I’ve taken a few days to reflect on the announcements of WWDC22, regarding the two new MacBooks, with their brand new M2 chip in.
I’ve had my M1 MacBook Air for over a year now. It’s the 8GB Unified Memory/256GB SSD, 8 Core CPU/7 Core GPU base model version, and I literally cannot fault it.
However …. When shiny new Apple products are released, it is difficult not to be tempted to upgrade.
After a number of days of contemplation, including many trips to Apple’s website to configure different models of the new MacBook Air, I just cannot justify buying it.
Due to having the base model of the M1 MacBook Air, I don’t feel that getting the base model of the M2 MacBook Air is enough of an upgrade, to justify spending the money. In the UK, the price of the base model M2 MacBook Air is £1249.99. This is for the binned 8 Core GPU model, with only 8GB RAM and 256GB storage.
For the M2 MacBook Air to be enough of an upgrade for me to justify purchase, an extra £100 will need to be spent on getting the full powered 10 Core GPU M2 chip. Another £200 will need to be spent upgrading the unified memory to 16GB, and another £200 increasing the SSD to 512GB.
Suddenly, the price has rocketed to £1749, which is only £150 shy of the price of the base model 14 inch MacBook Pro, which comes with the 16GB of unified memory and 512GB SSD I want.
For that extra £150, you also get the following, which are not available on the M2 MacBook Air:
- A Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED display with pro-motion, up to 120HZ refresh rate.
- Better speakers.
- More ports, including an SD card slot and HDMI port.
- Thunderbolt 4 ports, allowing multiple external displays to be connected.
- Better bandwidth.
- A faster SSD.
- And last but no means least, a better M1 Pro processor, with 14GPU cores.
THAT IS A LOT EXTRA for £150 more.
I’ve not even included the majorly disappointing M2 13 inch MacBook Pro in my thought process, because it just doesn’t make any sense to me what-so-ever, however, as stated above, I have taken a few days to assess whether I am going to upgrade to the new M2 MacBook Air, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I will not, and I will be keeping my M1 MacBook Air for the time being.
The reasons for this are:
- I do not feel the base model of the M2 MacBook Air justifies a £250 price increase from the base model of the M1 MacBook Air, and let’s be honest, you can pick a base model of the M1 Macbook Air up for £899 these days, pretty easily from numerous places, which makes it a £350 price increase. That’s £350 for a new shape, a MagSafe charger, 0.3 inch extra screen real-estate, a better chip (albeit not massively better), increased bandwidth, and some full sized function keys.
- I feel that the M2 MacBook Air becomes worse value for money, the more you spec it up. As mentioned above, if you spec it up to 16GB Unified Memory and 512GB SSD, you’re getting very close to the 14 inch MacBook Pro, which is a much superior machine.
- I feel that the M1 MacBook Air base model and the 14 Inch MacBook Pro base model are the two MacBooks in the line ups that offer the best value for money, or ‘bang for the buck’.
So why not upgrade to the 14 inch MacBook Pro base model? ….. Well because of the reason I mentioned at the start of this story, when shiny new Apple products are released, it is difficult not to be tempted to upgrade, so I’m going to wait for the new 14 inch MacBook Pro base model, with the M2 Pro chip in.
I’m happy to wait for this to be released, because my M1 MacBook Air is still a wonderful machine!
