Hello, my name's Tom and this is Proper Honest Tech.
Earlier this year, I made a video where I discussed 5 reasons why I felt, at the time,
that the M1 Macs weren't for me, and that I would instead be waiting until the M1X or
the M2 Macs were launched before I made the switch to Mac silicon. I'll link the video
in the description of this one, should anyone care to have a look, but to summarise, I felt
at the time that;
- 3rd party hardware and software optimisation wouldn't be up to scratch quickly enough
- That the initial M1 Macs were the consumer focused models
- That anyone buying an M1 Mac early-on would essentially be a beta tester
- That the True Pro models would be worth waiting for
- And that my current setup at the time was good enough, and I didn't need to upgrade
Yet, here I am, in August of the same year, some 6 months later, making a review of the
M1 Macbook Air that I've been using as my daily-driver computer for the past month.
And, spoiler alert, this review is going to be overwhelmingly positive.
Now, there are plenty of reviews of the M1 Macs out there already, and in general, they'll
all tell you much the same thing. The entire range of M1 Macs are extremely powerful, far
more powerful than you'd expect based on the price, and extremely capable computers especially
when it comes to optimised Mac software. They're very power efficient, leading to excellent
battery life across the range, with this Macbook Air easily giving me a full day's worth of
processor heavy usage before I need to think about charging. As for the rest of the computer,
this is, for better or worse, the same Macbook Air that's become iconic in recent years - a
great display, an excellent keyboard, great sound, a phenomenal trackpad and an absolute
potato of a webcam.
And to be honest, I could quite easily end the review there, having covered everything
that I wanted to cover. But as I mentioned at the start of this video, there's already
plenty of reviews out there discussing those topics. So what I thought I would do, is revisit
my old M1 Mac video, and address each of the points that I raised back then, and see if
I felt that they were still issues now, after a month or so of using this as my daily-driver
computer.
The first point that I made was around third party hardware and software optimisation,
and that my concern was that apps simply wouldn't run on the new Mac hardware quickly enough.
And in my experience, that has happened, but not so much that it's been a significant issue.
For example, I own a Universal Audio Apollo Twin interface, and it's crucial that this
works for me to be able to do my job, it's how I record my voice and it's how I drive
my speakers. But officially, Universal Audio still don't support the M1 range of Macs,
almost one year after they were launched. Sadly, this doesn't surprise me. I love Universal
Audio's gear, but their development team are probably the slowest to react to new software
that I've ever experienced, it takes them months just to update their gear to operating
system updates, never mind entire new system architectures. There is a workaround that
the company feature on their website, and the workaround does work, so I guess that's
technically problem solved, but had it not have been for that workaround, this could
have been a major problem.
Another piece of software I've had issue with is the RX range of audio cleanup software
made by Izotope. I was using RX7, and Izotope have now basically declared that a legacy
product, and will therefore not be making it compatible with the M1 silicon, I've instead
had to upgrade to RX8. Kind of cheeky in my opinion, and I wonder if other companies will
do the same.
But beyond that, everything I've wanted to use so far, and I mean everything, has worked
and worked flawlessly. Optimised apps obviously run the best, but even non-optimised apps
run brilliantly thanks to Rosetta 2. It always felt like a bit of a risk switching my entire
setup over to M1, but so far, I've had no reason to even consider going back to my Intel
Mac, when it comes to 3rd party hardware and software, so I reckon I can disregard that
first point.
The second point I made back in February was that I felt like these were the consumer models,
and I wanted to wait for the next level up of Mac silicon before I committed to buying.
And, I do still believe that's an accurate assessment. It's clear when you look at the
lineup that Apple transitioned to first, these are the Macs that require the least power,
these are the Macs that the average user could walk into an Apple Store and just purchase,
without needing to think too much about speccing them out for custom usage. But, where my opinion
has changed, is in how Apple are defining what a consumer model computer is, and what
a consumer model computer should be capable of doing.
Because, up until the M1 range, a computer at around the £1,000 mark, regardless of
who made it, could be expected to be portable, with enough power to handle basic to mid-range
tasks. Email, web browsing, office tasks should all be handled with ease, whilst things like
photo editing and video editing might well be feasible, but with an expectation that
there might be some slow-down, and that you might be pushing the computer beyond it's
limits. Certainly, you'd expect the computer to get hot at this stage, and as the power-draw
increased, the battery life would likely decrease proportionately.
Not so with the M1 range. Apple has created a line of computers which, across the board,
from the base M1 Macbook Air all the way up to the higher-specced 24 inch iMac, can fly
through simple tasks, whilst also being able to do things like 4K video editing, advanced
photo manipulation, as well as tasks requiring an element of machine learning. It's impressive
stuff, and Apple have essentially raised the bar of what we can expect in a base-level,
consumer-focused computer. It makes whatever comes next that much more exciting, sure,
but if I was stuck with this Macbook Air for the next few years, I could work with it quite
happily, and do everything that I need to do for my work. That's pretty amazing.
