Apple's MacBook Air 15 M2 is expensive, but practically unrivaled

[RobertJasiek]

As to video editing on 8GB. For years, I video-edited without problem on 2GB RAM under Windows 7. It all depends on how efficiently an OS uses RAM and what kind of video editing one does. My basic splitting of videos only needed the size of the video file itself. I guess it can be much for storage-demanding if one applies complex filters on a video. Also, newer Windowses fill more RAM but Windows 10 works well with 8GB and basic video splitting. For basic stuff, browser windows / tabs have become the most storage-hungry now that files on the internet have grown and browsers are programmed badly.

[ramirez789]

And what do you think all those "content creators" do when it comes to video editing on YouTube? They just jibble and join/split some fragments here and there...
They don't really need a MacBook to do that, it can be done on any 300$ machine.

[Albator]

"Apple chips are passively cooled, which is a huge advantage. In the Windows camp, you have to rely on ARM chips from Qualcomm, which results in somewhat sluggish overall performance that cannot be compared with faster x64 laptops."

Not true !
Hey ppl come on, do your research... surely you must be aware of Intel's N-series chip existence ! because , for example, both ASUS and Lenovo IdeaPad 330 sports the Intel Pentium Silver N6000 (and older N5000) - 4 cores, totally fanless !

And... While some people don't like to hear it, the N series is perfectly adequate, even for video editing, but you must have 8 GB of RAM and replace HDD drive with SSD (though nowadays most come with SSD out of the box).

Besides... There's a new wave of CPUs coming through, all those recently presented Intels N100, N200 and N300 (8 cores!), all with very low TDP, something like 6 or 7 W. Very fast, certainly could compete with that Macbook of yours... while being passive cooled at the same time, of course. Oh , and 5 times cheaper :)

You seriously believe that the cpus you mentionned match a base M2 chip?

Let me show you how wrong  you are.

Geekbench results for your so powerful N300 (8 cores! you said), Asus Vivo slate 13 oled, relased a month ago.

Geekbench single core : 1235
Geekbench Multicore : 4205
Passmark: 9534

Now lets take a look at M2

Geekbench single core : 2638
Geekbench Multicore : 10014
Passmark: 15368

Lets go even further, lets compare your 8 Core fantastic chip with a 2020 base m1.

Geekbench single core : 2366
Geekbench Multicore : 8656
Passmark: 14118

As you can see, a 3 year old M1 CPU destroys any of, even the latest june 2023 intel CPUs you mentionned. And dont get me started on GPU performance as we all now how Intel Graphics perform compare to M1.

I know that apple bashing is still thing in 2023, but maybe its time to accept that when it comes to laptops, Apple is the one who managed to raise the bar this high.

[Albator]

And what do you think all those "content creators" do when it comes to video editing on YouTube? They just jibble and join/split some fragments here and there...
They don't really need a MacBook to do that, it can be done on any 300$ machine.

So now we can comfortably edit and export 4k videos on a 300$ windows machine. This is ground breaking news.
Please show us a brand new 300$ windows machine can achieve this in a smooth and efficient way.

Option 1 : You don't know anything about Video Editing
Option 2 : You don't know anything about the CPU/GPU performance required to edit a video.
Option 3 : All of the above.

[Neenyah]

Damn, all hail the M1/M2 Mac!! In video editing Intel(+QuickSync) + Nvidia can't do anything against those fastest chips in the known universe and even when M1s & M2s are 6x slower that's actually being 6x faster but we read clocks wrong 🤯 Such a power for real professionals, Intel and Nvidia are turned into useless dust by the mighty Apple 🥵

Reality is "slightly" different 👉 "PC vs MAC for the SAME PRICE - Which is better for VIDEO exporting?" ( youtu.be/_D0K3-uZMyY ) 👈  where we can see the M2 Pro being completely obliterated by just the i5+3050 combo but ok, who needs reality when Apple is damn good and fast and superior and when even the latest June 2023 Intel CPU can't match such insane and never-seen-before performance 🥵🥵

[Olaf]

Hard to read it... I wonder if anybody tried to run windows server vw or any 64bit os vm on these macs. Computing it's not only editing photos or videos. Not only gaming. Unrivalled laptop is useless unless you want to use arm windows option, but it's really hopeless. You can also use azure, it's still limitation.  For many people like me, macbook is not even worth $500. It's just a gadget.

[Neenyah]

Well that's true Olaf, no denying there, but also Apple is primarily targeting content creators, so video editors, photographers, designers, animators and 3D also to some extent (lack of GPU power is limiting for something really professional and intensive) and of course iOS/macOS developers. They absolutely don't care about anything or anyone else, including gaming.

So just by that fact it's funny to call the Air 15 unrivalled when it gets easily beaten in all those mentioned targeted usages too; for example in video rendering, where 3 minute long 4K h.264 vid in DaVinci Resolve is rendered in 3:23 on M1 Pro MacBook Pro vs 1:32 on Asus ZenBook Pro 16X with i9 13905H + 4080. Even cheaper and weaker Dell XPS 17 (9730) with i7 13700H + 4070 is completely obliterating that M1 Pro MBP with just 1:47 to render the same clip ( youtu.be/Ne7O9qE2puY?t=770 ).

Amusing article.