should you buy the new m2 macbook air or should you save a ton of money and go
for the m1 instead well today we will find out because we are going to be
comparing everything with these laptops from the design to the displays the
webcams the speakers we're going to be skipping on some of our normal
benchmarks because people buy these machines they're usually doing some
lighter tasks and focusing on how these devices compare in the real world now
before i jump in i want to let you know that we are giving away a brand new m2
macbook air and i don't care where you are in the world i will pay for the
shipping any taxes or import fees and we're going to give one of these to you
guys all i have to do is one be subscribed to the channel and two
comment on these launch week videos starting out with the one that came out
on friday you can comment once per video and then on monday july 25th we will be
choosing a winner in one of our videos so make sure you guys don't miss that
now right away i want to say that i absolutely love the previous m1 macbook
air i love the design i love the performance i love the price we highly
highly recommend this machine to so many people specifically the base model with
the m2 i mean this is a beautiful
upgrade first off i love this color yes you do get fingerprints on it and that
kind of sucks and yes you might be able to have some more chipping or more
noticeable chipping because of this dark color but it is gorgeous as far as the
footprint it is very similar but the m2 is actually slightly
larger in footprint but with that we have a reduction of about 20
in volume now this thing is extremely thin overall and you guys see that it is
a slate design whereas the m1 version has that iconic wedge shape that a lot
of us love now on the back it is definitely thicker than the m2 macbook
air but on the front it does seem quite a bit thinner just because of how the
bottom kind of curves in and it gives you this illusion of thinness you guys
let me know which design you prefer down in the comments section below the m2
also weighs less than the m1 even though it has larger batteries inside it has a
very clean new layout that they did with some nice upgrade options to repair
ability which is really cool to see in our tear down video now we also did the
thermal fix video where we helped the performance of this but we did take
those pads out just to make it a fair comparison because most people won't be
doing that now one of my favorite things about the m2 version of the macbook air
is magazine you get this nice braided high quality cable and you get that
classic automatic connection right there which just snaps in the magnets are
strong you get the led notification that it's charging and then of course you get
full access to both of those thunderbolt ports whereas with the m1 version if
you're in charging you only have one unless you buy additional dongles or
docks i also really appreciate that the m2 has fast charging where it can reach
50 in just 30 minutes with one of the 67
watt power adapters now that is a really nice thing to have if you don't have it
charged up and you need to go now with that on the other side both of them have
your headphone jack but the m2 can support high impedance headphones so if
you do have a set that is nicer that needs a little bit more juice it can
provide that opening these up what i really miss is that macbook air logo on
the old one i think it'd be nice to have it here but the new one has a clean
modern design both these do have touch id to log in but the m2 has a larger one
along with full size function keys as far as the keyboards the new one seems
to have slightly less key travel maybe because it's thinner but with that the
keys are a little bit more springy slightly louder and it gives a little
bit more feedback compared to the m1 macbook air which has more travel but
it's slightly mushier but of course either way everybody will be happy with
these and with that the track pads are both awesome the best in the industry
and now for the moment that i've been waiting for the speakers our m1 macbook
air has these grilles on the side and we have stereo speakers whereas on the m2
those grilles are missing the speakers are actually built in at the top inside
and we have a few vents here when you open it up where the sound can bounce up
at and off of the screen towards you which is pretty cool and they're also
quad speakers with dedicated uh speakers for the lower end so now let's go ahead
and take a listen [Music]
me
oh the things that we do for thinness or at least the apple does we were really
surprised by the findings here now one thing you guys heard the difference
through a mono mic through youtube so you guys let me know what differences
you heard but here it was pretty substantial now the first thing that
stood out is the fact that it is quieter it actually peaked at 80 decibels one
time but it averaged 77 to 78 whereas the m1 version it peaked at 80 many
times and it would go to 78 and actually just sitting at 79. so it is one to two
decibels louder now the next thing was how wide the sound was here with the
speakers on the sides it felt like the sound was kind of more all around me
where here with the m2 is very noticeable the sound is coming from the
screen the speakers are closer together and it's coming from one source it did
not sound as nice the highs are a little bit more muted and as far as bass it is
a little bit better but a very small difference so if i had to choose i would
go with the speakers on the m1 macbook air and that is weird to say now as far
as the webcams and microphones the m1 uses the older 720p webcam and the
non-studio microphones the m2 version has upgraded microphones and a 1080p
camera that should have more detail and less noise and along with that with this
tough situation with that window there it should have better hdr as well that
1080p webcam's larger sensor should also help in low light situations if you're
in your house and your lights are dimmer so you should have less noise compared
to the m1 macbook air with its much older camera system and now let's talk
about the displays i love the one on the m2 now yes there's a notch that does not
bother me it is worth the trade off because we have this extra space here so
the menu bar isn't using any of that 16 by 10 display you guys can see we have
that large forehead there of wasted space now with that we have thinner
bezels on the side and they're completely even all around so it looks
nice we have a little bit more space the m2 screen also gets brighter 500 nits
compared to 400 and it supports a billion colors compared to 16.7 million
that part's not a huge difference you just get better
gradients and both these are dci p3 so if you care about having a great screen
the m2 is definitely better and now let's get into real world performance
now we're going to start out with the ssds i'm a bit sick of this topic but i
think it is unethical just not to mention it so these base models the ssd
with this one gets 1372 right compared to
