MacBook Pro 2021 vs MacBook Air M1 - SPEND or SAVE?

this video is brought to you by cleanmymacs i am here to answer the age-old question macbook air or macbook pro but this year with apple's product releases that answer is more complicated than it's ever been which is why i want to make a video that matches its energy so yeah in this video we're going to be discussing product design portability performance and ultimately productivity with regard to these laptops in order to help you decide which one is right for you all right first up let's talk about some general hardware aspects and product design features of these laptops first and foremost we have to address weight and thickness and it's important here because the macbook air is called air for a reason it's under three pounds it's very slim and trim and it tapers very nicely to your wrist if you're typing especially in your lap whereas the macbook pro 14 inch and 16 inch is much thicker and heavier um this comes in at 3.5 pounds and up especially if you get the 16 inch and yeah it's just thicker and for typing for example you do have a little bit more elevation for your wrist so that is something you need to consider here this is a lot thicker and heavier for a reason and this is a lot thinner and lighter as the name suggests the port situation with these devices is also very different with the macbook air you just get two usb-c ports for data display and power and a headphone jack as well whereas with the macbook pro you get those ports and more including an additional usbc port an hdmi port sd card reader and the magsafe power connector which is really really nice because if somebody decides to trip on your charging cable here with the macbook air in previous macbook pros if it's plugged into a usbc port your laptop is going down with the cable that's tripped whereas with the magsafe power connector it's magnetic so not only are you saving a i o port for data or display or something else um this also just rips out like that so your laptop won't go down with the person that you know trips over your cable here and also i have to mention the sd card a reader is so so nice if you are somebody that writes data and needs to read data from sd cards here it's as simple as plugging it in i mean like a lot of laptops have this feature but apple brought it back and it's a huge deal especially if you are a creative you know professional taking photos or videos here the hdmi port is also really nice if you want to plug into displays and projectors and such tvs as well um so yeah definitely something to consider here also um the displays are definitely different here and i'll try to boil this down as much as i can basically you get a just more bare bones display here it's bright enough for casual tasks you have bezels here it has enough screen refresh rate to you know be okay i mean 60 hertz is the standard and this still has that here whereas the macbook pros display has slimmer bezels you do get a notch which i'll address in a minute here but it is significantly brighter in everyday situations and also if you edit hdr content or work with it it gets extremely bright in those conditions although that's you know more rare um you also get a higher refresh rate just like you do with the ipad pro which is you know a nice thing but it also just makes your everyday experience a little bit more smooth so if you like that on the iphone 13 pro or the ipad pro if you own one this is definitely a consideration as well um as for the notch here this has to do with the camera on previous gen macbook airs and pros you got a potato quality just trash camera but here um this notch accommodates a 1080p camera which is better for you know video chatting and also a photo booth than just taking pictures and videos here it's not a reason to upgrade but it's definitely a nice addition here and the notch also brings another interesting display aspect here um with regard to the menu bar if i can open this up here so when you are full screen in apps like safari for example or really any app um normally with a previous gen macbook pro if you go to the menu bar it sort of has to push down the window to accommodate that here um because you have more screen real estate the menu bar sort of lives at the size of the notch so when you hover your mouse over here the window doesn't change but you can you can access the menu items so even though with the 14 inch you're not getting a ton more screen real estate that definitely just makes a difference i would say not a huge difference um but it's a nice addition also too here we're not going to talk about size but having a 16 inch display you know offers an even better productivity experience but again that's a whole you know portion of this video here um another thing i want to talk about is the keyboard situation here and the macbook air and new macbook pro surprisingly have a pretty similar situation because they both have the magic keyboard with a function row no touch bar in sight which i honestly prefer here the only difference is is that the function row of keys here is bigger and the touch id key is a bit bigger as well making them easier to press i do enjoy that you also of course get this sort of blacked out paint job which is nice but again not a reason to upgrade or anything also too i will make a note the track pads are the same size at least with the 14 and 13 inch that we have here so there's no difference there as well as no difference in the tactility and typing experience here again i will say though as i said in the sort of design aspect part of this video um the fact that you have slimmer or slimmer body here with the macbook air makes it easier to type on your lap and just on a table here you have more elevation here which does kind of cut into your