Which MacBook and specs?

[b2387692]

Hello all,

For general web browsing/email, video streaming i.e Netflix, NFL+, MLB.tv, etc., and html coding/web development side hustle, portability is nice but not a major need; which MacBook would you get Air or Pro; and with what specs i.e. screen size, M1-M3, GPU, RAM, storage, etc…?

My max budget is around $1.5K.

TBH: My last MBP was a late 2011 17”, but since I like to use my 65” tv as an external display, even 13” M1 MBAs for <$1K are looking appealing, at this point. 😉

I appreciate your feedback!

 

[casperes1996]

If you need it now I would get an M1 air. Upgrade ram to 16gb if you multitask a lot and get storage as needed. Otherwise I would wait until march and get the M2 presumably at the same price the M1 Is now.

If you don’t need portability at all I would get a Mac mini and hook that up to your tv.

 

[b2387692]

If I’m going to wait until spring, I’m leaning towards the 15” MacBook Air, which I believe would be an M3 release at that point.

Actually, I currently do have my 2011 Mini hooked up to the tv, but I believe it finally died. I’ve revived it once, when it wasn’t getting past white screen, but now nothing displays at all when I try start it. 😑

TBH, since both my WiFi & Ethernet don’t seem to work on my “smart” 65” LG tv, I’m looking at just getting a RoKu stick to get my streaming channels and either ditching or attempting to fix the Mini, so a laptop with a decent display size is probably my priority. That said, with my budget that probably means either an M2 14” MBP or waiting for the M3 15” MBA .

After doing a bit of research, I agree with the your 16GB of RAM suggestion; and feel I should probably go with at least 512TB SSD…Not clear on the whole “core” CPU/GPU stuff though. 😳

 

[casperes1996]

After doing a bit of research, I agree with the your 16GB of RAM suggestion; and feel I should probably go with at least 512TB SSD…Not clear on the whole “core” CPU/GPU stuff though. 😳

None of the use cases you initially listed would really benefit from more gpu cores at least. In general I would also say your use would probably benefit more from faster cores than more cores, so you would probably see more benefit going for M3 vs going for a prior generation Pro chip. More cores only speed up parallel processing. That may be parallelized within an app or across app instances.