Apple NEVER Learns. - M2 Macbook Review

[@dgsprysoup]

Linus, a good idea next time would be to include code compile times for comparisons! Macs are used by many devs and a difference between the normal and Pro models is going to be huge

[@exod4]

developers don't care about code compile times

[@JackMott]

@@exod4 sadly even javascript gets “compiled” (webpack).

[@dgsprysoup]

@frog web dev is pretty light, i work with react js almost everyday and it's not that bad as compared to something like android studio

[@oilybrakes]

@@exod4The developers of said JS framework probably do care tho.

[@gavination_domination]

@frog I'll have you know I'm a mobile app dev as well! *storms out in a huff*

[@ashuggtube]

“It’s always kind of funny to me when people complain about gaming performance on a machine that was clearly engineered for browsing Facebook” 😂

[@JohnSmith-pn2vl]

yea, and having a dead silent machine is really something else once you experience it. that one feature is killer to say the least

[@jimj2683]

@@JohnSmith-pn2vl this

[@mijnnaampje]

A 1400 dollar laptop 'engineered' for browsing Facebook. That's almost an achievement itself. I mean, it's almost an achievement to 'engineer' a laptop for such stuff that expensive.

[@krishmalhotratalks]

@@ryanspencer6778 to be fair, i play games on my m1 mac and find the performance to be satisfactory, im not playing on the highest settings and I only play minecraft but its pretty good compared to my previous mac

[@GuyGamer1]

@@ryanspencer6778 That's why the MacBook Pro exists. Nothing the Air is intended to do will make it throttle. I max out the CPU using Ableton with many tracks and plugins, and never get any throttling.

[@DanBires]

Don’t forget if that dell xps isn’t plugged in it won’t compete with the macs. The macs score the same on just battery power. The xps scores way lower unplugged.

[@JeffGeerling]

I've been using an M2 Air for a month or two now and honestly, I was slightly happier with the M1 Air, for some reason it felt smaller, maybe it was the curves... but it was so good in that form factor that the slight performance upgrade in the M2 coupled with sometimes throttling behavior when I'm video editing made the M2 Air a little disappointing. But that's just like, my opinion man.

[@branislavavramovic2601]

I loved the dude's quote at the end

[@kittybrowneye3163]

The airs are junk and always have been

[@LeftJoystick]

Hey it’s that dude!

[@KJTD]

@@alexandergreenfield91 he's quoting Big lebowski

[@loldude0]

Agreed

[@MrDeaf]

I remember when macbooks had active cooling. They would break their hinges because all the heat was exhausted into the structural glue on the screen.

[@DanB95]

and even with that cooling, they'd still somehow run at 90c+, absolutely boiling the bottom of the case still. 😅

[@eonnephilim852]

just a case of careful design and removing the burden of troubleshooting on consumers by just... subtly hinting them to buy every single refresh they do, which people should because WE NEED TO GIVE THEM MORE MONEY SO THEY CAN GIVE US MORE PRODUCTS TO CONSOOM!!!! 😎 🙏 thank you apple for your superior and cutting edge engineering, btw I will get around to my mandated daily 10 minutes of sucking steve jobs' dessicated penis, right after I install a dildo on my office chair so I can get even more used to getting fucked in the ass... btw have you guys seen the new always on display feature? I bet the poor androidtards are going to be begging their google overlords to support that feature ASAP 🤣🤣🤣😂

[@davidandrew7314]

Remember? It's still a thing ffs. It's just this model.

[@damyr55]

They still do. Only Air models don't

[@ErnieZee]

what structural glue? That's literally nonsense. I've had multiple macbook pros for the past 10 years and dissasembled most of them and there was no glue anywhere near the hinge. Actually the hinge is probably the most durable and the best part of all macbooks I've had.

[@fandacy]

I have been using base model m2 air for a year now. For the ones that are wondering, It never got hot (not even close to warm) even once during my workflow. Just to be fair my workflow is relatively light. I run these programs at the same time while working: discord, safari with 10ish tabs, onenote, mail, calendar, notes, asana. Hope this helps.

[@BeenDeliveredToday]

this helps, thank you

[@imagination320]

But the point is we don’t know where do u live either in Antartica or in Africa

[@fandacy]

@@imagination320I live in Istanbul. which is Mediterranean climate basically.

[@zankyo7898]

Hi, hope you’ll respond to this, after another 8 months would you recommend the base model m2 air? I want to get one for university so I’ll use it for light work as well and I am wondering how it held up for about 2 years now. Thank you in advance❤

[@fandacy]

@@zankyo7898 Im assuming you will be doing very light tasks which looks similar to my workflow and you ll be mobile. For 13 MBA base model: Regarding RAM, 8 should be fine for 2 years. The hard disk size is very personal. I would probably go for 512gb though. The screen is 60hz but i mostly connect it to a 32" 120 hz monitor. I got the midnight color and it gets chipped damage from plugging stuff. If you care such things, just get the silver one. So if the prices are close, my consideration would be between m3 15" MBA with 512 gb or 14" m1 pro base depending how much you value screen refresh rate. (there is a 100 gr difference btw the two.) Hope this helps.

[@killertoast96]

Would have been cool to include a Ryzen 6000 Ultrabook. These chips are much more power efficient than intel and in a small chassis with limited tdp this makes a big difference in performance

[@dylan-nguyen]

Sadly there’s not really a size competitor with AMD Thinnest AMD laptop is probably a Lenovo 14” Edit: Lenovo released the X13 Gen 3 with AMD a month ago But doubt it would be in time for this review

[@khalilahd.]

Agreed!

[@raviteja-on2hb]

Exactly! There is the new Asus zenbook s13( I think) with the ryzen 6800U which is a lot more power efficient, has a better GPU and has identical if not better cpu performance. I hope people stop using Dell XPS 13 as a reference windows ultra book especially when it has so many QC and driver related issues.

[@TuNguyen-nj4os]

​@@dylan-nguyen But does it matter? It's not like a few mm thinner changes anything, beside looks. Only weight and footprint size matter, and they have laptop that's lighter than apple's

[@dylan-nguyen]

@@TuNguyen-nj4os smaller footprint means less cooling if you got a bigger laptop it can cool better and would not be a fair comparison

[@KingMuttley]

The best thing about Apple having shite cooling is that we can get to see Alex go all mad scientist on it

[@chadmasta5]

Let's be real. They could have industry leading cooling and he'd still go mad scientist on it for fun.

[@morgan0]

as someone with one of the last intel macs, i love seeing alex do mad scientist cooling on macs, cos mine really does get hot

[@abpdev]

Funny part is that the M2's cooling is actually good and enough, it just exposes how bench marks can be misleading for entry level staff.

[@davidandrew7314]

It's not shite cooling though, it's the Macbook air ffs.

[@jay-5061]

@@abpdev found the apple fanboy

[@ohnoimissed]

An M1 MBA was my first ever Apple laptop, and I loved it. Traded it in for an M2 MBA, and honesty, I've hit zero issues so far. The battery life remains fantastic, it rips through the workloads I throw at it (web dev, music, browsing, remote desktop for work, very light gaming, Photoshop/light creativity work). I had read about the heat issues, so I've been running temperature monitoring software. Vast majority of the time, the SOC is running between 35-40c. There are occasional, short lived spikes in the double digits if the CPU/GPU gets really stressed, but the only time I've seen sustained high temperatures - by which I mean lasting more than a few seconds - are when running games, the most dramatic of which was a brief spike up to 108c before it throttled back and settled into high double digits. My experience (your mileage may vary, ofc) is that it is probably, for most people, going to be pretty much a non-issue. This thing ain't running hot all the time unless you're using it for stuff that you really should be doing on a pro instead.

[@Czyb20]

You probably use it for gaming when it's a workstation. Apple has the most efficient chipset in the entire world nothing can beat apple in terms of efficiency however I don't recommend for gaming child.

[@ohnoimissed]

@@Czyb20 I said in my post exactly what I use it for, and what I expect from it... 😅

[@Czyb20]

Idk it's hard very skeptical that it suddenly spiked up to 108c surely you had to load a huge application or something to bring it up

[@ohnoimissed]

@@Czyb20 it was a game, again, as I said in my original comment. CS:GO, if you want me to be really specific

[@mikem9536]

@@Czyb20 LOL You Apple Fan Boys never believe facts.

