Are you looking at buying a new MacBook
or maybe you already have an M1 MacBook Air
and want to see how the new M2 MacBook Air
stacks up against it?
Well, in this ultimate comparison video,
I'm going to be comparing the two in everything
from pricing, form factor, ports,
battery life, how hot they get,
and some performance differences,
including coding, creative workflows,
video editing, 3D, gaming, and more.
Okay, so let's not waste any time and get straight into it.
Let's start with the most important factor
which is, of course, pricing.
As you already know,
there is a 200 US dollar price difference
between the two models and on paper,
it looks like the M2 Air is the better buy.
More features, more performance, new design.
But what I don't often hear mentioned is
just how cheap you can get an M1 MacBook Air these days.
This is because the M1 Air has been out for two years
at this point and is now, technically,
outdated by the redesigned M2 Air.
This means there's a ton of M1 Air stock
on the secondhand market
and you can pick up a lightly used M1 Air
for anywhere from 600 to 800 US dollars right now,
or $850 for a refurbished model directly
from Apple themselves,
which as I've said in the past is
as good as a brand new one.
And as time goes on and Apple tries
to completely phase out the M1 MacBook Air
with the new M2 MacBook Air,
I think we'll see additional massive discounts
on resellers such as Amazon and also Best Buy.
So what might initially seem like a $200 price difference,
in reality is more like $400 to $600.
And the question to ask yourself
throughout this video is are the extra features
and performance on the new M2 MacBook Air really worth up
to 50% more cost compared to the M1?
Moving on to physical differences,
both MacBooks have an almost identical footprint.
Although the M2 is just slightly less thick
which might not be obvious at first glance due
to the rounded bottom chassis of the M1.
Speaking of that rounded chassis,
you might find it more comfortable
to type on the M1 versus the M2,
where your wrists might dig into that hard edge.
In terms of weight,
the M2 is just barely lighter than the M1
so you almost certainly won't notice a difference.
I also strongly recommend reconsidering the midnight color
because although it looks really nice,
it does scratch and smudge very easily.
Starlight is quite nice
or you can't go wrong with either space gray or silver.
Now, although both devices are a 13-inch footprint,
the screen is actually slightly larger
on the M2 due to these smaller bezels.
The panel technology and color accuracy, though,
is essentially identical between the two,
despite Apple using fancy marketing terms like Liquid Retina
which is basically just the same LCD screen as the M1
but with rounded corners and a notch.
Yes, the notch, love it or hate it.
One noticeable difference, however,
is that the M2's screen can get 25% brighter
at 500 nits versus just 400 for the M1.
So if you spend a lot of time outside in the sun
or in environments with a lot of glare,
you definitely will notice this.
You also get a 1080P webcam
on the M2 MacBook Air versus 720P on the M1.
A welcome update but certainly not a game changer.
The audio is also better on the M2
with a four-speaker sound system
and support for spatial audio.
Here's an example of the four-speaker sound system
on the M2 versus the M1's stereo speakers.
♪ I know I'll see you in my dreams ♪
(electronic music)
♪ See you in my dreams ♪
Moving on, the track pad on the M2 is slightly wider
than the M1's and moving on to the keyboard,
you can immediately see the larger function keys on the M2.
But in terms of overall typing experience,
I think most people will enjoy the M2 a little bit better
because of the more tactile response
versus the slightly more mushy keys of the M1.
Although at the end of the day,
there's really not much difference at all
between these keyboards.
Moving on to ports, they're very similar between the two.
On the right-hand side,
you get the standard 3.5 millimeter audio jack.
However, on the M2, you also get built-in support
for high-impedance headphones for any audio files out there.
On the left-hand side,
both MacBooks have two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports.
But one thing to note is that you can only output
to one external monitor
and this is the same on both M1 and M2 Airs.
So that might be a deal breaker to some.
You'll also notice the M2 Air has a MagSafe charging port,
and yes, it comes with a color-matched cable.
This is great because it frees up a Thunderbolt port
and gives you access to the fast charge feature,
allowing you to charge to 50% in just 30 minutes
but only if you buy the 67 watt charger at additional cost.
Looking on the inside,
you can see that the M2 MacBook Air
is using a slightly different thermal system
with thermal material across the entire logic board
to transfer heat away from the M2 chip
versus the M1 which has a metal heat sink
over the chip instead.
And no, you can't replace the RAM or SSD on either machine.
It's all soldered or glued down.
Also, in case you didn't already know,
we are doing a giveaway on this channel.
We're giving away either an M1 MacBook Air
or a 1000 US dollar Apple gift card.
All we have to do is subscribe using
that button down below
and make sure you check out the description
for more details.
Okay, let's move on
to the performance differences between these two devices.
Now, just bear in mind here that you do need
to take the target market of the MacBook Air line up
into consideration.
Most people won't be doing anything too intensive
and if they are, it will likely be in short bursts.
So that is what I'm going to concentrate on in this video.
Let's start with the differences between the M1
and M2 chips themselves.
When looking at the base models,
which is what I'm featuring in this video,
honestly, there's not that much difference.
You get the same CPU cores:
four efficiency and four performance for a total of eight.
Although the CPU cores
on the M2 are slightly more powerful.
You also get one extra GPU core on the M2.
And again, they're slightly more powerful.
And double the memory bandwidth
and an extra media engine adding ProRes
to the existing support for H.264
and HEVC we saw introduced with the M1.
Now, one thing to bear
in mind is you do get some additional upgrade options
on the M2 that you do not get on the M1.
For example, you have the option to upgrade the GPU cores
from eight to 10 on the M2
versus seven to eight on the M1
and you can also go up to 24 gigabytes of RAM on the M2
and you also get a couple more color options
and also charger options
when purchasing on the Apple website.