wrists a little more i will say here and last up i want to talk about speaker quality i'm with the macbook air you do get good speaker quality here um decent sound decent mids highs bass all of that more than good enough for casual stuff like you know watching netflix or youtube but if you're doing a little more intensive stuff with audio or you just want better you know speakers the macbook pro even at the 14 inch the 16 inch has better speakers has more bassy just rich sound in general here so ultimately while you are getting more with the macbook pro the drawback is it is thicker and heavier however with the macbook air sure it's more bare bones and ultimately less powerful as i will touch on later in this video it's really nice to handle it's super lightweight and we'll talk more about this with regard to portability next up let's touch on portability here and literally as i just said the macbook pro especially if you have a 16 inch variant is thicker and heavier which may be better suited to be transported in a backpack that sentence was overly complicated for no reason however the macbook air as i said as well is lighter and is better honestly suited to fit and a smaller bag or can do that you know so if you're somebody who wants to pack light or have one of these type you know business bags you can do that a little more easily without feeling like you're carrying a hand weight around although i probably need to but yeah let's go outside here and kind of check out how these are on the go if you will once again this video is brought to you by cleanmymacx and for those of you forking out a lot of cash for a shiny new mac keeping it running its absolute best is definitely a priority with cleanmymagx you have access to 30 plus tools that help you solve the most common mac issues for starters with the optimization feature you can see exactly what your mac is doing and kill tasks with an interface that's way more straightforward than apple's built-in activity monitor with malware removal you can scan your mac for adware cryptocurrency miners and malware as well as instantly remove them if found space lens is another great feature that allows you to see what files are taking up the most space on your computer very helpful when you don't want to manually snoop through finder and finally with smart scan you can easily examine and rid of unnecessary system log files in user cache that slow your mac down click my link in the video description to download a free trial of the app if you're interested so yeah as i've been saying because the macbook air is slimmer and trimmer it's more of a spontaneous device that you can just pull out of a bag or a backpack and you know just put on your lap very comfortably here like this is totally fine like i could work like this if i really wanted to whereas with the macbook pro even though you could technically do the same it's not as comfortable and you might have to plug in due to some battery performance um issues or just rather limitations which i'll touch on later in this video here but yeah when you're pulling out a macbook pro specifically a 16 inch what you can use it on your lap it's definitely more comfortable to use it at a table for example any kind of table you want you know this is a picnic table but yeah i tend to use it more like this plugged in especially if i'm doing anything intensive but yeah that's sort of the usage case difference here on the go the macbook air is a lot more spontaneous you can just pull it out whenever you want if i can honestly get to it here there we go great on the lap once again but the macbook pro is more of a you know device used on a surface it just feels better that way and yeah if you have a bigger device it makes even more sense to do that all right next up i want to talk about performance between these two laptops and to make it simple for you essentially the macbook pro is the more powerful device but it gets lesser battery life especially in the 14 inch model whereas the macbook air is a battery life champion but it has lesser power and that's not to say the m1 chip isn't very capable but if you're doing intensive tasks the m1 pro and up is going to treat you a little better and give you a little more head room um also too i want to touch on some spec differences here for your reference the macbook air is configurable up to 16 gigs of ram and 2 terabytes of storage whereas the macbook pro is configurable up to a better processor 64 gigs of memory and 8 terabytes of storage so essentially you're getting you know four times the amount of i guess you know ram and also storage and increased performance i don't know if it's four times but it might be um i think with regard to gpu it would be because the m1 has a core gpu and the m1 max is a 32 core gpu so upwards of 4x the performance there so um what does this mean to you this is all a bunch of numbers you know i'm not going to show you geekbench scores or anything i want to just give you sort of a real-world explanation as to what you can expect with the m1 even the seven core model it's amazing for emails you know document typing media consumption casual tasks and stuff even some light photo editing here here's a photoshop composition with multiple layers of high resolution you know images we also have a final cut project here albeit with 720p and 1080p video but it's handling it this macbook is handling it very well even with eight gigs of ram and seven core you know gpu um this is fine this is a more casual edit you know so if you are a bit of a creative you know not necessarily a professional this is good for you and of course for a lot of more casual tasks this is perfect um however if you are doing more intensive stuff like i do even with youtube and of course i do freelance stuff as well or i'm