Which MacBook Should You Buy? (Summer 2022)

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at which MacBook you should buy.

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Now if you're looking to buy a new Mac soon it's important to know the different models that are available. In the last video I talked about the desktop Macs. The Mac Mini, iMac, and Mac Studio. In this video I'm going to talk about the MacBook models. It's a pretty big difference between whether you want a portable or a desktop. So I'm going to assume if you're watching this that you're interested in a portable Mac. So, like with the desktop there are really three main models that you can consider. There's the MacBook Air, the 14 inch MacBook Pro, and the 16 inch MacBook Pro. Yes, there is another MacBook Pro and I'll talk about that later. 

Let's start with the MacBook Air. This is the low-end model. It's the most consumer friendly one. The lowest price. It also has the least number of features. It's starts off at a very reasonable price of $1200. The problem with the $1200 model is that is comes with a very small hard drive. I always warn people against getting the smallest drive. 256 GB is just too small for almost anybody. Unless you don't use any photos. Don't do any video work. Nothing. You just use the web and email. Most people are going to want more than this. But it is the cheapest portable Mac you can get and it's a pretty decent machine. It's got the M2 processor in it. But even with the M1 processor it still was pretty powerful and a base model Mac with a M1 or M2 shouldn't be seen as kind of low-end or a toy or just for like a home user. This is something that's actually pretty powerful. You can do a lot of things with it. But I do recommend at least going one step up to get a bigger drive. 

So if we look at the upgraded M2 we get the same amount of memory and a 1TB drive. Then the price jumps to $1700. In addition to the larger drive, which is going to be much better for just about any use, you are going to get a slightly better M2 processor. There's actually two levels of the base M2 processor. One of them has fewer GPU's than the other. So you're actually getting a better processor and a bigger drive here. 

Now I know a lot of people say getting 8GB is a mistake. It's too small. But I've been using 8GB M1 MacBook Pro for awhile now. I have thoroughly tested it using a variety of software. Stuff like Final Cut Pro. and ScreenFlow and numbers with complex spreadsheets and all of that and it works really well. Maybe it wouldn't work so well if you fill up the hard drive completely so you don't have that much space and you try to do, you know, fifteen different things at once. Twenty Chrome tabs open with complex pages and all of that but if you use it with reasonable expectations of using a few apps at the same time, getting things done, maybe not expecting to run several big powerful apps at the same time, then 8GB is fine. macOS actually manages memory very well. 

Now saving money isn't the only reason to get a MacBook Air. It's also the thinest, the lightest, and has a really good look to it. So you may want to get a MacBook Air even if you can afford more. In that case look at getting a high-end upgraded version. It's the same M2 processor but 16GB of ram, and get a 2GB drive.The price is $2300 for this but it's a pretty powerful lightweight easy to bring with you machine. 

So let's move on to the MacBook Pros. There are essentially two models of MacBook Pro that vary mostly because of the screen. You've got a 14" screen and a 16" screen. The advantage of the 14" screen is it's still a pretty lightweight machine. It's only a little bit heavier than the MacBook Air, in reality, whereas the 16" model is definitely heavier, it's definitely bigger and it's going to be harder to carry around but it has more screen space, of course. So you're really need to figure out what you want. Because if you want a MacBook Pro, but you want to keep it light, then the 14" is for you. If you want big screen space and you don't mind the extra weight then 16" is for you. 

Now the base model is $2000. It comes with a M1 Pro processor in it which of course is more powerful than the M1 but also you have to remember it's more powerful than the M2 processor as well. It comes with a base of 16 GB of ram so you're getting more memory there and you also get a 512GB SSD which I'm still going to warn against. I think it's still too small especially if you're not considering the Air but you're considering getting a MacBook Pro then 512GB is probably too little. You want to go to at least 1TB. So I would go to the reasonable one which is the  same model, same everything except a 1TB drive for a little bit more. Because if you're getting a MacBook Pro you want to have the drive space to do what you need to do. 

Now if you want to go high-end you can. You can go to the M1 Max processor which is even more powerful than the M1 Pro and, of course, leaves the M1 and the M2 base CPU's in the dust. Now this one comes with 32GB of ram, that's the minimum with the M1 Max and I'm suggesting getting at least a 2 TB drive with it. But you can see the price is up there at $3500 for this one. 

Now let's take a look at the 16" models. The only reason to go and get the low-end 16" model is if screen size is the most important thing to you. Maybe you edit graphics, for instance, and you need a lot of screen real estate. So getting the M1 Pro model, 16 GB of ram, the small drive really too small if you're getting this type of Mac, is going to run $2500. A more reasonable one is $200 more going with the 1TB drive. Now you have a pretty decent machine that a lot of professionals could use. At this point if you're doing video editing it's a really good machine. The 16" screen gives you the ability to see all of the different parts of Final Cut Pro or whatever software you're using and the 1TB drive gives you the space to do what you want. But if you want to go higher end than that then you want to go to the upgraded 16" model which has the M1 Max processor, 32GB of ram, and that is plenty for just about anything, and a 2TB drive. Now, of course, you can go higher on the amount of memory if you really want but just like with all the desktop Macs I want to say that the first thing you should spend money on is more storage. I so often hear from people having trouble because they bought a drive that was too small. They can't have all their files local. It's got to be using the iCloud optimize feature or they have to have external drive which are going to be much slower to access files and of course with MacBooks difficult to bring with. It's much more critical you get a drive bigger enough to hold what you need now but also years from now as you're using larger files and doing more with your Mac. Memory would be next. More memory is better but, as I said before, Macs really manage memory well and you can do with smaller memory as long as you don't run out of storage space. 

