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I’ve published some fairly unusual Mac comparison buying guides of late, but this feels like the strangest.
It also feels like it might be the quickest.
Ever since Apple unveiled the 15-inch MacBook Air at last month’s WWDC, the requests for comparisons against its siblings have come flooding in. They’re all completely justified, too.
Should you buy the 13-inch MacBook Air or the 15-inch MacBook Air? What about the 14-inch MacBook Pro? How does Apple’s brand-new laptop stack up against that?
As I’ve said on numerous occasions recently, picking the right MacBook is getting increasingly difficult as the line-up expands. But choice is no bad thing, and today, we’re going to look at the biggest choice of them all – literally.
Should you buy the 15-inch MacBook Air or the 16-inch MacBook Pro?
Let’s get into it.
The price says it all
I think the first thing to establish here is that anyone reading this guide is, clearly, going to have a sizeable budget for their next MacBook. The fact the 16-inch MacBook Pro (which starts at £2,699/$2,499) is even being considered suggests that this is a serious purchase.
It also means we can – and should – wipe the base model 15-inch MacBook Air off the table, because it is so far south of the MacBook Pro in terms of raw numbers and horsepower.
By the way – if, at this stage, you’re suddenly thinking perhaps I should just get the 16-inch MacBook Pro, please do.
The key thing to bear in mind here is that we cannot change the spec of the M2 chip inside the 15-inch MacBook Air. It is fixed at the 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU configuration and isn’t available in Pro or Max configurations. We can only match some of the MacBook Pro’s grunt by increasing the unified memory and storage to match the base spec of Apple’s biggest laptop.
Bump the 15-inch MacBook Air up to 16GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage, and it comes in at £1,799/$1,699, which is £900/$800 cheaper than the big MacBook Pro. Yet it still lacks four CPU cores and nine GPU cores.
It lacks many other things when stacked up against the MacBook Pro, too. These include a much brighter XDR display, double the memory bandwidth, higher-specced speakers, and ports which include a third Thunderbolt 4 port, HDMI output, and an SD card slot.
It should also be noted that the 16-inch MacBook Pro can be specced with up to 96GB of unified memory and a massive 8TB of storage.
These are very different laptops. Yet, they’re still worth comparing, and it’s still easy to buy the wrong one.
Who is the 15-inch MacBook Air for?
I have the base-spec 15-inch MacBook Air and it is a brilliant all-rounder. Due to the inefficiencies of the base spec M2 chip with 256GB of unified memory, I wouldn’t trust it with intensive 4K video editing, but it is a tank for everything else I throw at it.
Equally, I know that if I had specced this thing up as far as possible, it would become a replacement for my 16-inch MacBook Pro while editing on the road. The display alone makes it a far better competitor for that than the 13-inch MacBook Air.
But would it replace my MacBook Pro wholesale? No, absolutely not. And that’s because the MacBook Pro gives me far more headroom, has that wonderful XDR display, and an abundance of ports which never fail to be useful every single day.
I would, therefore, always choose the 16-inch MacBook Pro over the 15-inch MacBook Air for those reasons, but that’s because video editing is a crucial part of my business; without being able to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible, I don’t have a business.
However, take the video editing requirement out of the picture, and I would always choose the 15-inch MacBook Air over its big brother. The combination of Apple silicon-era performance-per-buck and the ridiculously lightweight frame make it a portable beast in its own right. If you slot into that user bracket, this is the laptop for you.
Who is the 16-inch MacBook Pro for?
See my notes above.
If you need power, ports, and the best of everything, the big MacBook Pro is for you.
Those requirements might be related to your job – like they are mine. Or you might just want Apple’s biggest, baddest laptop, which, as I’ve always said, is absolutely fine – it’s your money and your desire to own one.
It really does come down to performance, though. The other big difference between these two laptops is that the MacBook Pro has active cooling, whereas the 15-inch doesn’t have a single fan anywhere within that slender chassis. This means that as things get intense, the latter will throttle its performance, while the 16-inch MacBook Pro can power through and keep itself far cooler.
If you’re working against the clock to get intensive creative stuff done, that can mean the difference between a failed project and a paid invoice.
Wrapping up
The performance and port deficit between these two machines make the choice far simpler than many of the other 15-inch MacBook Air vs <insert alternative MacBook here> comparisons I’ve published.
I’m a broken record, I know, but I once again have to say that you probably already know which of these two you need, even if the answer is buried deep down within you.
I understand exactly why you’re making this comparison, but as I hope my words above have demonstrated, the choice is actually pretty simple.
So, which one are you going for and why? Let me know in the comments!
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