M1 MacBooks for Photoshop

[Celestron4]

I am looking at replacing my 5yr old MacBook Air and am stuck as to whether I should go for the MacBook Air or the 13inch Pro. I would be using it for editing my images (often 80-100mb file size) on photoshop when I manage to get the telescope outside (not as often as I would like to, British weather and University work gets in the way). 
 

Which of the two is the better option? 

[Steve Clay]

I'd say the pro as it has a cooling fan and what you intend doing will be processor intensive I'd have thought.

Steve

[Ouroboros]

I can’t speak for the Air, but I use a MacBook Pro for  processing (7 years old actually) and it’s fine. 

A full sized desktop screen would be better I’d say. 

[GrumpiusMaximus]

The processor and GPU in the Air and Pro is exactly the same, provided you go one step higher than the base-model Air.  The base-model has a 7-core GPU and everything else has an 8-core.

The only difference between the two machines otherwise is the size of the battery (the Air has a smaller battery) and the fan (the Pro has one, the Air doesn't).  The performance difference between the two is only really a thermal difference and the fans on the Pro take a few minutes of intensive use to kick in, e.g. for film rendering.  In most cases the Air will be roughly the same as the Pro unless you're doing a lot of very heavy lifting in Photoshop.  I'd recommend getting a 16GB of RAM model regardless.

Hope that helps!

 

Edited August 10, 2021 by GrumpiusMaximus