Editing on a MacBook Air?

Image from Apple.com

Is the MacBook Air M2 2022 any good for video editing?

Now I’ve used this PC for over a year now, as you can see from the stickers, it’s been al over the world with me, and I’ve worked on many different projects with it, but not everything has been pink coloured roses. Stick to the end to know not only if it’s worth the money, but also what specs are any good, and what specs you should keep away from.

Specs

Let’s talk about specs first, since it paints a better picture of why this PC performs the way it performs, and what the biggest problem with it is.

So this Macbook Air has an M2 Chip w/ either a 8 core CPU & a 8 Core GPU, or a 8 core CPU and a 10 core GPU, both options have no fan cooling (this will be super important later)

We have a 13.6 2560x1664px screen, and a 52.6-watt-hour lithium polymer battery, which is insanely good. If you’re coming from a windows machine: Bro, it doesn’t even compare. The battery here can easily last you all day UNLESS you do video editing. But when you run out, you get the really cool USB-C to MagSafe 3 charging port. We’ve also got the 3.5 mm headphone jack, the 2 thunderbolt/usb 4 ports, and of, course, famously no usb’s, sd card readers, or anything else, this (especially the SD card reader) is a disadvantage compared to the macbook pro’s.

In terms of memory and storage, this is important: you have options for 8, 16, or 24 GB of RAM, and options of 256, 512, 1TB or 2 TB of storage, this is where Apple starts to rear it’s ugly head (you’ll see what I mean in a minute)

Real Life Use

So how does this translate into real life use, and more importantly, video editing. Well the day to day on this pc feels amazing! I’ve worked in an office where everyone had macbook pros, and, even though it’s obvious that those are more powerfull, this one still felt slicker to me, and weirdly enough I seem to prefer the keyboard on this one. BTW, I’m talking from experience, because they actually bought a MacBook Pro for me to use, so I could make the comparison first hand.

In terms of the video editing, I’m not gonna lie… it’s impressively good. I’ve used this for shifts of 8, 9 hrs of editing, and it’s been mostly a breeze. BUT there’s one major caviat. Firstly, I was editing mostly in FHD, and I know 4k just wouldn’t work as well. Secondly, there is a limit to how intense your edits can be. For the cutting faze there is no issue, same for some basic animations, music and SFX, but as soon as you put that adjustment layer on top and start messing with the colour correction and the colour grade, you’re gonna have to lower that timeline resolution. Plus, exports can be really slow, again, specially when you slap a colour grade on it.

And, as I said earlier, this PC has no fan cooling, which, on the one hand, is a marvel of engineering, and it makes it quieter, but on the other hand, it gets hot. And this leads to pretty significant thermal throttling, which means your Mac won’t work as fluidly and the end of your shift as it did at the beginning.

And lastly, Apple did an Apple thing. As I said, you have an option for 256GB of storage, which is the one they advertise the price on. First of all, every editor knows that’s not a lot of storage, but that’s fine, because you’ll have an external SSD anyways, isn’t it? Well no, this model is the one that comes with the 8 Core GPU, which is significantly slower for editing than the 10 Core GPU, but if you want that one, you’ll have to get, at least, the one with the 512 GB os storage, and now, when you start comparing prices, you’re awfully close to the cheapest Macbook pro, which isn’t as sexy (It’s still got he touchbar for christ’s sake) but it is more powerfull, and most importantly it DOES have fan cooling, so it won’t overheat as much.

Apple does this on purpose. When I bought my Mac, I was originally looking into the $1000 MacBook Air M1. When I started comparing prices, I started considering the M2, and if it weren’t for the fact that they didn’t have it in stock in the store were I bought it, I probably would have ended up buying the MacBook Pro, that’s allot of upgrades before even talking to an Apple guy!

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, I do think this is a very powerful machine. Pretty much every.single.video I’ve done has been edited on here, but honestly you might be better off buying a good value MacBook Pro if you’re looking to future proof you’re machine. Even if you’re a beginner editor now, who knows how long it will be until you upgrade your skills to the point where this Mac might be a bottleneck? Now, if you decide to buy this one: DON’T BUY THE 256gb one. Not only is it not enough storage, but the performance will be capped. So at least go for the 516GB option.

Thanks for reading guys, really appreciate it. I’ll see you in the next one.