Now what about the 13" MacBook Pro. That just got a new version with a M2 processor in it. Well, the main advantages of a 13" MacBook Pro over a MacBook Air are two things. One is there are fans in the MacBook Pro. Now the advantage of fans is that you keep the processor cooler. You have this powerful M2 processor in it. But it, of course, is not going to work as well if it gets hot. Fans will keep it cooler. There are no fans in the MacBook Air. The only thing is that with my M1 MacBook Pro I got it because of the fans and I can rarely ever get the fans to go on. As a matter of fact the only times I've ever gotten the fans to go on is when I purposely tried to do it by running lots of complex calculations or rendering of really complex videos while doing other things as well. So it hasn't been an issue like I thought. Also the 13" MacBook Pro has the Touch Bar. Apple got rid of the Touch Bar on the higher end MacBook Pros and the lower end MacBook Air so what's it doing on this model. Well, it's probably there because they picked up the design of the previous MacBook Pro. I still don't see a future for the Touch Bar. If you really love the Touch Bar and you want to get what might be the last Mac model with that on it then maybe the 13" MacBook Pro is for you. But in general the Touch Bar gets mixed reviews and it has no future. So I'm not really sure why the 13" MacBook Pro exists. It seems like if you want a MacBook Pro get the 14" MacBook Pro and that's your low-end. If you want anything below that you get the MacBook Air. 

So I've made up a chart here so you can see the differences between the models. There are three groups. The MacBook Air, the 14" and then the 16" MacBook Pro. You can see the three different ones that I've speced out for each. So you've got on the low-end that low-end MacBook Air. A more reasonable model. I think in the case of the MacBook Air that the high-end is justified if you really like the form factor. Then you can max it out with 16GB of ram and the 2TB drive. Otherwise if you want more power you go with the MacBook Pros because they have the M1 Pro or M1 Max processors in them. They are very comparable. The 14" and the 16" really it just comes down to if you want the bigger screen size sacrificing weight and carry size. That should make it easy to decide between the 14 and 16". But then added to that the 16", of course, is going to cost you more because of the bigger screen. So you just really need to know where to put the price point. 

There are a few other things you want to consider when deciding between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. MacBook Air being the cheaper consumer model doesn't have as much capability when it comes to screens and displays. For instance, you can only hook up one external screen to a MacBook Air. So you've got your MacBook Air screen and you could hook up say a 4K display to that. You can go more than the one external display using workarounds but the quality drops. You're not getting the full extra screen experience when you go more than one and you have to buy usually additional hardware or software to do that. Part of the MacBook Pros all can use two external displays in addition to the one that's part of the MacBook itself. If you go with the models that have the M1 Max in them you can go 3 or 4 external displays depending upon the size of the displays themselves. 

Also the MacBook Pros have better screens attached to them. They can use XDR which means they are going to be brighter and they are going to have more contrast and promotion which means the refresh rate is much faster. So a much better display if you're doing video work than the MacBook Pro has a distinct advantage in how good the display is. But that is pro video work. If you're just editing your home videos it probably really doesn't matter which one you have. 

Also the ports are a little different. The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro both have the mag save adapter so power is its own port. But the MacBook Air just has two thunderbolt ports. That's pretty much it. On the MacBook Pro you've got three thunderbolt ports and these, of course, you could use for USB for instance in displays and all sorts of things. There's also a HDMI port and SD Card slides with the MacBook Pro. So if you need a lot of ports and you don't want to rely on a dock and there's an advantage for the MacBook Pro as well.

Much later this year or next year we can expect Apple to come out with a M2 Pro and M2 Max for upgraded 14 and 16" models. But keep in mind going from M1 to M2 is probably going to only increase speed maybe about 25% if you go with the difference between the M1 and M2. That probably only really matters at high end stuff. So things like surfing the web, checking emails and even editing video while you're actually doing the editing is probably not going to change much to be getting a new processor. So you have to figure out whether it is worth the wait especially if you really need a new machine now. Don't be deceived by the numbers and think that M2 is twice as good as M1. It doesn't work like that. Just moving up one generation where a small incremental speed increase. Apple is going to keep going with those. Model M3, M4 and so on. But in general it's much more important to look at whether its the standard M1 or M2, the M1 Pro or the M1 Max or the M1 Ultra when getting a Mac going from the standard to the Pro is a big leap. The Pro to Max is a big leap. Max to Ultra is a big leap. Much more so than going from M1 to M2. So I think this decision is actually a lot easier when you're looking at MacBooks because either you're going to want kind of the consumer model or the lightweight model MacBook Air. I'm going to get one myself because I have a desktop machine and I want a lightweight companion that can go with me as I travel. If you were using a MacBook as your main machine then the 14" and 16" are probably what you want to look at and from there it is just deciding on the screen size.

Hope this helps with your decision. Thanks for watching.