Who edits with a Macbook Air?

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AstonSenna

AstonSenna

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I have a 2015 15" MBP and it's mostly fine on Lightroom and editing 25MB raw files. Exports take a little extra time, so does building previews and even launching lightroom. That sucker likes to spin up its fans and will have some glitchiness as it goes into tornado mode.

I did buy a 14" M2 Pro model kitted out pretty well , used from B&H, and their used computers have a 30 day return window (which I'm still in), and now Apple just released the 15" Air, having a bit of buyer's remorse. The 14" I've only used a couple times, and going from the 15" screen to the 14" screen was more noticeable than I thought, paired with the compact chassis which makes the screen almost feel smaller than it is, I think the computer is just maybe too small now that I'm used to having that big 15" screen. Also, I strongly feel the 14 is just plain overkill for me, i'm not rendering 3D models and stuff, or gaming. Just lightroom, photoshop, and some video editing here and there.

So, would love to ask those who have M2 or M1 macbook airs, how they like them for editing as a photographer and occasional videographer, if they get too hot and uncomfortable when editing (I will deal with hundreds of photos at a time, and exporting the same amount) and start to throttle and lag, or if they behave just fine for long periods of lightroom use. Same with light video stuff. You know, more normal stuff than those torture tests they do on YouTube. Ideal specs for any device would be a 1tb 16gb model.

Thanks!
 
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AstonSenna said:
I have a 2015 15" MBP and it's mostly fine on Lightroom and editing 25MB raw files. Exports take a little extra time, so does building previews and even launching lightroom. That sucker likes to spin up its fans and will have some glitchiness as it goes into tornado mode.

I did buy a 14" M2 Pro model kitted out pretty well , used from B&H, and their used computers have a 30 day return window (which I'm still in), and now Apple just released the 15" Air, having a bit of buyer's remorse. The 14" I've only used a couple times, and going from the 15" screen to the 14" screen was more noticeable than I thought, paired with the compact chassis which makes the screen almost feel smaller than it is, I think the computer is just maybe too small now that I'm used to having that big 15" screen. Also, I strongly feel the 14 is just plain overkill for me, i'm not rendering 3D models and stuff, or gaming. Just lightroom, photoshop, and some video editing here and there.

So, would love to ask those who have M2 or M1 macbook airs, how they like them for editing as a photographer and occasional videographer, if they get too hot and uncomfortable when editing (I will deal with hundreds of photos at a time, and exporting the same amount) and start to throttle and lag, or if they behave just fine for long periods of lightroom use. Same with light video stuff. You know, more normal stuff than those torture tests they do on YouTube. Ideal specs for any device would be a 1tb 16gb model.

Thanks!
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I’ve played with editing on my wife’s M1 Air and while it works…the performance is not as good as my M1 Pro MBP with 32GB in it…and the smaller screen size makes using LR hard based on pixel dimensions of the screen. I haven’t seen any good comparisons of the M1 and M2…but Apple claims the M2 is 20% faster and based on previous things I’ve read that seems to be a bit of a stretch…and my guess is that a base M2 isn’t going to be as fast as an M1 Pro with more RAM. The screen on the 15 M2 Air is bigger than the M1 Air…but is still smaller in pixels than the 14 MBP, not as bright, and lower quality overall…so I would still recommend an M1Pro MBP over the air and an M2 Pro 14 is going to be faster than an M1 Pro MBP. Add in more ports and only 9.2 pounds heavier and I think the MBP performance and screen are enough to make it the choice. That said…I could use her 13 Air for processing on travel if I had to…but I wouldn’t like it.
 
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Up until last December I was happily editing on a 2013 Macbook Air. It did get warm (or hot), naturally, and took its time on occasion (you could take a short vacation while it was importing), but was otherwise fine. I then updated to a Macbook Air M2 with 24 gb ram...races through everything, never gets even vaguely warm, imports and exports at the speed of light and is an absolute joy to use. There is always something better/faster and it obviously depends upon whether you are pro or amateur, whether you consider anything a nano second slower to be a 'snail' or whether your patience is tested whenever a task is not completed instantaneously. In other words, Macbook Air M2 is fine for me so far even with multiple apps/progs open.
 