[@JacksonWelch]

Would be interesting to see if the CPU mod of the M1 has any impact against these scores.

[@ThePianist51]

It has. But the chip gets insanely hotter after a time than those benchmarks here without a real active cooling.

[@grittygirlgraphics8633]

I use Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects and this little M2 Air handles all of it amazingly well. When I migrated from my big machine, the air got really hot, and I was worried. But since then, it hasn't skipped a beat. I love this little portable mini version of the big boy I keep at home.

[@memerf36]

Did it lag a little bit when you edited your photo on Photoshop? Or was it totally smooth?

[@grittygirlgraphics8633]

@@memerf36 doesn’t skip a beat. That being said I got the one with 24gb ram and 1TB storage so it wasn’t cheap but I’m really happy with it. I actually bought the 14inch last year and returned it because it took forever to render a 10second after effects project. And it had 64ram and max chip. I think it was a lemon.

[@memerf36]

@@grittygirlgraphics8633 you mean you have solved your problem in rendering with the new M2? Cool. I heard that in certain circumstances the M2 works even better than the M1 Pro. Actually, I’m considering M2 16/512. Basically I don’t use it for editing 4K/8K video. Hope it will work smoothly for several years.

[@themissfyris1519]

well i trust linus and common sense push it abit more than what you think is alot and i say the temps will get there

[@Demigord]

why not just get a pc for the same price and get 30% better performance?

[@forgiv]

I'm a senior software developer that works on a few different kinds of projects. I bought the M2 Air as a portable machine that I could use for meetings and small amounts of web dev work while I'm out of the house. Honestly, it's been fantastic and has taken over as my primary machine for web projects. I use the base spec and it's honestly good enough as long as you don't use virtual machines or a jetbrains IDE. But if you use docker and vs code, then the base spec is more than good enough.

[@Tabacish]

"meetings", "small amount of web dev" . Yea, base spec anything would work...

[@forgiv]

@@Tabacish you’d think that would be true, but most base spec versions have huge trade offs in either horsepower or display quality. Where with the M2 Air I can get that really good bursty performance and fantastic display while trading out the ram and storage which I don’t need for a machine with such a specific use case.

[@Tabacish]

@@forgiv True, but anything at the same price point would do...

[@forgiv]

@@Tabacish yes, but also no. You can easily find a machine with better cooling, more ram, or more storage at that price point. But you will be very hard pressed to find a machine that has a greater than 1080p display that is 14” or less for less than $1500. Which is $300 above the base spec M2 Air. You COULD get something on clearance, I found a 4k yoga and that weird 3k2k spectre on clearance when I was originally looking. But I tried using that 3k2k spectre at my last job and it was honestly just hot garbage. Now, if you’re tight on money then get something cheaper. I’m not making a sweeping endorsement of the machine and saying it’s the one to get no matter what. But for the specific trade offs of lowering storage and ram for a better display and performance, there’s nothing else that does it as well at that price point.

[@KiinaSu]

Docker runs on a vm in Linux. And I can't imagine running it on 8gb ram. Unless your containers are just like an nginx instance or something.

[@northgen1062]

It would be great to compare « real world performance » with other tasks. Not everyone is a film maker, some of us are engineers, accountants, programmers, etc. So knowing if a laptop can run simulations, conception work, big macros and excel sheets, some heavy code would be very interesting!

[@abpdev]

Lol I have been saying that for years, It is just gaming and content creation here.... And I think It will never change since they refuse to address it while hiring a staff of 80. might as well just give up.

[@jay-5061]

MacBooks are terrible for engineering students, but u have w point about general review wuality

[@Tabacish]

Chill, these are facebook machines...

[@abpdev]

@@jay-5061 Lol I was an engineering student and this is a lie.

[@Ale-nv2bo]

Yeah man, and they call it productivity while not even being 1% of the work people actually do on a computer. Not everyone is a youtuber.

[@vivek_v]

In 7-ish years, when the CPU starts to experience more load during light usage, the temperatures will likely start to get unbearable. This is what makes it feel like the whole thermal design is planned obsolescence. In the present, the computer runs fine, but the thermal solution having no headroom will start to severely cripple it in the future.

[@HHalcyon]

Sounds very much like Macbook Air.

[@Aestheticnerdlife]

If this were true my 2013 macbook pro would be max fans all the time which it is not, it struggles sometimes but its mostly memory and storage limitations I guarantee you a mac laptop will outlast anything made by Dell, HP, Razer

[@HHalcyon]

@@Aestheticnerdlife I just officially retired my Macbook Pro 2013. It's still in use but it's begun to struggle (RAM, CPU, GPU, SSD) quite a bit for my use cases. But 2013 Air is a whole other story. I told my friend to dump his and get a Pro because it was no workhorse.

[@invidious07]

When your laptop is a fashion accessory you don't have to worry about that because you buy a new one every year.

[@Aestheticnerdlife]

@@invidious07 You act like they make bad computers that only look good, grow up and get over this PC fan boy behavior

[@AnUnseenRuler]

It’s amazing to me that people here seem to think use case is only video editing on one side and facebook surfing in the other. Email, writing memos letters, spreadsheets, PowerPoint (and yes, Keynote) presentations and Teams/Zoom meetings for people flying and traveling is a huge part of everyday tasks for most real world workers. The Air is perfect for these people.

[@jooplin]

Loved when Linus lifted up his arms and screamed „Time for Apples“ I literally cried

[@aaronainairetv]

Hungry For Apples?

[@drabberfrog]

@@aaronainairetv No! The milk people don't have a patent on simple rhetorical questions. There's not even a single word in "Hungry for apples?" that's shared by "Got milk?" It's a completely different slogan. It's different! And I shouldn't be fired, I should be promoted.

[@rubixloverful]

here's a tissue 🤧

[@khalilahd.]

Love his dad jokes 😂

[@jooplin]

@@drabberfrog *flicks* „Yes!“

[@RGBeanie]

When Linus screamed out "its Appling time!" I genuinely cried a single tear. The most review out there!

[@yonigle8553]

Release it again!

[@LeftJoystick]

This is definitely a review of all time.

[@DrAdityaReddy]

@@yonigle8553 this is the review of all time

[@martin0499]

Morbius and its consequences were a blessing to the human race

[@Josh101]

It's longevity that pushes me to the pro. If I want to keep the machine for over 5 years I have a feeling I'll need that cooling after a while.

[@ChiquitaSpeaks]

Sounds like the perfect opportunity for a liquid metal mod

[@MultiSneakerLover]

My late 2010 macbook air lasted 10 years😂if you dont need the cooling right now why would you need it 5 years later?

[@wyw201]

@@MultiSneakerLover Not sure how your 2010 macbook is comparable with the current gen given completely different internal layout and SOC design. Also, there were thermal issues with those macbooks under load.

[@rt-xt]

@@wyw201 that doesnt even matter, those macs from back then already have a reputation for being survivilists

[@wyw201]

@@rt-xt Certain generations of MacBooks certainly do not have a reputation of being “survivalist” lol

[@ArcticBeats]

Would be interesting to include some benchmarks for music production, as Music Production Software (DAW) is heavily used on Macs. Additionally it can get very CPU heavy depending on the plugins you use.

[@antoinesassi7271]

I agree, very difficult to buy a laptop for music, nobody does the benchmark. Personnally I use the M2 Air with Garage band and about 15 tracks, no heating, no lag, everything's good

[@willofthewind]

This is exactly why I just bought an M2 Air, for music production and live sound. I was advised by people in the field to go with the fanless option since we have to travel a lot and might need to do gigs in dusty fields and such. I went M2 for more CPU power, but now that I see it throttles way more than the M1 Air did I'm a little concerned.

[@illustris.]

@@willofthewind Give it the thermal pad Apple didn't bother to put in and you'll be good.

[@danascoles1205]

PLEASE!!!! ableton / FL / cubase / logic

[@rorykoehler9018]

It handles music software no sweat.

[@jahnesaisquoi]

While apples odd insistence on certain things (like keeping it super thin or no fans) is pretty bad for the consumer, it definitely pushes for some cool engineering. It’s not good enough though!