But apart from that, I mean,
yeah, these things are pretty much identical.
And let's be honest,
most people won't be pushing this machine hard enough
to notice any performance differences anyway.
I mean, the majority
of MacBook Air users simply browse the internet
and read emails.
However, there are a lot of popular workflows
on this machine that are a little bit more complicated
than that.
So let's see how they compare.
Let's start with the CPU
and look at some coding and development.
Despite the improvements to the M2 CPU cores,
this only translates into about a 15% improvement
over the M1
or for single core workflows, almost no difference.
And in real life usage, we see the same minimal differences
around 10 to 12% depending on the task.
Even for a lengthy 20 minute code compilation,
you're just not going to be seeing a big boost on the M2.
So for all of your developers and coders out there,
I don't think it really matters which one you go for.
You're not going to see that much improvement on the M2.
Moving on creative workflows
and we can nitpick benchmark numbers all day long
but again, there's essentially no difference
at all between the M2 Air and the M1 Air.
Typically, only about 10% in most cases,
except possibly for Lightroom exports.
But even then you spend 99%
of your time actually editing the photos
and not exporting them.
However, if you do any kind of light video editing,
which yes, is entirely possible
even on an entry-level MacBook Air,
the edge does go to the M2
because of the aforementioned ProRes support.
You'll mostly notice this
during actual timeline editing
when scrubbing or doing live playback, for example.
The M2 will be smoother and more responsive
but again, only if there's ProRes footage being used.
Rendering is a similar story.
If it's just ProRes,
yeah, the M2 is significantly quicker.
Although for timelines containing a mixture of codex,
including one ProRes footage stream,
the difference is much less.
So if you don't use a lot of ProRes footage
or you don't even know what ProRes is,
both machines will perform almost exactly.
Moving on to 3D workflows.
Navigating around the view port
and actually creating 3D models
on Blender was pretty much the exact same on both devices.
Same with any short renders involving the CPU.
You're only going to see a significant improvement
in GPU intensive tasks.
For example, when rendering the barbershop scene in Blender,
the M2 Air finished nearly nine minutes faster than the M1.
Now, I don't know how much 3D rendering
you're going to be doing on a fanless MacBook Air.
But I do know there are some
of you out there at school or university
or just getting into Blender as a hobby on the side.
Now, if that's the case, again,
you really won't notice that much of a difference
but when it does come to rendering,
the M2 is going to pull ahead.
Let's also have a quick chat about gaming,
which again is actually a pretty popular activity
on these devices, despite the lack of a fan.
On paper and for short bursts, the M2 is about 25% faster,
but once the chassis and M2 chip has heated up,
the performance difference is more like five to 10%
as you can see in this Tomb Raider benchmark.
Now this performance difference can be explained
by how much heat the M1 and M2 chips produce.
The M1 runs cooler,
peaking at around 95 degrees Celsius
during CPU intensive tasks
versus a whopping 100 plus degrees for the M2.
This helps explain why in some GPU intensive tasks,
both devices perform very similarly.
Even though it is more powerful,
the M2 simply runs warmer
and thermal throttles slightly more.
And this also translates into a warmer chassis.
The M1 MacBook Air is typically about four degrees cooler
than the M2 MacBook Air when doing intensive tasks.
And it's the same story
if you want to keep either machine
on your lap while playing a game or rendering something.
Although to be fair,
you likely won't be doing anything too intensive
on this machine where it heats up to those temperatures
or at least not frequently.
So this probably doesn't even really matter to you.
That being said,
if you want to see a full video on the thermals
and just how hot this particular machine gets,
I will link a separate video I made
on that topic down below.
Moving on.
I thought I'd also mention the internal SSD speeds
because there is a huge difference between the two,
but only with the 256 gigabyte M2 Air base model.
Long story short, the 256 gigabyte SSD
on the M2 Air is 50% slower than the M1s.
Now you may not notice this difference,
but in some cases, you definitely will.
And again, I made a full in depth video on this topic
if you want to learn more.
So I will link that in the description below.
But just bear in mind here, if you're planning
on upgrading the base model 256 gigabyte SSD
to the 512 gigabyte option for the M2 Air,
this issue won't apply to you.
Moving on to the battery.
Apple claims both MacBooks have roughly the same battery
where you'll get about 15 hours of wireless web browsing.
I found in real life with a mixture of everyday tasks,
you'll get closer to about 12 hours.
And honestly, I think when it comes to laptops
and battery life, once you get past about 10 hours,
it doesn't really matter anyway
because that's more than a full day of work.
Okay, so how about just normal day-to-day usage?
Well, to be quite honest,
they both accomplish the exact same task
and that is being a lightweight,
portable laptop with great battery life.
Honestly, if you have the money,
go for the M2 Air.
The screen is really nice.
It is thinner, and you'll get that small performance boost.
And the extra features like MagSafe are really nice.
Just bear in mind, again,
that slower SSD on the M2 256 gigabyte base model.
But if you're on a budget
and you don't mind going for a lightly used,
secondhand M1 MacBook Air,
I definitely think that is the way to go
for a lot of people watching this video.
You'll get basically everything good
about the Apple Silicon Air platform
and only miss out on things you likely won't notice
that much anyway.
So yeah, honestly, I think both
of these laptops are incredible devices.
Yes, the M1 MacBook Air, I think,
is the tried and trusted companion for a lot
of people out there and will continue to be
for probably the next five to 10 years.
But I also think the M2 MacBook Air,
although it's maybe not a significant upgrade
and only has a couple more nice features
for that extra price tag,
that's still a really decent option as well
if you can afford it.
But apart from that, guys,
thanks for watching this video
and I'll catch you in the next one.