MacBook air good enough for web/graphic design?

That MacBook Air is enough for graphic design, always choose the most ram option as design programs consume lot of it, this would be a different story if you are doing things like cad, bin design in architecture or rendering as this has to cause overheating and the Air does not have fans, and even then you can resort to an external one.

You might want to consider some other factors:

• • Compare the external monitor support of the two Macs. For example, if you want to run 2 external monitors AND your Mac's display, then the MBP would be what you want. Also, there are differences between the resolution support of external monitors.
  • Compare the external ports provided on MacBook Airs vs MacBook Pros. Might be something to consider.
  • There is a difference the the display resolution of MacBook Airs vs MacBook Pros. The Pros have a better display, which might be important when doing graphic design.
  • To me, a 13" display wouldn't be of interest unless connecting to an external monitor.
  • Given the apps you use, I'd be saving up for the MBP with a larger SSD and (perhaps) more RAM. Adobe recommends 16GB RAM, but if you tend to have multiple photos and browser tabs open all the time, then adding more RAM to the MBP would be a wise move.

Hope this helps.

bpow77 wrote:

My main concern is performance longevity. A lot of the reviews I’ve read and watched about the M3 Air say that although it is plenty capable, it’s more of a “sprint than a marathon” machine when it comes to workloads meaning in short burst of work it’s fine but could warm up and throttle under longer periods of work. I’ll be using apps like Photoshop and web building apps like Wordpress and Duda for most of the working day so I’m curious to know if reviewers are being over cautious or if the Air could easily handle a full workday’s worth of graphics / web design work?

Again, based on what you'll be using it for, I'd still recommend going with a MacBook Pro (but not a base model processor). The MacBook Air has no fans in it, so if the thermals creep up, the only thing it can do is throttle back.

Personally, if you can afford the higher performance, get the higher performance.