[@jimjones3287]

my surface pro 7 has no fan and an intel i5 quad core. Amazing engineering.

[@Alias_Anybody]

Considering that the heatpipe/heatsink design is apparently not very good...

[@anchorbubba]

@Jim i think its something a lot of people tell themselves too feel better about apple, a multibillion dollar company know for innovation and a status symbol is now monkeys with typewriters throwing shit at the wall

[@anchorbubba]

@Jim i myself find it very depressing despite not using any apple products, similar story with microsoft and windows really, its just upsetting that the companies with the most potential too effect the world in meaningful ways are busy beating the same dead horse in unison

[@Paddyhudson]

@Enchanted Goose pretty sure he was being sarcastic.

[@max-fj7np]

Im a huge apple fan. But I love Linus's unbiased reviews on these machines. It's the perfect mix of a non apple fanboy showing real world problems with these computers with an apple hater showing the situations where these machines shine. You guys are my go to for tech reviews

[@somerandomchannel382]

so, m2 is worse then m1?

[@luigiweegee7152]

@@somerandomchannel382 no m2 is better than m1.

[@MJSGamingSanctuary]

@@luigiweegee7152 Not true if its thermal throttling it basically self castration something that thermal throttles can lose 33% to 60% of its performance. I've played with a lot of cpu's and when they thermal throtle its mind bendingly shocking what happens to performance. We're talking dips from 120+ or 60+ FPS to halve or less performance. The N64 at its like 22 ~ 30 FPS being better visual fidelities.

[@luigiweegee7152]

@@MJSGamingSanctuary yea sustained performance sucks but in most use cases m2 might be better

[@MJSGamingSanctuary]

@@luigiweegee7152 For 1400 usd you could get a intel or amd equivilent for HALF the cost and still have 700 usd to blow on memory or space upgrades.

[@lucacasonato]

I’d love to see the FF compile test you do on desktop run on these chips & other laptops too. Many developers use Mac laptops as their development machines, so more info here would be great. Otherwise great video as always!

[@xxxxxx-bm1rr]

very few developers actually compile from scratch large codebases on a daily basis, you have build servers for that, those benchmarks are completely pointless for vast majority of developers that care much more about wether or not m1 supports tooling they are using, rather than compile times

[@lucacasonato]

@@xxxxxx-bm1rr I compile large C++ and Rust code bases from my M1 on a daily basis. Thank you for educating me on how to do my job!

[@DanielQRT]

​@@xxxxxx-bm1rr incremental debugging builds still take time to compile

[@Rick-vm8bl]

I've got the M1 Air, even went for just 8GB RAM. I do mostly web dev work (PHPStorm, Docker, SQL Server, etc) and it's been shockingly decent. I hit a memory issue once but that was down to a crummy electron based dev app leaking memory all over the place. I think the last time I rebooted was about 4 months ago, which as a Chrome user makes it surprisingly decent. Very happy with it, I was a bit worried about only having 8GB ram but it's been absolutely fine for my workload. I've even dabbled in a bit of davinci (admittedly only 1080p footage) and again, it's not skipped a beat.

[@CyberFreaked]

I really don't understand why a lot software developers use a mac book, it''s expensive and you can get so much better for the same price. They are really about vendor locking / closed sourc etc exactly the opposite of that what makes our work even possible, I guess it's kinda cool and a hype in this branch of work but well. For me, I don't even accept a mac book for development work, just out of principles

[@Mike_Hartman]

@@CyberFreaked Build quality, battery life, silent or near silent operation, not having to use Windows, XCode, Visual Studio compatibility, great trackpad, great ecosystem for iPhone users, etc. I haven't owned an Apple device in a decade, but even I'll admit what Apple does good or great.

[@badBlackShark]

Honestly I want to just get work done at work. I found Linux fiddly sometimes. I don’t need any options, I need the thing to work when I want it to. And I need UNIX. So Mac it is. Also for a lot of devs price doesn’t matter that much, because it’s a company laptop anyway. And for companies a happy developer that doesn’t leave is worth much more than the (for them) inconsequential price increase. I also like the trackpad, the gestures, and honestly the design of the whole thing (MacOS specifically).

[@MiGujack3]

@@CyberFreaked Aside from being simpler and better with battery life, you'd be surprised how many developers don't know how a computer works. They can't take advantage of a Windows machine because they lack the skills to make it work right, can't blame them though.

[@jesusbarrera6916]

@@Mike_Hartman most of that only comes since the M1 Macbook, because the 2015-2020 macs were kinda trash but yeah, many developers have absolutely zero knowledge of hardware.... they just need stuff to work

[@michaelhonaker2634]

You should try container benchmarks. Alot of developers use Mac with docker and I'd like to see it's performance is. I know it's arm so won't be comparable to any competing x86 platform

[@brysongrayy]

For anyone wondering, if you’re gonna be using this for basically anything other than constant benchmarks or insane workloads, you’ll be perfectly fine. I have used it since I got it and have had actual workloads. It’s fine for almost anything you’ll actually use this in.

[@felipe367]

Sshh you can’t say logical statements like that. The internet DEMANDS screaming headlines and negativity.

[@bossofthisgym3945]

if you do anything but that u can buy 200$ laptop and its gonna perform the same lmao

[@user-jt6xh2ln9z]

@@bossofthisgym3945 what

[@huaen8880]

@@bossofthisgym3945 There's a difference between your budget cheap $200 laptop and a $1500 ultrabook. I do agree that the average person that browses the web and occasinally needs to send an email only really needs a refurbished/used $200 laptop. However, anyone doing any kind of work on a laptop benefits a lot from having a laptop with good build quality, battery life, better components like keyboard and trackpad, performance, lighter weight and durability.

[@bossofthisgym3945]

@@huaen8880 Thats just copium from an Apple user trying to justify massivly overpaying for a piece of hardware thats good for nothing but tasks that computers were designed to do 30 years ago. You can get good quality alluminium builds with Windows for 2x (or maybe even 3x if you look well) less the price. But oh well it's your money, let them give you less for more

[@codyjames34526]

"This is a work of art" - 10:13

[@Michael-uo4jj]

Apple - we make $2,000 Facebook browsing machines

[@simonezini5944]

Thank you for including lightroom, even if lightroom classic is more widely used as far as I know. Also, photo exporting in my opinion is not a big deal, as you do it when your job is finished so time is not a big problem. I think previews generation is more indicative as it is critical to quickly browse pictures with the edits applied to them

[@ak_hoops]

That part

[@UD503J]

Exporting is still a time constraint for me. I have to do my whole Lightroom loop and then move on to the next shoot. I can't dump another card while I'm exporting from the previous batch.

[@Marth70]

I've had the base M2 air for college and have not so far ran into any issues. I only write papers, use online services for classes, listen to music, have a couple of apps open at all times, and run some live streams on it for my remote work. It blazes through everything with ease with all of them running. Also the battery does great and I never have to turn it off even if I put it in a sleeve. If you are in doubt of the base m2 air... don't. I will run what you need it to run.

[@samm9397]

I got a M2 Air a few weeks back and honestly, yeah I agree, tbh it's the best laptop I've ever owned. And I am a pretty hard core PC gamer + dualboot linux distro hopping since like 2010. I work in the tech industry and I code on the side. Also record music as I've been playing since high school long ago. In a way tho, apples kinda right. You DONT code on a MBA, it's a general use laptop and if your trying to use it that way, well, yeah it's not gonna work right. You don't play cyberpunk on a 750ti and expect it to be fantastic. My work issued MBP hasn't ran into any performance issue at all. My MBA has been AMAZING when I am traveling or using it around the house to watch KZbin/streams, listen to music, do light music comp, and just any general day to day use. When I wanna game I got my desktop. But sometimes you wanna be around your place and I'm not lugging my rig around lol.

[@paulhillbeats]

This is the problem that I have with Linus’ review. People that buy this are like you, students who want a reliable machine that breezes through their work with ease. Linus is acting in this video like people who actually need the “pro” power are considering these things.

[@Summer-xu8qu]

@@paulhillbeats Tell me you haven't watched the video without telling me you haven't watched the video, he already acknowledged that people who buy m2 air isn't gonna do any kind of heavy sustained workload, and the more "real world" test are bursty in nature, the m2 air even gets his vote....

