M4 Macbook Air or Macbook Pro for Photoshop?

Question

Looking to upgrade my wife's old iMac with a new M4 Macbook that will perform well with current version of Photoshop. She is skilled hobby photographer with strong Photoshop skills, & tends to keep her Macs for 5+ years. Primary Photoshop use will be still photo editing of RAW images from her Digital SLRs. These files are typically 20-30MB.

We are considering these two Macbook configurations:

Macbook Air 13" M4 24GB Memory, 1TB SSD

Macbook Pro 14" M4 24GB Memory, 1TB SSD

We want 1TB storage to future-proof room for personal files and 100GB+ additional space for scratch files. There are positive Youtube reviews of Macbook Air M4s with 24GB of memory doing video rendering, so we were hoping that for still editing, this would be a good balance of current performance, budget, and future-proofing.

We would appreciate feedback from current Mac Photoshop users on pros & cons of the two machines above, and particularly whether the upgrade to Macbook Pro or other upgrades to the Macbook Air would be worth the additional expense.

Thanks for your help!

creative explorer · Answer

@Matt&FamilyOnMacs curious to know if you bought your MACs?

If you haven't, the 'Back to School' specials should be coming soon in June... and so prices in general will be coming down... In all honesty, I would personally get as much RAM as possible that you can afford because AI technology is growing so much. Many of my students like the 'Air' because it's so much lighter than the 'Pro' —but you should know there isn't a 'fan' on the 'Air'

Neither the MacBook Air nor the MacBook Pro is inherently "better" than the other; instead, they are designed for different types of users and workloads. The "better" choice depends entirely on your specific needs, budget, and how you plan to use the laptop. The Air is for the everyday user who wants a great all-around laptop, including everyday Photoshop use! The Pro is for professionals and power users who need the maximum sustained performance Apple offers in a portable form factor.

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