Introduction:
Hello everyone, I recently bought a MacBook Air M2 two weeks ago on a student discount—not just a student discount but a back-to-school deal. I got it for even cheaper than the MacBook Air M1. We'll talk about the discounts and deals later, but first, I want to share that I am a big fan of the M1 chip.
I used the MacBook Air M1 for more than a year, edited over 150 videos, did coding, made Android apps, and did a lot of other tasks on that cheapest possible MacBook Air, and I was very happy with it. Now, after upgrading to the MacBook Air M2, what do you think? Should students spend ₹1,20,000 in India (or $200 more in the US), or should they still go for the MacBook Air M1? Let’s talk about it in this post, so let’s get started.
Firstly, talking about the student discount: if you buy any kind of MacBook Air—whether it’s the cheapest or the M2 MacBook Air—if you go to the Apple webpage on the education discount page, you will see that it’s firstly $100 cheaper. On top of that, if you buy it, you’re eligible for up to a $150 gift card. For the MacBook Air M2, I got a $150 gift card.
You might get the same for the MacBook Air M1 as well. So, in total, I paid around $1,200 after taxes for this MacBook, and with the $150 gift card, it effectively cost me $1,050. I used that gift card immediately for Final Cut Pro, or you can use it for subscriptions on your Apple account. Of course, you can save your gift card or use it for anything else, which gives you great flexibility.
However, there’s a problem in India. They don’t give you a gift card; instead, they offer either AirPods 3 or a discount on AirPods Pro. So, if you bundle up, you’ll get a ₹10,000 discount on your MacBook Air M1 or M2, or you’ll have the opportunity to get AirPods Pro or AirPods 3 at a great deal. It could be a good combo, but I personally prefer the gift card because it’s like real money in your hand and gives you the flexibility to buy anything you want.
Because of this discount, people might easily go for the MacBook Air M2 as it could be cheaper than the MacBook Air M1 without discounts. If you ignore the discount on the M1 and just think about the discount on the M2, you’ll think it’s cheaper than the M1. But remember, the discount is valid for both MacBooks—you can choose any MacBook regardless of the discount focus.
The MacBook Air M2 feels lighter, though it’s not significantly so. The number one benefit of getting the MacBook Air M2 is that you get a MagSafe port. This gives you one extra port because if you’re using one port for charging on the MacBook Air M1, you’re left with only one port. While this wasn’t a major issue for me, the MagSafe port is convenient, especially since the M2 MacBook charges really fast with a fast charger, taking only about an hour to an hour and a half.
Basic:
With the fast charger, the MacBook Air M2 charges in half an hour and a half, and I still had both the ports free in my previous MacBook Air as well. So it's like a minor benefit if you want to charge and use two ports.
Apple stickers also make a camouflaging effect; they are like 100% matching with this matte color, but it's very fingerprint magnetic, though it has more fingerprints than I've ever seen on my MacBook Air M1. The number three benefit is bigger screens; the Java code carrier has a 0.3-inch bigger screen diagonally, so you can see more code when you're scrolling.
It's just a minor difference, but it does make a difference while you're programming, just a little bit. Now we're talking about performance difference. Many people notice while playing Minecraft that they can play Minecraft on this computer on this MacBook M2 with 50% smoother performance frame rates as compared to MacBook Air M1, which is amazing.
And if you want gaming, for gaming, it is now possible to play games on MacBook M1 and M2 both, but on M2, it’s even bigger, around 40 to 50% better performance. But to be honest, that performance might be on the most expensive version of MacBook M2. But still, you will see around 20% improvement on this variant because this is the cheapest M2 MacBook I have bought. For gaming, it is really important to be secure on the internet.
If you want to play multiplayer games on the internet, which you can do on MacBook M2, remember to use a VPN. Currently, my favorite VPN is Surf shark. With it, you can be secure on the internet; no internet provider can steal your data, they cannot see your browsing history, they cannot see who you are talking to, no one can steal your data, and you will be secure.
Moreover, another benefit of using a VPN is that I can watch multiple libraries of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and most importantly, Z5 and Hot star, which are cheaper in India. But I can get it at the same rate in India, in the US.
Features:
Here let's say that I have 8GB RAM, and I am full of that RAM, I use all of that RAM. Now, since it's a unified memory, a key chip in one chip you have RAM, SSD, everything together. Now the SSD can be used as RAM, so 8GB is not limiting you, but it's giving you an advantage because of unified memory, so it's a great architecture.
