 10 minutes
and that is just with cpu tasks as far as graphics the performance loss can be
over 26 and if you're loading both up at the
same time it could be even more than that so if you're pushing your mac hard
and you're loading up the cpu and the graphics the pro is the way to go but if
you need to save some cash and you want a thin and light design a thin laptop
cooler can make a surprising difference just by itself i'll go ahead and link
the cooler and the full video in the description so what about performance
especially if the tasks you do don't completely max up the cpu for a long
time well this is the reason why most people would buy the 14-inch pro instead
of the air and it might be the biggest reason why you're considering it well i
want to challenge you a little bit and also give you some more info i just want
you to take a second and ask yourself how much performance do you really need
first off the 2 000 14 inch macbook pro is the double bin version meaning to get
the full m1 pro chip it costs at least 2 300 and second even the base m2 ear
already beats out even the previous best 16-inch macbook pro in many tasks and
absolutely wipes the floor with the intel macbook airs in the real world the
air has more than enough performance for most people even for difficult tasks but
i do have to add that we are using a 512 gigabyte ssd model of the air because
the base 256 gigabyte has a slow ssd that will not only slow down transfers
but your whole machine if you are multitasking and doing productive work
now the m2 chip sounds like it could be better than the m1 pro and it actually
can for a few tasks which i'll mention but the base 14-inch has six performance
cores two more than the air because of that the multi-core score isn't that
much higher with the difference of only eleven percent and this test shows a lot
of various computing tasks so most won't even notice it in the real world as for
single core the m2 beats out the 14 inch by nine percent because of its faster
clock speeds which also gives it a good advantage in web-based application
performance but once again both are so fast that you probably won't notice what
you will notice though is the difference in battery life apple specs show that
the m2 air only gets one extra hour of battery life with the fine print showing
that it's based on video playback but that's not the truth for real world use
we found that for mixed use the battery life is worse and a bigger difference
between them and for top tasks the difference is even greater since the 14
inch can use a lot more power adding on to that if you use low power mode both
laptops are still very fast but the m2 air can last up to 15 hours because it
will only use 2 watts for the cpu and 1.5 for the graphics that is because it
has 4 efficiency cores and there are new ones that are much more powerful while
being more efficient now the 14 inch pro's battery life doesn't improve too
much because it has to keep using the performance cores as it only has two
efficiency cords that are much worse so the cpu actually uses about 15 watts
compared to an average of two and using that mode on the m2 air results in the
machine running super cool and the bottom not heating up at all so if you
really care about battery life the macbook air is the clear choice check
out the video if you want to get a lot more info now when you do need full
performance for more than 10 minutes the stock m2 air loses by about 30 in cpu
and for graphics by more than double because the stock macbook air throttles
a lot after just four to five minutes now if you use the cooling solution that
we showed them to air won't throttle but it's still a 63 difference which is
massive and spending an extra hundred dollars for better graphics is mostly a
waste in our testing so if you're doing graphics heavy tasks like gaming or
productivity tasks that rely on graphics this is where the 14-inch pro really
starts to stand out and combining both can make a slightly more pricey 14-inch
if spec the same ending up being more than twice as fast and a much better
machine to have but let's get real most of you wanting the air probably won't be
working on raw footage but you're gonna be using it for web browsing and some
light productivity and maybe some normal creative work here the differences
aren't massive with the 14 inch only being slightly faster for photography
and since both are so fast compared to old intel macbooks in the real world i
had no complaints especially with the 16 gigabyte macbook air which is the one to
get if you're going to be doing productive tasks and even for things
like compiling code the air can keep up very well and for simple 4k video
editing with effects it can actually beat out the 14-inch using the latest
version of davinci resolve which is now fully optimized for the m2 chip so i
would say that there is only a small group of people who really need the
extra power of the 14 inch pro but when you need it like for extended 100 loads
especially with graphics you really need it and with that comes the mini led xdr
display that is capable of hitting up to 1600 nits instead of 500. now for normal
use you don't really notice a difference but when it comes time for hdr either
viewing or editing the 14 inch gives you a much better experience with really
great contrast and brightness that the m2 air simply cannot achieve as well as
120hz pro motion for super smooth scrolling which to be honest i didn't
notice as much as i do on my iphone and also being able to play games at above
60 fps personally unless you know that you want or need many of the benefits
that the 14 inch provides that we talked about i think that the air is a great
machine and it is much more pleasant for taking on the go seriously it's a big
difference but if you don't mind the size and you can't afford it you do get
a lot more bang for the buck with the 14 inch macbook pro especially if you buy
it discounted on amazon i'll go ahead and leave the best deals down in the
video description go ahead and check out one of those must watch videos right
over there especially if you want to buy an m2 macbook air and click above to
subscribe if this video brought you some value this has been max max tech and i
will see you in the next video [Music]