trying to decide between the pro and the air m1.

clementineorange

 I can't believe how stressful this decision is, im a grown ass man and i know id be happy with either, but Jesus. I have an Alienware laptop burning a hole in my lap and the fan is so loud its giving me anxiety.  I've been dying to replace it with a mac.

i sent a message to apple and they basically said the same thing a lot of the bloggers are saying.  The pro and the air are very similar and both are very good.  Just the pro is a bit faster under sustained loads.

I love the fanless idea, but i am trying to decide if im going to regret not going for the pro...  the salesperson says that the fan runs non-stop even under light loads, but they say its very quiet.

Mike Wuerthele

clementineorange said:

 I can't believe how stressful this decision is, im a grown ass man and i know id be happy with either, but Jesus. I have an Alienware laptop burning a hole in my lap and the fan is so loud its giving me anxiety.  I've been dying to replace it with a mac.

i sent a message to apple and they basically said the same thing a lot of the bloggers are saying.  The pro and the air are very similar and both are very good.  Just the pro is a bit faster under sustained loads.

I love the fanless idea, but i am trying to decide if im going to regret not going for the pro...  the salesperson says that the fan runs non-stop even under light loads, but they say its very quiet.

I'm not sure what the question is?

What's your workflow?

jdb8167

Watch the video with Bob Borchers and Tim Millet that AI posted. That answered my questions. They went as far as saying that the CPU will seem different while refusing to answer if they used the same silicon or the same clock speeds. If performance is paramount then go for the Pro. 

clementineorange

I'm more just venting that back in the day when Jobs came back he simplified the product line to have obvious differences, so basically:

desktop pro |    desktop normal
----------------------------------------
laptop pro   |     laptop normal

And those differences were very big.  Now the differences are less apparent and it makes choosing harder!

Right now I am using a Core i7 running at 30% CPU (running chrome, code editor, software synthesizer, git in the background, dropbox, and google drive, adobe).  if I was using the air I would probably cut out some of the background processes.  I feel like this is all pro territory but maybe now I could push it back to an air.

I guess my main question is this:
how out of place is a MacBook pro 13 inch working from a couch or laying down vs an air with no fan.

Marvin

clementineorange said:

I'm more just venting that back in the day when Jobs came back he simplified the product line to have obvious differences, so basically:

desktop pro |    desktop normal
----------------------------------------
laptop pro   |     laptop normal

And those differences were very big.  Now the differences are less apparent and it makes choosing harder!

Right now I am using a Core i7 running at 30% CPU (running chrome, code editor, software synthesizer, git in the background, dropbox, and google drive, adobe).  if I was using the air I would probably cut out some of the background processes.  I feel like this is all pro territory but maybe now I could push it back to an air.

I guess my main question is this:
how out of place is a MacBook pro 13 inch working from a couch or laying down vs an air with no fan.

The old fanless 12" Macbook and entry Macbook Airs were quite close in some workloads too but the main difference shows when doing sustained heavy workloads like long sessions where the CPU or GPU are at a high load. The following site shows the performance under heavy CPU load:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-12-2017-Laptop-Review.230656.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2020-Review-Is-the-Core-i3-the-better-choice.465534.0.html

When a fanless machine needs to cool down, it only has the option to lower the performance of the chip so if you are encoding a movie for 30 minutes like a Final Cut Pro export then if the chip gets too hot half way, it will lower the performance until it's cool enough and the export time can increase significantly. If the chip is doing real-time 3D or compute on the GPU, the performance can similarly drop.



The fanless models (right) can have dramatic drops in performance when they hit the thermal limits and need to cool down where the fan models (left) will ramp up the fans at those points and throttling will be less significant.

Environment temperature is a factor too. In warm countries where the air is hotter, the fanless models will have a harder time cooling the CPU. Similarly if the computer isn't well ventilated, like airflow underneath. Running a laptop on a bed or sofa for example can heat it up very quickly whereas on a laptop stand allows more chance to cool.

Not every professional workflow will have heavy sustained performance needs. Photography/Photoshop/software compilation for example will normally process in short bursts. Video encoding, 3D rendering, computation, gaming, game development can max out chip for long periods of time without a break and the fan models are more suitable for those tasks.

I expect the performance drops on fanless M1 to be less noticeable for average tasks due to the huge improvements vs Intel chips. In the above graph, the drops were noted as being 15 minutes apart so they can still perform reasonably long sustained tasks.

From the workload description posted above, the Macbook Air M1 seems like it would suffice but people will start receiving the new hardware tomorrow and will be able to do more thorough performance tests between the Air and Pro.

Marvin

Here's a test of the M1 Pro vs Air (on carpet but it didn't seem to affect it):



The Pro was about 10% faster but it has some fan noise vs the Air being silent.

Here's the Air running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p:



I think the Air would be fine for most tasks and a cooling pad could be used to help avoid any throttling if needed.

DuhSesame

Marvin said:

Here's a test of the M1 Pro vs Air (on carpet but it didn't seem to affect it):



The Pro was about 10% faster but it has some fan noise vs the Air being silent.

Here's the Air running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p:



I think the Air would be fine for most tasks and a cooling pad could be used to help avoid any throttling if needed.

Pretty sure the M1 Air will last longer than x86 laptops with a fan...

big_fan

clementineorange said:

I'm more just venting that back in the day when Jobs came back he simplified the product line to have obvious differences, so basically:

desktop pro |    desktop normal
----------------------------------------
laptop pro   |     laptop normal

And those differences were very big.  Now the differences are less apparent and it makes choosing harder!

Right now I am using a Core i7 running at 30% CPU (running chrome, code editor, software synthesizer, git in the background, dropbox, and google drive, adobe).  if I was using the air I would probably cut out some of the background processes.  I feel like this is all pro territory but maybe now I could push it back to an air.

I guess my main question is this:
how out of place is a MacBook pro 13 inch working from a couch or laying down vs an air with no fan.

From every one who I trust, if you plan on working for hours into hours, get the MacBook Pro. The performance is the same unless you start working long enough to get the fan going.

But the fan doesn’t kick on for a while. So the question for you, what do you plan on doing it? I probably would be okay with an Air, because I usually have light editing projects.