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For a photo trip to Botswana it would be desirable to take a laptop with you for image processing and image review. I don't own a laptop and would have to buy another one. For image processing and viewing at home I use a Mac Studio and a 27" monitor and edit in LCR. A laptop was never an issue. Now I will probably get a laptop after all. I am thinking of a MacBook Air 13", M2 , 8-core, 10 GPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. This is not too heavy, because my luggage, including hand luggage, must not weigh more than 20 kg.
Thanks for any suggestions.
 
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I have a MacBook air but only use it on trips, the screen is so small it's hard to really know what I'm seeing and I did not get a large working memory as I only use it on trips for backing up the images to an external hard drive. I use my mac studio at home. When I got an SSD external drive for travel that speeded up downloading a lot, really quick now on the MacBook air. I'm thinking of purchasing a laptop with a larger screen for travel in the future.
 
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Viathelens said:
I have a MacBook air but only use it on trips, the screen is so small it's hard to really know what I'm seeing and I did not get a large working memory as I only use it on trips for backing up the images to an external hard drive. I use my mac studio at home. When I got an SSD external drive for travel that speeded up downloading a lot, really quick now on the MacBook air. I'm thinking of purchasing a laptop with a larger screen for travel in the future.
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Sounds like the new 15" macbook air is the right laptop for you then.
When you go from your current Air (assuming it's a newer M1 or M2 Air model) when traveling and using it for photos, is the Mac Studio that much faster when doing normal ingest and editing? Or is it mostly imperceivable.
 
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Nerja Rob said:
Up until last December I was happily editing on a 2013 Macbook Air. It did get warm (or hot), naturally, and took its time on occasion (you could take a short vacation while it was importing), but was otherwise fine. I then updated to a Macbook Air M2 with 24 gb ram...races through everything, never gets even vaguely warm, imports and exports at the speed of light and is an absolute joy to use. There is always something better/faster and it obviously depends upon whether you are pro or amateur, whether you consider anything a nano second slower to be a 'snail' or whether your patience is tested whenever a task is not completed instantaneously. In other words, Macbook Air M2 is fine for me so far even with multiple apps/progs open.
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That's great feedback, thank you. I'm going to the store later today and brining my old 15" brick to see how size comparisons are with the new 15" Air.
 
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AstonSenna said:
Sounds like the new 15" macbook air is the right laptop for you then.
When you go from your current Air (assuming it's a newer M1 or M2 Air model) when traveling and using it for photos, is the Mac Studio that much faster when doing normal ingest and editing? Or is it mostly imperceivable.
Click to expand...
A lot faster....but it also has a lot more operating memory.
 
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AstonSenna said:
Sounds like the new 15" macbook air is the right laptop for you then.
When you go from your current Air (assuming it's a newer M1 or M2 Air model) when traveling and using it for photos, is the Mac Studio that much faster when doing normal ingest and editing? Or is it mostly imperceivable.
Click to expand...
The new 15" MacBook Air is 0.6 pounds heavier than the 14" one. Up until a month ago I was using an almost 10 year old 11" MacBook Air which is quite a bit lighter than the 14" on trips just to transfer photos to an external hard drive and to check email, search the web etc. I loved that computer for its light weight but definitely couldn't process the large files from my Z8/9. So a few weeks ago when there was a sale bought the 14" MacBook Air (the M2 chip but only 8GB and 512GB hard drive), trying to keep its weight down (have a 5TB external LaCie Rugged hard drive which weighs about the same as my 11" MacBook Air). Can process photos on the 14" MacBook Air but wouldn't want to do it full time (and it is much faster for transferring then my old 11" one). When I saw the 15" announcement was a bit feeling taken but when compared the weight, decided the 14" was still the best for me. And the 14" one that I bought is still being sold for more than what I paid.
 
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