trying to you know do some more experimental type content possibly with 8k footage in the future you know also if you do advanced you know development 3d rendering anything that involves a lot of gpu and cpu horsepower the macbook pro 14-inch 16-inch with m1 pro or up to m1 max is going to be great because it offers you a lot of headroom and you might not use all of this horsepower at once but it gives you the creative freedom to just do something without having to worry about your laptop catching up and with the m1 chip that's definitely the case i used a 13-inch macbook pro for a while editing everything and i would regularly hit that performance threshold but with something like this and i have a maxed out version with 64 gigs of ram and all that you don't necessarily need that but in my experience it offers you know a ton of headroom to where i really don't run into any performance issues whatsoever but you have to know if you need this you know if you are a more casual user like i said doing emails business type stuff you don't need this but if you are doing anything above casual you know creative you know professional type work and if you are creative professional time is money and you're going to want to have at least the m1 pro with 16 gigs of ram if not more you know and also more storage on the inside as well and last up here let's talk about productivity or more specifically using these as laptops of course you can attach these two displays but what's the point of having a laptop if you can't use it on the go and in the case of the macbook air it's super lightweight and refreshing to have in your lap here and it's perfect for single tasks and some split screen multitasking as you can see here in safari for example you definitely have enough room to do that and i've used this form factor for years for school for example and have been very very comfortable in the case of the macbook pro it's definitely less comfortable to have in your lap and i may have said this already but even though even though the display is bigger here and you do get the advantage of having the menu bar up here the screen size is not big enough at least with the 14 inch to make a huge difference in terms of productivity if i do split screen multitasking over here for example i mean sure there's like an extra 0.7 inches but it doesn't make too much of a difference here this is still a pretty i wouldn't say small laptop but smaller laptop at least compared to the 16 inch which i also have i use this primarily for my work and though this thing is a behemoth i don't know even though it's uncomfortable at least the screen size sort of justifies itself you know what i mean because you just get so much more screen real estate the additional two inches does make a difference as such as that sounds but um what i'm getting at here is if you use applications that have interfaces where you have to have multiple menus open and also too if you just want to have more of a window for productivity here i can look up news and i don't know apple news at the same time just so i can show you what split screen multitasking looks like as you can see here you have two really big windows to work on which is really really great so beyond just creative work of course which benefits from a larger display if you're just a big productivity head and you want to make sure you have enough space to do research and read and write and whatever you're doing buying the 16 inch just for that reason isn't the worst idea even if you're not going to use the m1 pro um the fact that you can buy the m1 pro with 5 12 gigs of storage um for 2500 which is the same cost as the mid tier 14 inch is nice it's a great value again if you want that big display but again here even though the macbook pro is a great device for productivity specifically the um 16 inch you can't beat this sort of portability and in lap feel of the macbook air it's just really really great for writing i love this thing for school and such and the display is definitely big enough it's not you know bezel-less or notched or whatever you know whatever makes the macbook pro nicer but again here if i'm gonna have a smaller laptop in my lap i'd rather have this one and again if i'm gonna have a macbook pro in my lap honestly i'd rather justify once again the more uncomfortable thicker body with a bigger display that i actively benefit from especially when i bring my work home or work on the couch just like this so what have we learned here today well if you can take advantage of the macbook pro models 14 inch or 16 inch even though they are expensive they are worth it so i mean i'm somebody who can and i am absolutely positively satisfied with my purchase wouldn't want a different machine however for most intents and purposes for more casual tasks the macbook air with the m1 chip even the baseline is a killer deal and if you can get one of these for 900 or less i definitely would this holiday season so uh yeah this is the laptop for most people and even though it doesn't have all the bells and whistles it's i think the best value mac on the market right now and that about wraps things up here i hope this video was helpful check out my link to clean my mac x in the video description it helps to keep your mac running at its maximum potential leave a like comment if you have any questions suggestions or opinions and of course subscribe for more content like this and as always i'm noah and i will catch you all in the next one

Channel: Noah Herman

Views: 113,862

Keywords: MacBook Pro 2021, MacBook Pro 2021 review, MacBook pro 2021 vs MacBook air, MacBook Pro vs MacBook air, MacBook Air M1 vs MacBook Pro M1 pro, MacBook Air vs MacBook pro, MacBook Air M1 review

Id: jQkQXCz7O6I

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021