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User profile for user: Whopper864
Whopper864 Author
User level: Level 1
5 points

Old MacBook pro versus New MacBook Air

Hi all,


I am a little bit tech illiterate, but was hoping to find a little help from this forum. I have a mid-2014 MacBook Pro 15". Its been an excellent laptop, but unfortunately since they stopped allowing it to get updates, I am finding myself more and more inconvenienced in its daily operations. It still does everything I ask of it without question (which is granted nothing heavy duty), but I wanted to inquire as to which machine is more powerful - my current macbook pro or a new MacBook Air 15" with the M2.


My hunch is that the MBA is more powerful, but my Pro has 16GB of memory (16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3) and is processor is the 2.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7. The MBA I was looking at only has 8GB of memory, but I am sure there have been many other advances. Once again, I am not very tech literate, so which machine is more powerful if they went head to head? I would be shocked if the MBA didn't win, but I just have no way of knowing as I have tried to understand these things, but I cannot.


Also, is it worth waiting for the M3 chip or is the M2 going to be fairly similar?


Thanks so much for all of your help!

Posted on Feb 16, 2024 1:47 PM

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User profile for user: Gabo0704
Gabo0704
User level: Level 3
521 points

Posted on Feb 16, 2024 2:05 PM

Bought the M2 air. It’s phenomenal. Newer and faster chip, better design, MagSafe, battery lasts an eternity. It barely gets warm when working on CAD. No fan noise ever, you’re giving up a lot on the M1 Pro just to get a couple less ram.

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User profile for user: Grant Bennet-Alder
Grant Bennet-Alder
User level: Level 10
132,163 points

Feb 16, 2024 2:11 PM in response to Whopper864

Your hunch that the Apple-silicon (any model) would compute rings around any intel Mac you own is correct.


DON'T buy the one with only 8 GB of RAM.

That is a student's model, intended for use where nothing intensive (at all) is done on the computer, and all files are stored elsewhere.


the very first M1 model was slightly slower than everything that followed it. Pro processor or Max processor or M2 (plain) are all faster than original M1 plain. Other than that, M3 vs M2 vs M1 are all incremental increases.



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Old MacBook pro versus New MacBook Air

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