I recently purchased a 15" M2 16gb 512 SSD MBA from best buy for $1449. The main reason I bought it over the MBP was for the weight. My walk to class is around 15-25 minutes so I wanted something light. However, the MBP (16gb 512 SSD) is on sale for $150 more than the MBA and I’m wondering if it would have been smarter to just get the MBP.
Since I am studying CS, my main usage for my laptop will be coding. This semester, I’ve mainly had eclipse, vscode, mysql, discord, and the vscode live server and tomcat server running all at once. I am also interested in audio programming so occasionally i’ll have visual studio (will need to switch to xcode) and Ableton running at the same time. Next semester will probably be more of the same with some C++ and OpenGL for my video game programming class. I also occasionally work with photoshop/illustrator.
Considering my workload, will the MBP be the better choice? I plan to use my new laptop for my remaining 3 semesters and also my software engineering internship next summer; which will probably have me working with backend technologies.
For reference, my current laptop is a Lenovo - IdeaPad Gaming 3i 15" Intel Core i5-11300H - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 - 8GB Memory - 512GB SSD, which is able to handle my current workload for about 2 hours before dying.
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Get 👏 the 👏 Pro
I am a software developer and would gladly return my company provided 16” pro for my wife’s 24gb M2 air. The only deal breaker for me is the dual display requirement. YMMV
But why?
The form factor of the air is fantastic. If you have returned to office, going from meeting to meeting with the 16” pro is sorta a pain. This generation of the MBP is the first to get thicker and heavier. If you don’t need the power of the pro (which most do not) the 24GB air is still a beast of a machine. I only use a single 32”4K at my desk so it would meet my needs just fine. Webstorm, VSCode, postman, and a little adobe photoshop and 4k video editing in Camtasia. All completely scream on a 24GB air. But, some want dual displays and some use heavier workloads. For me, since the air serves my needs power wise, I will take the form factor over the pro.
The form factor of the air is fantastic. If you have returned to office, going from meeting to meeting with the 16” pro is sorta a pain. This generation of the MBP is the first to get thicker and heavier. If you don’t need the power of the pro (which most do not) the 24GB air is still a beast of a machine. I only use a single 32”4K at my desk so it would meet my needs just fine. Webstorm, VSCode, postman, and a little adobe photoshop and 4k video editing in Camtasia. All completely scream on a 24GB air. But, some want dual displays and some use heavier workloads. For me, since the air serves my needs power wise, I will take the form factor over the pro.
I’d pay $150 more for the pro motion display, other than that though both computers will do what you need them to do for the next half decade pretty easily.
my early 2023 macbook pro 16 inch does way more than i need it to do. i code in julia and ocaml for reference