[@abpdev]

@@Summer-xu8qu that highlights the other problem with him, the misleading titles and intros. I watched the video, made it seem as if the M2 is a problem only to gradually switch as the video grows. more proof that for low end devices, one should not waste their time with LTT.

[@Ale-nv2bo]

At what proce tho...

[@awake3951]

Been using the laptop for the last month and a half and it barely gets warm. That's even when I have many tabs, desktops, applications (safari, chrome, word, music, photoshop)

[@KarlBaron]

I would love to see battery life tests of doing actual work instead of just playing a video. Like a loop of compiling code until the machine dies (compile-test-edit-compile workflow). The old Intel MacBooks had great battery life just playing video but once you loaded the CPU your battery life dropped off a cliff. My M1 Pro is way way better with battery under load but I'd love to see how the M2 compares with it's higher TDP.

[@world-tour]

I've noticed mine still has a strong new product odour when it gets warm, even after weeks of use. The smell is likely a fire retardant, which is likely needed in much larger amounts due to not having any cooler in it. It's actually given me a sore throat a few times after using rh laptop for longer periods which is a bit concerning. Tried to find info about what chemical it was (as many fire retardants are carcinogenic) but no luck so far.

[@sovo1212]

Just wondering, isn't it possible to design a big, yet slim fan for a laptop/ultrabook (think of 12x12 cm or even larger), but of course spinning at much SLOWER speed in order to reduce noise? Maybe it would sacrifice cooling efficiency, but wouldn't it be a good compromise to get a silent running machine without having to throttle down performance?

[@mizinoinovermyhead.7523]

The problem is that at that size the rotational mass would require so much to get going that for bursty workloads where it would spin up and down often and where the laptops are mostly used, you would kill a lot of battery power.

[@Oaisus]

A fan that big would take up all of the space the battery uses

[@Manker00]

But you have to look at how much air is moved by each amp and can’t just say that the big fan needs more power as it also moves more air at the same time

[@sovo1212]

@@KenS1267 Well, to be fair, a 300mm fan would exceed the size of any laptop, lol.

[@sovo1212]

@@giovannigio6217 I don't think it's intentional. They just hire designers to do the job of engineers.

[@andyvaldez4334]

You forgot to mention that the MacBook Air does not support dual monitor display and only MacBook pro or Mac mini support it

[@BaskuraCorp]

I have a fully loaded M2 Air, I considered the MBP 14 - but after looking at them both for a long time, portability, battery life and silence were the things that mattered to me more. I've been using it for work, browsing, videos, music production, some video editing and it really doesn't get all that warm at all. In order to heat it up to where it's even noticeable, I either have to render videos for long periods or game - neither of which I purchased this machine for. This was my first Mac since the iMac G3 and I'm really pleased with it - even plays World of Warcraft very well, but most of my gaming is done on my desktop PC.

[@matthewcorson1260]

Exactly, all these tech youtubers are so disconnected with their general audience that they don't realize that a majority of the people watching their videos are not editing 4-8K footage or running code for extended periods of time. Shame on them for spreading misinformation on a device that I've found in personal use to be excellent.

[@fynkozari9271]

What pc do u have? Mine ryzen 1700 asus rtx 2070.

[@matthewcorson1260]

@@fynkozari9271 Alienware Aurora R10

[@mikem9536]

@@matthewcorson1260 Yeah heaven forbid they point out that you can't use the hardware to it's full potential.

[@kaiser234]

@@mikem9536 Most of us dont event use any of our products to its full potential tho, so this is bad faith acting in a way

[@NN010]

10:38, I agree with this take on the M2 13 inch Pro. That price difference between it & the 14 inch Pro is why I went for it instead. I felt the extra money was worth it for the larger & better display, superior I/O, more powerful SoC & better battery life. I’ve been using that 14 inch Pro for a couple months now & I don’t regret it. Apple Silicon truly has been a game changer for my productivity (as a web developer & designer)!

[@adoan4]

Not to mention that you can literally get a 14in Pro for $1600 at Best Buy now, so its even cheaper than an equivalently specced M2 13in pro

[@alileevil]

You can literally do anything the MacBook does with a $600 windows laptop. Stop taking as though the M2 or the M1 MacBook was like the reinvention of the silicon chip.

[@xxburningfoxxx1081]

@Max typical apple consumer

[@xxburningfoxxx1081]

@Max no i mean the op not you

[@tholderbaum]

@@alileevil I have many windows laptops. I can and do use whatever laptops I want to use. So point me to the $600 windows computer that will provide me with 15 hours of peak performance on battery with no slowdowns because of power management. Every windows computer that has even come close has done so by impacting the performance or screen brightness or shutting off the screen and other hardware aggressively to save power. My MacBook Pro 14 does not.

[@valdir7426]

I do pretty heavy audio work on an air M1 and I've yet to see it throttle. although it heats a bit less than the M2 and the heatsink is a bit more robust.

[@jamesjross]

I have the option of getting an upgraded m2 air or a 14-inch m1 pro. £500 difference. I'm going to be using FL studio. - any thoughts

[@negativeland5207]

@@jamesjross go for the pro for the better IO, better screen, and better cooling.

[@BCG1015AP]

@@Justin_Leahy with the rumored October event, should those interested in M1 Pro just wait until the price drop? This is my dilemma at the moment…

[@negativeland5207]

@dany ay lol most likely talking about the non sale price (2000~)

[@andrewdunbar828]

I'm travelling with my M1 Air in tropical Southeast Asia. It can get warmer than I'd like if I'm not somewhere with aircon. But it gets worryingly hot from time to time when some part of some app or maybe part of the OS goes a bit awry and starts using 100% CPU. Using the GPU too much or an Intel app in Rosetta can also get it warmer than I'd like. No idea how the M2 would cope with the same.

[@theillestinmanila]

Thanks for sharing. I'm trying to buy something for the next 5 years and travel through SEA as well, probably going to go with 13" mbp even though it's unpopular

[@andrewdunbar828]

@@theillestinmanila I haven't had any of those spurious processes for probably more than six months now. But some stuff still gets it hotter than normal, such as the Android emulator. And I think Java has an effect like GPU and Rosetta to a lesser degree.

[@Lyuze]

These videos are great, but a large portion of people who buy macs buy them for audio work. It would be cool to see some sort of stats for a stress test in pro tools, ableton, or logic. Thanks for the vid!

[@nogerboher5266]

No... Apple just knows that in 2 to 3 years, people will be forced (by Apple themselves) to buy a brand new Apple laptop, because all of their devices are designed to slow down, break down or wear down over a period of 2-3 years. Especially with how the high temperatures affect electronics and especially so in case of batteries, RAM, CPU, GPU and MoBo. With that, Apple figured ''why even bother with spending money on engineering and designing cooling, when our laptops will wear down significantly anyway and people will be forced to buy new ones?!''

[@Lyuze]

@@nogerboher5266 what does that have to do with my comment?

[@ohHeyKev]

@@Lyuze I don't know either but everywhere I go I hear the same spewed out argument that Apple is this and Apple is that.

[@EvanPilb]

Logic users moment

[@TheIndulgers]

It would also be good to include Dell’s performance graphs on battery - you know, like how laptops are often used.

[@G.Padilla]

Admittedly I'm a workstation class laptop guy, but I've never been without a power outlet nearby for years. If you care for battery life, you go with the Arm laptop, that's common sense, but if you're going to nitpick it to make it look cool, then also ask for a workstation class laptop for the plugged side of the benchmark, you know, like what someone who doesn't mind plugging a laptop can get.

[@G.Padilla]

@@Avendesora I'm just saying, if you're going to beat a dead horse asking if something is good on its niche over the regular thing just to feel good, may as well balance it out and ask what the niche on the side can be as well. If you want to live in battery land, live there, just accept its place and know there's other options. I'm just tired of people over praising for a niche use case, most people have access to power outlets since they were born nowadays.

