MacBook Air 13" (M2): which should I get?

For the uses you've described, I can offer the following thoughts:

• 8GB will work, but you'll see a lot of the spinning beachball at times. Much better to go with 16GB, for sure.
• 512GB storage would be the minimum I'd suggest.
• I'd personally go with the 10-core GPU MBA 13" M2.

Better to go with as much as your budget will allow on the above suggestions, as you can't upgrade later (everything's soldered onto the motherboard).

Also...keep in mind MacBook Airs will only support one external monitor. If you think someday you might want two external monitors and/or additional ports, then you might want to look at the 14" MacBook Pro.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Maximize RAM 24GB because it cannot be upgraded and it will make it faster and preserve SSD in the long run.

I would get at least 1TB these days. The more the better. A larger SSD reduces wear by not having the erase memory cells as often.

The Cloud Storage services now strive to keep data in the clouds until you need it. You could mate a larger cloud service with a smaller local SSD.

Personally, I picked the 15inch because it can display a full page of an MS word document with 24GB RAM and 2TB SSD. I bought a refurbished one and would do it again. The only think I might miss is the support for only two external monitors. I use three monitors with a Mac Studio M1.

Adobe recommends at least 16 GB of RAM for Photoshop. So I would suggest ordering any Mac that you get with at least 16 GB of RAM. If you are doing a lot of heavy photo processing work, there may be situations in which 24 – 32 GB of RAM (24 GB being the most you can get on a M2 MacBook Air) would be beneficial. But the first upgrade – to 16 GB – is the important one.

Lukcresdera wrote:

Personally, I picked the 15inch … I bought a refurbished one and would do it again. The only think I might miss is the support for only two external monitors. I use three monitors with a Mac Studio M1.

To clarify: The M2 MacBook Airs support only one external monitor. Same for the 14" MacBook Pros which use the 'base' M3 chip. The 14" and 16" MacBook Pros based on the M3 Pro and M3 Max chips are the ones which support two (M3 Pro) or more (M3 Max) external monitors.

All of the Mac Studios use Max or Ultra processors, so I believe that even the M1 Max version of the Mac Studio has the ability to drive up to five monitors.