About to buy a Macbook Air or Pro. Any imminent refresh that I should know about?
- Thread starter Hades
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2025 models came out in the last month or so.
Get an M4 Mac air, job done, they are amazing bits of kit.
Caporegime
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The M4 CPU are very recent, it will be the norm for at least 9 months.
What will she be using it for? If it's not anything more demanding than basic photo editing then I would wholly recommend one of the new M4 Airs.
The Pro's have their uses but are for more power hungry users and those that really want the 120hz display. If high refresh rate is not a priority then definitely go for an Air.
Totally agree the base model M4 Macbook Air will comfortably see them through for the next 5+ years.
I’ve stopped using my desktop for editing video, the m4 air is perfectly capable of managing 100gb projects of multiple 4k50fps 10-bit streams of really difficult longGOP codec video. Now I can sit on the sofa and do my editing. On a fanless laptop…it’s wild how good they are.
https://www.krcs.co.uk/ have good pricing and you can claim education discount if your daughter is studying.
Sorry to hijack thread. I’ve had it with this iPad Pro, it’s just useless for editing RAW files as overheats and dims the screen.
Is there anything I should know before buying a 16”” MBP. It looks like you can get them cheaper elsewhere rather than with Apple directly. Any cashback offers or anything not obvious?
I don’t really care if the MBP is due a refresh soon as I am 99% sure they will put prices up quite a bit after reading through their earnings results yesterday.
Is there anything I should know before buying a 16”” MBP. It looks like you can get them cheaper elsewhere rather than with Apple directly. Any cashback offers or anything not obvious?
I don’t really care if the MBP is due a refresh soon as I am 99% sure they will put prices up quite a bit after reading through their earnings results yesterday.
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And even then the generational improvements between M series chips has been incremental at best. I finally changed from M1 Pro to M4 Pro and if I’m being honest I probably didn’t even need to do that but it felt like a worthwhile time to do it.
The step up from 16gb to 24gb unified memory and 512gb to 1tb were likely larger upgrades for me than the chip itself.
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Soldato
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I have a m1 MacBook Pro (2021) I think, I often wonder what the main differences are between the pro and air, apart from the obvious weight difference.
I might opt for an air next time as I don’t do anything heavy on the pro, I just use it to browse, shopping, check emails and such.
Think the pro is overkill for me.
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Physically - more ports, better screen, bigger screen, active fan for cooling which means it can hold a sustained load longer. Supports more external monitors. SD card slot and HDMI out. More storage as standard
Air - The opposite of that. But the screen is still very nice. Lighter, thinner.
Day to day, the Air all day long for general tasks. I would recommend you and the vast majority of users go for the Air.
You can either upgrade the internal storage or get something external like this where I have put a 1TB nvme SSD inside. It has full size HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack, power pass through, adds another USB port and SD card slot. It even has Magsafe. Which cost about £60 total gives you 1TB storage over the £200 for extra 256G from apple and solves all the shortcoming except for the better screen (and the extra external monitor support....but this is going to affect the 0.1% of people).
I only get it out whenever I need to use it. Basically install my Steam games on there and my Lightroom library. But if I am not edition photos of gaming, i don't need to use it and the system won't fetch for it.
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I've been thinking about the Air or Pro and for me I'm leaning towards Pro mostly because of the higher refresh rate screen. I use an M1 Pro at work and going to a 60Hz screen is a bit jarring, although the Air still has a subjectively good display.
Caporegime
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As my Macbook is my 2nd machine, I couldn't justify the extra cost. Wish the screen is the same but it is still really good.
p.s. the Midnight colour looks different to the eye all the time and shows up oils from the hand horribly. When it's clean it looks amazing! Also, most people don't even know it is a Macbook. My brother in law saw it last month and he didn't know they made this colour and he is a Mac user.
Soldato
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Physically - more ports, better screen, bigger screen, active fan for cooling which means it can hold a sustained load longer. Supports more external monitors. SD card slot and HDMI out. More storage as standard
Air - The opposite of that. But the screen is still very nice. Lighter, thinner.
Day to day, the Air all day long for general tasks. I would recommend you and the vast majority of users go for the Air.
You can either upgrade the internal storage or get something external like this where I have put a 1TB nvme SSD inside. It has full size HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack, power pass through, adds another USB port and SD card slot. It even has Magsafe. Which cost about £60 total gives you 1TB storage over the £200 for extra 256G from apple and solves all the shortcoming except for the better screen (and the extra external monitor support....but this is going to affect the 0.1% of people).
I only get it out whenever I need to use it. Basically install my Steam games on there and my Lightroom library. But if I am not edition photos of gaming, i don't need to use it and the system won't fetch for it.
Great information, thanks. Yeah I think the air is best for me, I will likely wait until next year anyway, was just curious really on main differences.
Caporegime
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I got my M3 Air there this March just gone, £840 for 512/24G of RAM. Last gen model gets sold off cheap, this spec was a £600 upgrade so it was like £1400 (as Air was £999 as M3 base model had only 8G of RAM), but even the current line up M4 with this combination would be £1299.
So, I would also look at last year's model unless you absolutely have to have the latest. As said before, even the M1 Macs still holds up today 5 years later. I am using one right now.
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