[@bastienx8]

@@G.Padilla Maybe you should revise your "niche" definition, I'm a student in an engineering school and I see a lot of people complaining about the lack of performance of their laptops while on battery, and using the performance modes or other tricks to boost performance is not an option because you won't find power outlets randomly in the middle of a class. Light task battery life is the most commonly shown by the reviewers, because it is nicer to show the biggest numbers, but there are actually huge differences in battery life between laptops when you use them a bit more heavily (like 20 or 30% of the cpu, instead of the 0-5% range when browsing or watching videos)

[@G.Padilla]

@@Avendesora You'd think precisely students and businessman have power outlets in their lives. A laptop still ends on a desk most of the time, but if you like to imply using them while walking around like a console or the GPD Win is their normal and not niche, you're free to live in that bubble. Do you also think the natural habitat for a Mac Air is a Starbucks? But wait, they also have power outlets there...

[@G.Padilla]

@@bastienx8 If you don't have power outlets in a class which require heavy use of a computer, you're the one who should check if your University is normal. You'd normally be in a lab with University provided computers if that is a requirement of the course, with the option to use your personal one and with enough power putlets for everyone and their mothers. Or what, do they ask you to do CAD in a math class?

[@David-eq4xb]

I have been using M2 Air since launch and for me it is miles better than my previous M1 Air. I am software developer so bigger screen, ability to lower brightness even further are very important. MagSafe is also nice, it effectively ads one USB-C while charging. I have base model and when I train some deep learning model I can feel the slowdown even while browsing but it is definitely not unusable and every computer will do that. I hope Linus can find some solution to the throtelling tho like he did with previous Air it was really noticible for me. Some random things I noticed are better for software dev then previous model - very high quality webcam, full sized function row, even taller screen

[@thewattbomber]

NGL, working as a software engineer - running about 2 docker containers (DBs), VS Code, multiple tabs and windows for Safari (5 - 6, 2 - 3), 2- 3 NodeJS instances, Music, Sidecar etc. and it doesn't get warm or throttle.

[@eliloumas]

I bought a 13 in macbook pro as opposed to the m2 macbook air. I LOVE IT. I got it with the highest specs (24gb ram, etc) and it is the most amazing laptop I have ever bought. People hate the touch bar, but I love it. I could never be happier with this laptop. And I am a windows gamer. (I use my macbook for music production)

[@marcosrotllan]

Mb air for audio, mb pro for video. Simple.

[@mattifine4348]

It would be interesting to se what the Mac air could do if not thermally limited. With some DIY water cooling.

[@elephystry]

I used to have a Dell XPS 13” 9365. Got so frigging hot it’d hurt. One day I went to grab it, it was off, and wouldn’t power on. Didn’t care enough to get it serviced because I hated it so much, but I wonder if it cooked itself to death. I had another laptop that did after the fan died.

[@elephystry]

Oh yeah, there was another issue I’d have, if the RAM usage got above 4GB, the audio would crackle. So annoying.

[@jontysrivastava8386]

my experience says otherwise, I've edited videos on this laptop for days continuously and never seen it heat up even though it doesn't it have fan and the battery is amazing too

[@MrNickpeck36]

I was just about to say the same :) The 13" M2 Macbook is my first Mac and I have been really impressed, and while I don't really plan to play games on it, it hasn't heated up all that much while under load. But hey, some could have some defects I suppose.

[@Cicton]

I work 10 hour days on the new M2 Air and it’s without a doubt the best machine I have ever used. Citrix, VMs, Corp Apps, O365 suite. Typical day to day business work. Can’t say enough great things about this M2 Air.

[@Ulexcool]

Ok, so a Facebook machine 🤣

[@Cicton]

@@Ulexcool yeah, I use Citrix and multiple VMs for Facebook. You caught me. Cool guy

[@cholectu]

I’m so sick of tech reviewers critiquing M2 MacBook air for what it is not designed to do. In practice, if you use it for what it is designed to do, the machine is great for what it is. As an owner of an M2 and a person who also concerns about heat, these videos are just misleading.

[@cputeq007]

Bought a 1TB, 16GB M1 Air (8/8) refurb from Apple ($300 less than retail and Apple refurb has always been brand-spanking new for me). Great little machine -- I love the integration between my iPhone and MacOS. Interesting side note (talk about benchmarking) - I performed the M1 Air thermal pad mod (which allows the chassis to REALLY get hot) and saw definite performance improvements in sustained workloads. Then, I got curious to see just how hot the CPU would get. I had a thermal monitoring program running (which even shows battery temps) while playing Minecraft (with shader modes) for 30 minutes or so. The machine got extremely toasty (I had it on my desk) as the chassis soaked up all the heat. Then, I did some digging on the 'net to see what the 'safe' temperature is for Li-Ion batteries, and found an interesting tidbit -- they have a higher temp headroom during discharge vs charge. To test this, I kept an eye on my battery thermals while plugged in and gaming. Once the battery normalized at its max temp for 5 minutes or so, I unplugged the Air -- sure enough, the battery temps went up by 2C and performance marginally so -- the Apple was actually throttling based on battery temps as well, though in normal use it would never do so.

[@codenameexoliby6020]

The only unbiased trch reviewer on YT. All other tech channels are clearly sponsored by apple because they give no real critiques and they ignore obvious major issues with their machines. Thank you for this channel

[@AriCalifornia-ny1td]

I live in Southern California and sometimes have to use my laptop in no AC environments. During the peak of summer the fans on my m1 14 pro are running and the laptop still feels hot to the touch. I can't imagine having an air with no fans to remove that heat

[@Physicus9]

It would have been great to see them actually cool the case or cpu so that the unlocked M2 air would actually give results

[@wispa7214]

but this is the whole point why apple pc`s are not worth buying. Apple charge you for the tech and then its unable to run to its potential because the cpu is thermal throttled, as they don't bother to cool it. You got the real results, but you dont like them.

[@andyH_England]

@@wispa7214 Total nonsense comment, fanboy stuff. The Air is not a pro machine, so testing a laptop, that even in interviews, Apple said do not buy for sustained work, the Pro 13 is for that. The CPU throttles after a while, Apple could have just done what AMD does, throttle on battery, but they give you max power for a while for the short bursts of performance you need. If you need a fan for sustained work, buyers are to blame for buying an intentionally designed fanless device. Get the 13 MB Pro M2 for the exact cost. Or, the MB Pro 14 M1 on a deal, can get them for a similar price to Windows ultrabooks at the moment.

[@matevzpor8058]

@@andyH_England jesus, finally a comment with actual brain cells behind it.

[@Masterrunescapeer]

Will probably be another content piece, this one is just basically a review of it.

[@julianda45]

Talking from an audio producer perspective. I've mixed an entire session of 186 audio channels with 8 returns. Each of one with multiple instance of Fab filter, Waves and Sooth 2 plug-ins at a 2048 samples of buffer size. Also the CPU meter marked between 76-85%, and I didn't notice thermal throttling, or deficient performance. So I don't know why Linus is saying this machine only works for browsing the internet, of course is gonna be bad If you use it for heavy video editing or gaming, but isn't made for those porpoises.

[@mikem9536]

@@jcfawerd Hater, lol grow up kid, apple has had cooling issues for decades.

[@KyleErickson]

I've been rocking the M2 Air since release, edit all my videos (h265) in FCPX and the only time I've ever noticed it get really warm when was doing Blender renders without metal enabled. Software development/video editing, absolutely no issues whatsoever

[@ericneuman9130]

This is the best review video that I’ve seen yet on the air. It’s concise,to the point, and balances real world with the not real world or the some of the time.

[@aanilgizem]

idk about m2 but my m1 air is running perfectly, even too cold in the mornings that i can’t touch it

[@Fryinryan132]

Ik I play games on it too and never had a heat issue on 2020 M1

[@choppchopp9975]

I just bought my M2 air, haven’t really done anything large on it yet tho

[@DardyGG]

I like the comparison on purchasing between air and pro, you make some good points.

[@Till113]

the main reason I bought my M1 MacBook Air is because it has no fan, it can open large text documents really fast and the battery life last the complete workday as a lawyer. Sometimes it is nice to buy something that is build perfectly for your needs and not because it could perform an unnecessary task faster. PS: For these types of Laptops it would be nice to include benchmarks that test website and large word/PDF documents performance. (For some reason my more powerful gaming PC struggles with large word files while my Mac can handle them just fine)

[@Tawmii91]

Nah, if it doesn’t game or goes hot under heavy video editing it’s just a “glorified Facebook machine”… the ignorance is out of this world.

