Is the 2023 MacBook Air powerful enough for Creative Cloud

[Clayton Henry]

***PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS!***

I travel and am tired of lugging around my heavy MacBook Pro. I'm a graphic designer and thinking of getting a much lighter MacBook Air. I primarily use InDesign, and some Photoshop. I would load it up so price is around $2,000:

• 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display with True Tone
• Apple M2 chip with 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
• 24GB unified memory
• 1TB SSD storage
• 1080p FaceTime HD camera
• MagSafe 3 charging port
• Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports
• 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter

[kglad]

<moved from cc desktop>

[Conrad_C]

That M2 MacBook Air configuration should work very well for InDesign and Photoshop.

If your current MacBook Pro uses an Intel CPU, you are going to find that the Apple Silicon M2 processor should be faster, cooler, quieter (no noisy fan needed because it runs so much cooler), and the battery should last several hours longer.

In the past, the Intel MacBook Air was kind of borderline for Creative Cloud because it was underpowered. But the M1/M2 have improved the Air so much that the MacBook Pro is no longer necessary for InDesign and Photoshop. The MacBook Pro might still be a better choice if you frequently did long exporting or rendering sessions with Adobe Lightroom Classic, Premiere Pro, After Effects, or a 3D application. But InDesign and Photoshop don’t max out the processor for long periods of time, so they should work well with the fanless M2 MacBook Air.

[Warren Heaton]

For light or occational use, yes, it is very capable.

For extended workloads, you really want a MacBook Pro.

For example, an 30 second effects heavy After Effects Composition took my 32GB/1TB 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max 1.5 hours to render.  I rendered the same Comp on my 16GB/512GB 13-inch MacBook Pro M1 and it took 9 hours - so there's even a difference among the Pro models.

There Air is a great laptop, but be prepared for things to take longer than they would with a Pro.

[mrsdesignsherman]

Clayton, did you ever buy the MacBook Air? I'm considering doing the same chenge because I too am tired uf lugging around my heavy laptop when I travel. 

I do not work with video, I primarily use illustrator, InDesign, and some Photoshop. But, while I travel, I would mostly be using it for quick client requests. It seems like the M3 chip with 8GB of RAM would be a good choice. I would love to hear your impressions!

[Ben M]

Clayton, did you ever buy the MacBook Air? I'm considering doing the same chenge because I too am tired uf lugging around my heavy laptop when I travel. 

I do not work with video, I primarily use illustrator, InDesign, and some Photoshop. But, while I travel, I would mostly be using it for quick client requests. It seems like the M3 chip with 8GB of RAM would be a good choice. I would love to hear your impressions!

By @mrsdesignsherman

@mrsdesignsherman - Personally I would move up to 16GB of ram in the MBA. The cheapest with that amount of ram I am finding online is about $1,299. For the multi-tasking and to get the extra video memory (since the ram is shared with video) it would be well worth the upgrade.

[mrsdesignsherman]

Thanks so much for the reply! I have always maxed out RAM, and so I know that you are right! I was just curious because this will not be my daily computer. But, I have a feeling I would regret it and your reply reinforces that!

That is an amazing price... may I ask where you found that?