But because read and write speed is slow, so if you technically use 8GB RAM and now if you want to use swap memory and use SSD, you will see the performance difference, and I did see as well. I opened Android Studio, Final Cut Pro, and Xcode, all three apps, and when I was rendering I could see that the RAM is full and the laptop is really, really slow.
So this is the point when the MacBook M2 lags. So now I have, oh, it is slow. See, it is sometimes slow, and at this point, I have so many things open. I have Final Cut Pro, I have, oh, it's slow again, come on, hold on, come on, come on.
Yes, it is slow, but it's not that bad. Final Cut Pro, Android Studio, Chrome, Xcode, and Xcode Simulator, Android Studio Simulator, so many things open, and this video is also rendering on the side. Even then it can handle, but I sometimes feel that it's slower than M1 Air in SSD speed, and I didn't see any crashes frequently on M1 Air, but in the first week, I could see that I can kill this MacBook Air in terms of RAM if I push it.
You can see that it's getting hard, the mouse becomes responsive, but it's only possible if you open too many apps and if you want to read and write too much data into SSD. One more problem is that you can use a maximum of one additional monitor, so that's why one wide monitor is recommended. Otherwise, if you want to have another vertical monitor for coding, not possible.
But overall, in terms of everyday life and programming, I don't think you will see any difference. Similar battery life as before, 18 hours of video playback, 10 to 12 hours of use, because you will not feel like charging, and it's so light, it's even lighter than before.
And now the webcam is 1080p, but not magically better than before, and it's so easy to carry, but I personally love to use both MacBooks. Now I'm going to keep both MacBook Air M2 and MacBook M1 Pro because I get the flexibility. If I'm taking my office laptop, I can take the lighter laptop. If I'm not taking my office laptop for a trip, I can take my heavier MacBook M1 Pro.
In my last post, I reviewed a 10,000 rupee laptop after switching to MacBook M2, which immediately showed coffee differences. I want to explain that, I want to share the advantages you get by using macOS versus Windows. Number one, key environment: you can set up the environment for coding immediately.
Step one: download Git, Timeout Terminal, Git, and you will have Git immediately. Step two: get Visual Studio Code for Python, Java, web development, and all kinds of development, all kinds of assignments. You just need one app, Visual Studio Code, and you're all set. You just add the plugins, and you're set in one hour.
Step three: download a cloud storage like iCloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive, so your coding files are in that folder. Even if you lose your laptop, your files will be in the cloud. Step four: MacBook may auto-maximize tool line, so if you want to maximize on the side and on the top, just drag and drop. Naturally, MacBook, but after downloading it, but after downloading Better Touch Tool, you can maximize it.
So, you should step, you are ready with the development environment for your coding, for your projects. It's really faster as compared to Windows. I think you can open only maybe within one second like that, so because of that, I was able to set up the environment around one hour faster on MacBook. The coffee difference if you're using MacBook versus Windows.
Conclusion:
So you may be bothered by the advantage, and because of that advantage, I feel like MacBook is worth it because you can set up your environment quickly. It is Unix-based, and because of Unix-based Android Studio is two to three times faster than Windows because Android is Unix-based, macOS is Unix-based, so Unix and Unix are closely related operating systems for development, making the development experience faster on Unix-based apps.
That's why this whole ecosystem makes it worth it. Every Android developer I know uses MacBook, and every iOS developer can only use a MacBook, so these small, small things make your whole experience much better. So that's why it's kind of worth it.
In terms of my experience, in terms of GPU, like if you're video rendering, if you're exporting a video, I was really happy with MacBook Air M1. It used to export my post in three minutes for 1080p post , and this can do it in two and a half minutes. So it's really amazing for me to see those minor, minor jumps, and it's not really important for me.
So for a student like you, I will still say go with the M1 MacBook Air because it can do everything what this MacBook can do, and I have also used it for more than one year for 150 videos, for coding, everything you want, you can do easily on MacBook Air.
The only reason to upgrade to this is that you can play games with more frame rate, you can have a little bit of a jump in performance, like save 30 seconds to 1 minute in video rendering, 30 seconds in Android Studio project building, up to 30 seconds.
So if you upgrade, you can save a little bit of time, but that time is very negligible, according to me. So that's why I'll recommend all the students to go with MacBook Air M1, otherwise go with even a Windows laptop. I reviewed in the last post , it was worth it as well. So thank you so much for reading , and I'll see you guys in the next one. Goodbye.