2221 on the m1 model as far as read speeds we have 1446 on the m2 compared
to 2910 on the older m1 so yes it is more
than twice as fast now the next i'm gonna do is transfer our folder of tests
that we do with these systems and we'll see how that performs we'll test using
the same ssd and i'm going to start our timer here so the m2 macbook air took 6
minutes and 30 seconds to transfer this large folder full of files and the m1
macbook air took 3 minutes and 26 seconds being almost twice as fast now
you can easily fix this ssd issue but it's going to cost you 200
to upgrade to the 512 and if you're somebody that does transfer files and
you do different productivity tasks any creative tasks we would highly suggest
to upgrade to that but with the m1 if you don't care about the storage or you
do external even the base model will give you really fast speeds now as far
as snappiness and using it for regular things like web browsing both are going
to be super super fast the m2 is updated so it is going to do a little bit better
as far as you know this web-based uh browser test but in the real world
you're not gonna notice a difference both are insanely good now a lot of
coders love the macbook air because it is quick with this new apple silicon and
it's affordable so if you're a student coding it is great so let's go ahead and
run our test project as we're compiling one thing is noticeable that the m2
heats up way faster we're already at 107 108 which is a thermal limit here we're
at 74 now hitting 77
the m1 stays much cooler now we've done the teardown we saw that metal kind of
foil piece that covered it up and what somebody commented is that there is
actually a little piece of black kind of tape that keeps heat in from going to
the bottom case whereas the m1 it had a solid block of
metal with a section that goes out that is
actually thicker so the m2 because it's thinner apple changed the design they
have that little shielding which we thought could be a vapor chamber it is
not and it definitely heats up quicker the m2 air took two minutes and one
second compared to two minutes and 29 seconds for the m1 macbook air that
gives us a difference of 18 pretty much exactly what apple showed
off on stage so even if the m2 runs hotter and throttles more ultimately for
coding it is faster now as far as music production with logic we ran our test
right here and previously the m1 and the pro would actually outperform the m2 is
a little bit more stable it can handle more tracks but this time with the airs
we were able to handle 77 tracks on the m2 and 75 tracks for the m1 and as far
as bouncing the files is the same so if you're expecting to get better music
production with the m2 you are not going to get that it's going
to be about the same and now let's talk about the graphics performance this is
one area where apple really hit it hard during their event but the base model m2
does have an a core not the 10 core they showed off and this macbook air has a 7
core it's a binned model and this is the only one that they're selling now so we
are going to be using blender we're not going to run some kind of a benchmark
and we are going to render this classroom scene now as this is running
i'm noticing a couple things first off the m2 is clearly ahead with its acore
graphics compared to the seven core as far as temps they are really similar but
this task doesn't use all the capabilities of the gpus even though we
are maxed out so these do not heat up as much which is a good thing if you're
somebody that wants to do 3d rendering and animations alright guys that is
finished and this is a pretty good difference we have four minutes and 58
seconds for the m2 in 6 minutes and 24 seconds for the m1
with the 7 core that is a difference of 24
which is definitely substantial so when we don't have any thermal throttling
with this task that is great and now for all of you guys that do photo editing
out there we're going to test out adobe lightroom classic as far as actual
editing it's going to be very similar as long as your ssd isn't full on the m2
now this task does also use the graphics along with the cpu it's been updated to
be faster let's go ahead and export 50 of these images and see what kind of
difference we get we're getting close to the end here and it looks like the m1
macbook air is actually beating it out now this uses the cpu and the gpu all of
that which the m2 should be faster but it could be those ssds coming into play
the m1 did that in two minutes and nine seconds compared to two minutes and 16
for the m2 so if you're going to be doing tasks that do push both the cpu
and the gpu ram and ssd that is where the m1 could be faster and for you guys
that want to do some video editing we have final cut open up right here with a
simple 4k project with a couple effects supply this is what most people do
especially those buying an m1 macbook air as far as playback they're going to
be very similar where you're getting 72 gpu usage here compared to 70 over here
that means we have just a tiny bit more gpu power left over for effects on the
m2 not much at all though i don't think that's going to make a real world
difference now let's go ahead and export this five minute project two minutes and
24 seconds for the m1 two minutes 22 seconds for the m2 now both these can be
good video editing machines if you're doing some light work like this and if
you're working on other tasks let's say for example prores raw footage for black
magic or anything else we will do some more in-depth testing in our comparison
against the 14-inch macbook pro because we think that is the next step up that
is actually worth it now as far as battery life apple rates these the same
but the m2 does have some more powerful efficiency cores so if you are doing
light work in real world mix tasks you can actually get a little bit better
battery life but if you're going to be cranking up the brightness you're going
to be hitting it the performance hard especially on the cpu
then it should be about the same so overall what is my opinion well i really
like the m2 macbook air i like the fact that it's mac safe the redesign the
screen all those are really really nice upgrades and if you're going to keep the
laptop for a long time you might consider spending the extra money but i
would not buy it if you're trying to get it for extra performance of the m2 chip
real world results for regular use it is extremely similar so if you want to save
some money and you pick up one of these for as low as 850 bucks or maybe even
under 800 bucks refurbished i would say use the links down in the description
save yourself some money you will be very happy with this laptop it was one
of the best out there before it is still an absolutely great laptop especially
for that low price point but you guys let me know your thoughts down below
click that circle above make sure you comment down below to subscribe to win
one of these and check out those great videos right over there this has been
max and i'll see you in the next video [Music]