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MacBook Air M2 vs MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro - Which should you get?

14:47 video

Apple’s second generation of Pro Mac silicon is here. I compared the base 14-inch M2 Pro MacBook Pro with the base M2 MacBook Air from last year to see what’s different, how performance compares, and which to buy. Casekoo sponsored this video, with its Magic Stand case (a hidden stand holding the iPhone between 40° and 120°, with 48 magnets for MagSafe).

Configurations

  • MacBook Pro: M2 Pro, 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16 GB, 512 GB.
  • MacBook Air: M2, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 8 GB, 256 GB.

They share an almost similar footprint, with the Pro slightly larger and about 0.8 lb heavier. The Air has a 13.6-inch display and the Pro 14.2 inches.

Ports

  • Pro: left side, USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 ports, MagSafe and a high-impedance headphone jack; right side, “advanced” HDMI, another Thunderbolt 4 and an SD card slot.
  • Air: MagSafe and two Thunderbolt 3 / USB4 ports on the left (with subtle technical differences from the Pro’s Thunderbolt 4), and a high-impedance headphone jack on the right.

The Air supports only one external display, while the M2 Pro supports up to two.

Keyboard and trackpad

The Pro dropped the Touch Bar in 2021 for a full-size function row, and the Air gets full-size function keys too. Both have Touch ID, and the keyboards feel the same: Apple’s done a really good job bringing the Magic Keyboard feel to all its devices. The Pro’s trackpad is just a hair bigger than the Air’s (about 5 × 3 inches).

Displays

The Pro has a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display with mini-LED backlighting: up to 1,600 nits for HDR, 1,000 nits sustained, 500 nits for regular content, with ProMotion up to 120 Hz. The Air has a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, also up to 500 nits, with the same P3 and True Tone. It isn’t HDR, but it’s a really good display. The difference comes down to HDR: if you’ll watch or create HDR content, the Pro’s is better. Both have a notch with the camera.

Camera, microphones, speakers and wireless

Both have a 1080p camera with advanced image signal processing, and three microphones (the Pro’s are “studio quality”). The Air shows a lot more grain than the Pro, for some reason, though color and brightness look about the same. The Air has a four-speaker system with spatial audio; the Pro has six.

Wireless: Air Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5; Pro Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. I got essentially the same speed on both, but you may grow into the Pro’s specs as you upgrade your access points and devices.

Performance

  • Cinebench multi-core: M2 Pro 11,710 versus M2 8,200, a 43% increase; single-core was minor, since they use the same cores.
  • GFXBench Aztec Ruins 4K off-screen: M2 Pro 78 fps versus M2 56 fps, about 40%, with twice the GPU cores.
  • SSD: the Air’s 256 GB drive got 1,800 MB/s write and 1,500 MB/s read; the Pro’s 512 GB drive 3,500 write and 2,900 read. The Air’s drive hasn’t been an issue in six months of use.
  • Final Cut Pro export (an old video with a heavy color grade, titles, audio, cuts and B-roll): Pro 6:23, Air 6:43, only about a 5% difference, because the M2 Pro has the same single media engine as the M2. The M2 Max has two.

Heat: during Cinebench, the Air reached about 40°C and the Pro about 35–36°C. The Pro’s fans spun up and were noticeably audible, but in regular use and video export, there was no fan noise. The Air has no fan.

Battery: up to 12 hours of web browsing for the Pro and 15 for the Air, which is hard to gauge, but the Air should give you a couple more hours with light workloads. I’ve had no trouble getting through a day on any Apple silicon machine.

Price

The M2 Pro MacBook Pro starts at $1,999, the M2 MacBook Air at $1,199. For $800 more, you get more storage and memory, a better screen, better speakers and a much faster processor. Spec the Air to 512 GB and 16 GB to match, and it’s about $1,600, only $400 from the Pro.

Who should buy which

If you’re a casual user (browsing, email, shopping, YouTube, banking, light gaming, photo editing in Apple Photos, even light Final Cut Pro editing), the base Air may suit you and will do it better than any computer you’ve had. My issue is the 8 GB: unified memory is really fast, but memory is memory, and apps and browser tabs want real memory. With my day-job apps plus some side projects, I hit that bottleneck on a normal day. The base Air is really good for today, but there’s little room to grow.

If you’re a student, a professional, getting into content creation, a developer, or going into machine learning or AI, get the Pro, which has much more room to grow, plus the HDR display. I ran my entire YouTube business and day job on a base 14-inch MacBook Pro for about six months, and I did just fine.

If you need to spec the Air up to more storage and memory, you’re approaching the Pro’s price, and last year’s M1 Pro frequently goes on sale, so there are other options, whether refurbished from Apple or sales on Amazon.

In this video

  • 0:00 intro
  • 1:16 configs, hardware, display support
  • 3:44 displays
  • 4:47 camera, mics, speakers, wireless
  • 7:04 performance, heat, battery
  • 10:46 pricing and which to buy

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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