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MarkNeuhausen's avatar

Being frugal, I'm tempted by the MacBook Air M2, $699 vs. $949 at Costco.

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Stephen Pao's avatar

If buying the M2, you really don't want the 256GB SSD. They only use one 256GB module, so it has less I/O than the M1 which used 2 x 128GB modules... The other thing to note is that the M4 has 16GB RAM, which is basically a requirement these days. I believe the reason my SSD got so used up is just a lot of swapping on my 8GB M1...

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Wayne's Career and Life Blog's avatar

Steve, I downloaded that DriveDX app to run on my 2019 Intel MacBook Pro. I was surprised my usage stats are a lot lower than yours. Although now that I think about it, I used it for 3 years, and then UPWK gave me a new M1 unit. Then when I retired, they made me turn it in, so I’ve been using the old one. It barely holds a charge though, so I’m planning on getting the M4 MB Air as well. Any other buying tips?

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Stephen Pao's avatar

Make sure to get the 512GB SSD. The Write/Read (MB/s) for the entry-level 256GB SSD model was only 1919/2891 on the M4 Macbook Air according to Tom's Guide (https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/macbook-air-m4-review). You'll get much faster performance out of the 512GB SSD.

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