[@icthus13]

This could be due to the SSD speed of the Mac vs your PC.

[@Slenderman63323]

@@icthus13 this is probably it. Fast SSDs are ridiculously cheap though, you can get 1TB of PCIe gen 3 storage for as little as $70.

[@IvanPopelyshev]

I dont like Macs, but M2 Air for me has all the features needed - 1. performance boost for compiling stuff 2. the best performance on WebGL graphics 3. magsafe! 4. Battery time . 5. form-factor Of course its not for extreme gaming , it throttles at Civ-6 multiplayer. Also not for hardcore gamedev like Unity/Unreal.

[@Dorian_Barber]

I have the M1 MacBook Air, it’s great, I got the 16GB ram version and when I edit my YT videos on iMovie or make music on Garageband it never gets hot. Maybe if you do crazy 4K editing and some hardcore apps then yea it might heat up, but over never had a problem.

[@carsformario]

Glad to see this video, I literally got a M2 air 2 weeks ago. I’ve been feeling like maybe I should have bought the pro but I remembered how hot my old 2017 would get and felt just as fast as my sisters air.

[@etn]

yep, my 2017 pro would get insanely hot , even when i first got it. my m2 air has handled everything i’ve thrown at it flawlessly

[@mandable]

Am I reading this correctly? You decided not to get a 2021 model (which runs very cool on full load, I have one) because of how the 2017 model fared?

[@carsformario]

@@mandable No, I wasn’t in the market to get a 2021. When I got a 2022, it was my first time getting an Air instead of a Pro and I was worried that it would be too hot to do light gaming and possibly get hot with just web browsing and watching KZbin. My 2017 Pro cannot watch KZbin today without getting pretty warm. I hope that clears it up for you

[@Robyoutube1327]

I wish the battery life comparisons were done with the screen brightness at the same Lumens.

[@MiGujack3]

that's too advanced for this channel

[@Masterrunescapeer]

It is, they mention it in the video that they are all set to be equivalent to 50% of the Macbooks brightness.

[@freddyr0]

I've been using the M2 Macbook air for heavy programming (Rails, React, PHP), it has worked absolutely flawlessly. Once I stopped to count how many chrome tabs I had open, I was over 60 tabs, no issues at all.

[@realMartinHamilton]

You've just sold me on the M2 Macbook air 15". Thanks for the comment.

[@EvanPilb]

"heavy programming"

[@SergeyPupkoMusic]

The single SSD chip is what kills it. I've seen an apples to apples (pun intended) comparison between the M1 and M2 MBP and the M1 beats it out, or matches it in performance in a lot of things because of the read/write bottleneck. The storage benchmarks were roughly doubled on the M2 because they're pulling the carriage with one horse, so to speak. And while most people wouldn't notice, it does come in handy to a lot of creatives who need to pull up a large file for a project such as RAW footage/photos or sound library files, which tend to range in the gigabytes. Not to mention that memory swap will probably suffer from this. Otherwise, absolute beast of a chip that builds upon the beastliness of the M1. Too bad they decided to cut corners that negatively impact the user experience, as has been the tradition for Apple lately.

[@ThaisSilva-vk1bv]

I use a Macbook air M1 to work with programming and I never had this problem. My mac is on over 12 h a day and even running systems to develop for mobile I have no problem.

[@Teluric2]

Mac users always claim they never have problems but the repair bussines for macs is making lot of money.

[@Unpluggedx89]

The only air the laptop gets is just in the title

[@ssrbgangimaribotan6thofthe12]

Linus, can you try simulating room temperatures near the equator and the like? cause usually temperature output of CPUs here is much hotter than northern countries and we can't always afford to turn on our A/C 24/7. so sometimes the CPU can get a bit too hot here even though when i seen reviews and benchmarks its usually good enough.

[@Masterrunescapeer]

Doesn't really make sense, all the chips are going to have the same performance characteristics in the hotter weather as well, will still boost to the same and throttle. Or do you mean with the heat dissipation for passive?

[@Ale-nv2bo]

@@giovannigio6217 18ºC sounds like our winter 💀

[@ssrbgangimaribotan6thofthe12]

@@Masterrunescapeer my 10th gen i5 intel cpu will thermal throttle quiet easily even though the cooling supposed to be adequate according to reviews and recommendations, even with bimonthly change of thermal paste it still thermal throttle. I'm kinda tired of changing my thermal paste like every 2 months so i need to make sure what kind of cooler i need to cool my damn cpu properly before buying them. A lot of review/benchmark are usually in "colder" room temperature than in the equator. Its really hot here all year around, so its really easy for the cpu to get hotter.

[@ssrbgangimaribotan6thofthe12]

@@Ale-nv2bo i dont even have winter

[@ssrbgangimaribotan6thofthe12]

@@Masterrunescapeer btw when i game the room will basically become an oven if i dont turn on the A/C here. Its just that hot. Its not about performance when it start up (its good and all), but the problem is when i'm in the middle of a gaming session and the cpu starts to get hot.

[@thetshadow999animates9]

Comparing their prices vs PC isn't an apples-to-apples comparison

[@nejc3]

My company has just got me a new MBA2 16GB RAM and 521GB SSD and for 3 days I had it I'm enjoying it. I mainly use it for light work so heat was never a real issue for me. The hardware really is a step up comparing it to the old model looks. The notch, you get used to it, I mean, your phone has that haircut too, so it's pretty obvious now. Speakers are excellent too! If you think. you'll find yourself using Adobe or any other cpu-demanding tasks consider a MBP with a fan, thus your temperatures shall be aprx. 20-30c lower.

[@ArchieYFC]

30 Celsius degrees!?!?

[@nejc3]

@@ArchieYFC lower

[@ArchieYFC]

@@nejc3 still, 30 Celsius degrees lower simply because of the fan is impressive

[@markasiala6355]

Microcenter has the MBP M1 14" base model marked down to $1599 16GB/512GB. At that price you get all features you want from ports, function keys, plus the extra RAM for only $100 over the MBP M2. It really puts the MBP M2 in a weird spot right now unless you like the touch bar.

[@AlecMHansen]

If you look for deals you can get even better. I got a rose gold 16GB RAM 1TB M1 MacBook Air for $1500 refurbished. Has been running amazing for a year now. It even plays the kinds of games I like (mostly indie stuff) just fine.

[@zahitemremetin606]

@@AlecMHansen which games have you played?

[@AlecMHansen]

@@zahitemremetin606 Stardew Valley, Stellaris, Civ VI, FTL, Dwarf Fortress, Pillars of Eternity, Disco Elysium, Kerbal Space Program, EVE Online, Don't Starve, Darkest Dungeon, and Into the Breach looking at my Steam library and stuff I've installed. All work fine on my M1 Mac. I've go a Steam Deck now so I'm using that instead (amazing little machine). When Elden Ring came out I used my old Plex server with a GTX 970 to play. So I mean if you absolutely must play every game obviously don't buy a Mac but there's a surprising number of games that you can absolutely play on a Mac, and the GPU can handle it pretty well.

[@pesfreak18]

Let me get this straight. People complain that the Macbook Air gets very hot during long workouts. Something it isn´t designed for because the Pro Model is for that kind of use. For light use and bursty behavior like most people will do (because most people are non Pros) it works as intended. And for longer use (like Pros do it) there is a Pro Model. So for me it sounds like that people blame Apple for there wrong expectations. Did I miss anything?

[@pesfreak18]

@@jcfawerd I don´t get the point with the touchbar. The MacBook Air doesn´t have a Touchbar at all. The only available MacBook with Touchbar is the 13 inch MacBook Pro that has the cooler in it. Also both the Macbook Air and the Macbook 13 inch have the same ports.

[@mowtow90]

The thing is I completly skipped the Air line because of the lack of fan. I didnt want to have an oven on my laps. I got 14in M1 Pro and what can I say is - 70 to 80% of the time , the fans are off. The CPU dont go above 50-60 on normal load. It only goes up at full load then the fans kick in and they are quite strong.

[@oldlavygenes]

To me, the heat is a big issue when considering longevity. I don't want a laptop just for 3 or 4 years, I buy laptops to last at least 8 but hopefully 10+ years. I can imagine heat degradation being an issue if the laptop is continuously put under load.