The third point that I made was that I wanted to let early adopters do the beta testing
for me, before I committed. Now, this is, in general, a good idea. New technology is
always buggy, and as much as companies will try and iron out all of the kinks before they
get things in the hands of consumers, it's inevitable that some things aren't going to
work perfectly right away. So it's testament to Apple's efforts that the transition has
gone as smoothly as it has. There were some bluetooth issues, particularly with the Mac
Mini, where people's mouse and keyboards weren't staying connected, although digging around
online, it would appear that's a long-standing issue with the Mac Mini in general, not just
the M1 version, and that fixes are available. But other than that, the shift over to Apple
silicon has been pretty flawless. Almost one year in, and with so little to report in the
way of issues, it doesn't seem fair to still consider this a valid reason to disregard
the M1 Macs whatsoever.
My fourth reason for holding off back in February, was that I said I was waiting for the true
'Pro' models. By this, I was referring to things like the iMac Pro, the 16 inch Macbook
Pro and the Mac Pro, all of which are expected to reappear with Apple silicon in the not
too distant future. But, we're kind of back at the second argument again, where I talked
about Apple redefining what a consumer model computer was capable of. A couple of years
back, the Pro models were a necessary part of the Apple lineup, because the consumer
model computers like the Macbook Air, the 13 inch Macbook Pro and the 21 inch iMac simply
weren't capable of doing pro-level tasks at all, certainly not to a high performance level,
or for a sustained period of time. But that's no longer the case thanks to the M1 chip,
and so all of a sudden, the Pro computers are really being targeted to a very specific
pro niche of users. I watched a video by, I think it was MKBHD a while back, where he
said it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you're a pro user, just because you make
your living from something. But the fact is, basic 4K video editing, like the stuff I do
every day for this channel, is something that the M1 range can do all day long, and to a
really high standard. So, you then find yourself reassessing what a pro machine is, and who
it's for. 3D modellers, animators, CAD operators, app developers and a bunch of other power
users are the kind of people who will no doubt benefit from, and justify the spending on,
whatever Apple releases in terms of their top-end power machines in the future. The
idea of a specced out Apple Silicon Mac Pro with 32 CPU cores and 128 GPU cores sounds
incredible, but it would be the computer equivalent of me buying a Lamborghini to drive around
my housing estate. For what it's worth, if Apple create a more pro version of the Mac
Mini, with more ports and whatever the upgraded M1X chip looks like, I'll buy that as my desktop
daily driver machine. But again, the M1 Macbook Air is a more than capable machine in the
meantime, however long that might be.
My final point in my earlier video was that what I had at the time was good enough, and
there is truth to that. For context, before this, I was using a 13 inch Macbook Pro 2018
model which cost me £2,400, and an eGPU Pro which cost me £1,200, which I needed for
video editing. In terms of video editing performance, the M1 Macbook Air is definitely as good as
that setup, perhaps a bit better and a bit faster when rendering, but it's not blown
me away in terms of raw performance. But what has blown me away, is that all of that performance
is coming out of a Macbook Air, nothing more. There's no eGPU that has to be plugged in,
it's literally just the computer, yet it holds it's own compared to almost 3 and a half grands
worth of computer and eGPU. And it's a fanless computer. My Macbook Pro would trigger the
fans constantly. If I was recording voice over, the fans would kick in, and I'd often
have to wait for them to switch off before I could carry on recording. If I was rendering
video, the fans would kick in. If I was watching HDR content on YouTube or Netflix, you guessed
it. Yet here, on the M1 Macbook Air, it's silent. So whilst there's some truth to the
fact that my old setup was, in general, good enough, it cost me £3,600 and had some pretty
significant drawbacks. Swapping all of that out for a single computer which gets rid of
those flaws, and only cost me £1,100 seems like a no brainer.
So, in summary, I was wrong about the M1 Macs when I decided I would be skipping them back
in February of this year. The M1 Macbook Air has impressed me in pretty much every way
possible. Would I have liked it even more with a redesign, like the iMac 24 inch? Yeah,
absolutely, I do feel like Apple missed a trick in not launching new silicon with new
hardware refreshes across the board, but the current design still looks good, and I'm sure
that will be coming, probably next year. Yes, I'm going to buy into M1X when it's available
in the form of a refreshed Mac Mini, but that doesn't mean I'm not impressed with the Macbook
Air, it just means that a dedicated desktop with loads of power and more ports probably
makes more sense for me as a daily driver, allowing me to use my Macbook Air away from
my desk. The idea of being able to take this away for a weekend and still edit video without
any compromises in power is really exciting to me.
Good job Apple. Can't wait to see what you do next.
So there you go, my somewhat unorthodox review of the M1 Macbook Air, which I've been using
for a month now. What about you? Have you picked up an M1 Mac yet? If so, which one,
and what do you think of it? Or are you waiting for the M1X or M2 ranges? Drop me a comment
and let me know.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like, and
subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.