Depends heavily on the workload. A lot of tasks can use the newer accelerators in the M1/M2 over what was in 10th gen Intel. The higher end Intel models also had the issue of running hot and stuttering in practice which really sucked, as underclock/undervolt would have made the experience much better even at the cost of 5% performance on all-out workloads.
That doesn't get into the battery life. My M1 air has mostly been used on road trips to check email, or do light reading. No video or work. I can get pretty much a full 4-6 day trip on a full charge just doing email/reading in the evening a couple hours a night. This has been pretty fantastic imo. Never had any other device that could achieve that before.
I've used M1 Max and M2 Pro for work, and both are fantastic... x86_64 docker used to be a pretty big issue for some images, but it's been great outside of that. The drive I/O is outstanding, and can build large web/node apps faster than my 5950X desktop with a 980 pro drive.
Biggest down sides come down to the money sink if you want/need more storage or memory in the box. It's WAY overpriced for what it is, and you might be better served with a DIY desktop or framework laptop. There are also some workloads that are a true miss. Not to mention gaming as an entire use case that is pretty poor. Not to mention the UX is rather dated at this point, and I really wish some of the hotkeys were more aligned with Windows and Linux. Muscle memory is a pain when you jump back and forth.
tracker1|2 years ago
That doesn't get into the battery life. My M1 air has mostly been used on road trips to check email, or do light reading. No video or work. I can get pretty much a full 4-6 day trip on a full charge just doing email/reading in the evening a couple hours a night. This has been pretty fantastic imo. Never had any other device that could achieve that before.
I've used M1 Max and M2 Pro for work, and both are fantastic... x86_64 docker used to be a pretty big issue for some images, but it's been great outside of that. The drive I/O is outstanding, and can build large web/node apps faster than my 5950X desktop with a 980 pro drive.
Biggest down sides come down to the money sink if you want/need more storage or memory in the box. It's WAY overpriced for what it is, and you might be better served with a DIY desktop or framework laptop. There are also some workloads that are a true miss. Not to mention gaming as an entire use case that is pretty poor. Not to mention the UX is rather dated at this point, and I really wish some of the hotkeys were more aligned with Windows and Linux. Muscle memory is a pain when you jump back and forth.
nextos|2 years ago
Airs don't even need a fan.
hgsgm|2 years ago