[@amarug]

I have the M2 air, using it for not too heavy data and image analysis in python, opencv, tensorflow etc. smooth as anything, never gets hot. would recommend 9/10

[@djkidii]

hahahahha this shit i hot even wathing netflix :D asus s 13 much better cost less have the same performace better screen more ram and bigger ssd

[@micah6635]

actaully?

[@sysdevman]

I hear that M2 Airs are designed for smaller 3Nm chip tech. Since this is not available yet, they are using 5Nm tech

[@kfp87]

Funny how it not being a dust collector atracts me.

[@quacktac]

The real issue with this laptop is that the base model has less storage and less ram than should be considered the bare minimum in this day and age. To get 16gb of Ram and 500gb of storage you're very close in price to the 14" Pro, which seems like a much better deal. It's a shame, because I was sure this would be the perfect laptop for my girlfriend and was looking forward to fiddling about with it.

[@SomeUnremarkableGuy]

in theory yes, in practice no. depends on how you use your laptop. I have M1 base configuration and as a UX/UI Designer I have no issues at all. Works perfect, handles big files without any issues, battery is just awesome, I can go out and do my work without any worries. Also not to mention that this laptop stays cool all the time, even without the fans. If you are working on more heavy stuff that require better cooling, I don't see why would someone will look at the Air line up at all.

[@matthewcorson1260]

I upgraded the SSD and RAM one step up, and its been fantastic. I agree with you that had this laptop launched with base 528GB of storage and 16GB of RAM for the current price point, it would be much more competitive in the market.

[@Slenderman63323]

The RAM size is actually not that bad considering MacOS optimizations. The storage is an absolute joke though, no one should be selling a 1k+ laptop with 256 GB or even 512 GB of storage in 2022 given how cheap SSDs have become.

[@quacktac]

@@Slenderman63323 I wouldn’t mind so much if the storage was expandable out if the upgrades were priced fairly.

[@C0deH0wler]

Yes, I can understand where you are coming from, but 'it does very well at real world stuff'. ... Why are people shifting the goal posts?

[@gnocchidokie]

I’m currently using my 15” m2 MacBook Air emulating Mario Odyssey upscaled on an external monitor with this youtube video playing in pip on my laptop screen, currently have 35 tabs open in safari, about 10 other apps running in various virtual desktops in the background. Not a single stutter or hiccup. What are you all on about. Talking like this machine can barely keep one Facebook tab open without steam coming out of it. I run windows 11 flawlessly in parallels, I play with generative fill in photoshop, I even exported an edited 4K video. Gasp! You’d think that was all impossible with the way youtubers talk about this laptop. Can i do all of this even faster on a more powerful computer? Yes, that’s how computers work. I, however, am not a professional youtuber. This laptop is amazing, it’s been a joy these past few weeks that I’ve had it. I’m glad I didn’t listen to all the KZbinrs telling me to get something else. I have a stunningly beautiful, razor thin ultralight that does more than I’ll ever ask it to do, and it weighs less and is literally 1.5cm larger than my 13.3” black plastic macbook from college. If you like this laptop, get it. If you literally work for a movie or youtuber studio, you’re not even considering this anyway. People who upgrade their MacBook typically do so every 5 years if not more. If you have a 5-10 year old MacBook, you’re in for a treat with this one. If you get it and regret it, apple has a no questions asked return policy.

[@D37fit]

Is yours the base model?

[@gnocchidokie]

@@D37fit Good question, I should have mentioned that, I opted for 16gm of ram

[@ogyct]

Software developer here. I work with java and javascript on my m1 macbook air. I have never suffered from any throttling. And the performance of this machine is on par with my desktop core i5 10600k. The only time I got throttling is when I was playing WoW(which is actually very playable on this machine) after 10 minutes of playing. But for gaming I have a dedicated desktop machine, so I don't really need this use case. BTW everything else is handled very good as well. Music creation software, video editing.

[@utubekullanicisi]

M2 MacBook Air can sustain higher wattage than the M1 MacBook Air without the surface temperatures getting any hotter, so the hotspot temperature reaching 109C should barely have any effect on the end user whatsoever, besides needlessly worrying that it might reduce the lifespan of your machine, which shouldn't be the case as Apple isn't the only "offender" here with Ryzen 7000 series also being allowed to operate at 115C, which is built on TSMC's same generation process node. Should be a pretty good indicator that you're not going to damage any aprt of your electronics on either of the platforms. These chips are simply designed to operate in those temperatures. You could theorize that the reason M2 reaches 109C in the MBA is that Apple is suffocating the chip inside for the sake of trying to achieve comfortable surface temps and get maximum sustained performance in that chassis at the same time, or that the temps are simply spiraling out of control, but the M2 still reaches the same temperature in the M2 MacBook Pro as well.

[@amrani_art]

My XPS hits 100 degrees C as well, with 2 fans spinning at full speed, while only watching YT videos 🤔

[@Slurkz]

The title is clickbait. Conclusion of the video: the M2 Air is an excellent machine for the money, but don’t expect Pro performance when taxing it with a constant heavy load.

[@Format090]

my concern from temperature is always about the surrounding electronics, not the CPU itself. Higher temps could cause surrounding soldering to melt, that's why I immediately undervolted my 12th gen laptop CPU.

[@chattyinc]

That wouldn't really be an issue unless your CPU goes above 200º, even then it'll need to hold that for a realllllyy long time to cause any deformation on surrounding solder (assuming you get the solder to that temperature too, which is unlikely). Both leaded and unleaded solder only readily melts above 300º, so you're way likely to burn out the silicon in the CPU than cause any sort of damage to the solder surrounding it. Please, don't cap the performance on your flashy new intel because of such fears xD

[@DakotahMiskus]

I remember when laptops in the early 2000s ran so hot that a fan base was in almost everyone’s home for their laptop

[@silogisus]

Not really.But newer laptops are betterly power optimized to underclock and lower frequencies in low loads. I use Core 2 Duo(centrino) laptop alongside new machines and older laptops are hotter only in light work like browsing and word editing. Once you compare the heat under heavy load even in the same power draw , newer ryzen or 12 gen + Nvidia RTX gaming machines are much hotter with much bigger cooling. But they are much faster though.

[@oreo_man]

I there any chance you guys could build your own cooling system for one of these to see how well the M2 could perform if it had adequate cooling?

[@ak_hoops]

"Video editing pro-res raw footage" because that's what an MB Air is for 🤣🤣 Like the way this review was. VERY balanced.

[@syedhasan4572]

From 10:27 to 10:38, that glorified chromebook statement is so funny! 😀

[@mymusicpaws]

You should do a cooling mod on the macbook air M2 and see what performance you can force out of it

[@ujjawalpanchal]

while it would be interesting, but not practical. Those cooling mods really transfer the heat to more temperature sensitivity parts of the machine, reducing overall machine life.

[@Coldsteak]

@@ujjawalpanchal I've heard that, but why can you just stick some kapton tape on the battery?

[@fini_ookees]

I have the M2. No problems with it. I'm running the 512GB model. I work in IT, so I'm not running it hot ever. Use it mostly with parallels and day to day admin duties. I just wanted good all around dependable hardware and something small and light to carry around. I've used so many machines over the last 15 years in IT. Apple usually makes the most dependable yet over priced machines. Figured now was as good a time as any to switch over to arm.

[@lunakoala5053]

always interesting how experiences differ. In my experience apple hardware is the most unreliable I've ever had the misfortune of using. Which is sad, because I really like MacOS. All the pros of Linux, yet with an actually coherent mature GUI instead of random crap thrown together.

[@Cat-kp7rl]

What really surprises me is the consistency of Parallels. When I first used it, the setup was so effortless that I felt like there had to be something missing. And so far, my experience with Windows on Arm has also gone pretty well. I do embedded systems development so I’m reliant on a lot of old programs, so there is a higher probability of me getting bitten by an outdated dependency. For EDA I use Altium(Windows only, X86-64) So it goes through emulation on top of a VM, yet it is still almost as performant compared to running native on a workstation. What makes this a big deal to me is that the Mac can do this unplugged and get all day battery. So I feel like the value is relative. I spent about $3,400 on my MacBook Pro(16” Max w/32GB) BUT it saved me from having to spend $2,000 on a workstation plus some more money on a laptop bc I still needed something mobile (I’m often away from my desk). I also don’t deal well with having work split across multiple devices. And since I don’t game anymore, the poor gaming experience doesn’t really affect me. My needs are niche but extensive and the MacBook Pro fits them so well that it’s underpriced for me.

[@kingshum6938]

I have used this m2 for 3 months and I had no heating issues unless you are using very demanding application

[@AIC_onyt]

I would love a M2 chip in a laptop, that is in the formfactor of a thinkpad. Imagine how much performance you would have with a beefy cooler and lots of IO for different devices. that would be the ULTIMATE work machine

[@Emiliovstheworld]

I hope they keep the touch bar for the refresh. It’s super handy when color grading.

[@Hhhhhh-sz9ud]

If the fn key still existed in addition to it I think the Touch Bar would’ve been a lot better received

[@bfapple]

It's not on the MacBook Air.

[@Emiliovstheworld]

@@bfapple it’s on the 13 inch M1 MacBook Pro. And I just checked it’s also just got released on the on the M2.

[@bfapple]

@@Emiliovstheworld But this video is about the Air - so you can see why I’ve misunderstood.

[@Emiliovstheworld]

@@bfapple no I gotcha, my comment should have been more specific.

[@somename8831]

The Air is a fancy machine for browsing the internet and playing videos. What should be tested is the performance while doing that. Does it get hot while playing a normal video? Can it play high resolution with hardware and so on.

[@Darthwriter]

I've been using my M2 base model Air since the first day it was available. I use Office, Scrivener, Chrome and N-Able Take Control to dial into customer computers. It's rarely gotten more than warm. In fact, it only gets even a little warm feeling when it's doing OS updates. (I'm also running the Ventura beta.) Oh, and also, I do not notice any speed decrease using the single 256GB SSD. I previously had the 14" Pro and the only thing I notice that is all that different besides the size and weight is the screen is not as nice as the Pro. Not bad, just not as crisp with less deep blacks. Still nice though.

[@kinslayer202]

@G Money Right? Like Linus said a lot of people will buy this and use it as a glorified chromebook

[@Darthwriter]

For those saying it’s a glorified Chromebook or that I’m somehow surprised it doesn’t throttle… no! I’m not surprised because I’m using the MacBook AIR for the tasks it was designed for. It’s not designed nor cooked to do “pro” things because, you know, they actually make MacBook PROS that are designed and cooled for that. I’m saying all this discussion about throttling is stupid because it does NOT throttle when using for everyday mostly simple tasks that the Air was designed for. And for the record, Chromebooks suck (in my opinion) and I absolutely do more on than those even simpler devices were designed for. This is a great Mac for Mac users that like the Mac ecosystem but don’t need to do video and sound editing and design. (And if I did, this would actually still do it but not as fast as a Pro.)

[@oldlavygenes]

@@Darthwriter I'm a very poor person so I have to be wise with my money. If I were in your position, I would've bought a cheap used Macbook instead of a brand new one considering you're using it for such light tasks. But it's your money, you do with it as you wish.

[@oldlavygenes]

@@username8644 The thing that's always been the deal breaker for me is Windows. I'm much more productive in Mac OS. That's why I'd rather buy an older Mac than a new Windows laptop.

[@drfoto2673]

@@oldlavygenes Granted it's been a while since I bought a used macbook but if you are on a tight budget and going for light workloads that is not a bad option really. I decided to splurge on a new M2 air with 16 and 512 gigs because my 2013 macbook air is now starting to show signs of wear and the battery only lasts for about 2 hours. But that's an almost 10 year old machine at this point and if you have the charger connected it's still fully workable for light workloads, heck I even do some beginner blender modeling with it and as long as you keep working in evee or just do the base modeling and don't try to review shaders and lighting it will still work. I actually bought myself a powerful gaming laptop but I had to sell it after a year because I found myself dreading using it. Part of my reason for using macbooks and why I especially like the air is that it's silent when I want it to be, it feels good to use and handles great. Mag safe is the superior charging port and you can't convince me otherwise. And now if I'm going to do a prolonged heavy workload on the M2 air, well I can just stick it on a cheapo laptop cooling pad for airflow if the heat becomes too much. Honestly I would love to see some performance testing with that in mind on these computers.

[@iFix.]

And this is why i think we should move away from stress tests to appraise the usability of computers, while I see the value of benchmarks for some cases and I appreciate the data the "real world" usage data is just as important if not more than what happens when you hit a cpu/gpu with a constant 100% load since that is something that most users will never face. While "M2 chip throttles instantly" headline looks nice it may drive users away from what is the perfect device for 99.9% of people looking at it, and it isn't exclusive to apple products it happens with Intel processors or samsung phones for example.

[@C0deH0wler]

You would be paying like 3x the price to do 'real world' stuff, in that case. Retail staff would never say "Yes, it has drawbacks in heavy applications. But it has been marketed by apple to do everyday tasks extremely well! Look!"

[@alexar4583]

I had the MacBook 2017 since it came out and never had a single issue with heating despite not having a fan system

[@Melchirobin]

I disagree with your take on the ssd since macOS uses memory swap quite a bit because of the low amounts of ram on their entry level products. I feel like a faster ssd will be noticeable in day to day use.

[@Julian-sj5tr]

Either windows or Linux use memory swap to ssd too. Windows aggressively paging it memory to 30GB paging file in everyday app usage (on 8GB machine). Meanwhile Linux just using it a bit.

[@zoovy7252]

how is it noticeable?

[@Melchirobin]

@@zoovy7252 Time it takes to load a webpage you had not used in the past 10 minutes or the time it takes to open a background app. Yes the actual time saved is tenths of seconds but that definitely makes a difference to system responsiveness

[@_GhostMiner]

Ever since the words "no fan" left Steve Job's mouth in the garage apple has been cursed by regularly screwing up their cooling system.

[@sevenfacedsin]

So, I have a 2020 A2251 model, that since I got it had some heat issues, but wasn’t bad. Finally it started getting to 95 degrees Celsius when watching KZbin. Decided it was time to do a tear down and see what was going on. The thermal paste this entire time had an air pocket… surprised it lasted this long. Fixed the thermal paste situation, now I peak at about 63 degrees watching KZbin. I haven’t tried video editing yet, waiting for the TIM to cure, but I am assuming the thermals will be better. Honestly, I wonder how many of these machines have trash TIM applications, or just substandard TIM to begin with.

[@Oxxygen_io]

I did professional work on my Mac book air m1 for 6 month. Then the company gave me a beast MacBook Pro. And honestly what i missed on the air was just dual screen support out of the box. Anything else worked like a charm (16gig ram). But the m2 air seems strange with a smaller heat block.

[@sotonin]

Yeah... i honestly think they gimped the m2 air on purpose. They made a mistake on the m1 air, they made it too freaking good compared to the rest of the line up. They are trying to adjust now, to nudge people away from using m1 air for professional work (it can damn well do it and quite good).

[@animeloveer97]

I mean 16 gb isn't really that crazy the price is just wayyyyyy too much for the performance

[@ElItalianoMotero]

Come on, I have a M1 macbook air with 8GB and I do heavy Final Cut editing without a problem. I have never seen my laptop over eating, it probably throttled but I haven't noticed it. If you are not a professional, you don't need more power than the M1 mac.

[@Akelehimarenge]

And the battery life is insane , no thermal issues so far .

[@karinaguzman4756]

I’m a media production student so the m2 air would be good for me?

[@ffa1bc]

i do livestreams for a living and the mbp m1 was the best thing that ever happened to me. only once it did overheat a bit, but i use macs fan control and i just used the "full blast" setting, and the throttle disappeared. bear in mind that it only throttled with the heat of the sun hitting the mac directly. honestly i never saw the fans go full blast, even while using davinci resolve, obs, photoshop, illustrator and safari, all at once. wish i could upgrade to an m2, but so far i'm very happy with it.

[@ffa1bc]

@@karinaguzman4756 yes. i have an M1 (2020) and edit with davinci resolve and it's a very smooth experience. the rendering times are insane too, since every video editing software is currently optimized for the M1-M2 processors. the battery life doesn't even compare to a windows laptop, it's really impressive.