I’ve had laptops since the mid 1990s and I have used each of them until they were no longer capable of doing their job quickly and efficiently. Most of that work has involved editing photographs and the vast majority of the time those edits have been completed away from the office. The title of this post is “The laptop cycle” and I called it that because my needs from a laptop vary over time. Things are changing again and it appears that I am just rotating into a period where I am doing a lot of editing on the road.

For the last couple of years I have either been uploading direct from my cameras and then doing a considered edit when I am back at my desk or doing some very simple and quick edits on my 2021 M1 MacBook Air. I bought it as a back up for a fully loaded 2017 MacBook Pro and to have as a lightweight travel companion. In 2022 I invested in an M1 Mac Studio for the office and the older MacBook Pro (which still works fine) was relegated to being a back up itself. The 2017 machine which felt relatively lightweight when I bought it now feels pretty cumbersome and so I haven’t carried it on a job since early in 2021.

Just recently I have found myself doing bigger edits in clients’ offices, press centres and hotel rooms and my MacBook Air is no longer up to the job whilst my MacBook Pro can’t run up-to-date software. Inevitably this will mean making yet another expensive purchase and so I find myself in the unusual position of not being able to decide what to buy or, to put it more bluntly, how little I can spend and get what I need now and for the next three or four years at a time when work is as uncertain as it has ever been.

One thing is absolutely certain: it will be a Mac. No matter how good and how cheap Windows based machines are I don’t like using them and, frankly, don’t have the faith in them that I have in Macs. On top of that I am heavily invested in the whole Apple eco-system and I love the way that all of my devices share with one another so easily.

Given that I have the Mac Studio and a lovely monitor on my desk in the office and that after three and a half years it still performs incredibly well I’m fine with that. What I need is portability combined with power. Again, to put it more succinctly, what I want is portable enough and powerful enough to handle 45 megapixel images and the very occasional bit of 4K video whilst still fitting into a backpack and being light enough to carry around for occasional whole days.

We are starting to narrow the choices down.

I have pretty much ruled out the 16″ MacBook Pro for size, weight and cost reasons. The choice has come down to the 13″ MacBook Air, the 14″ MacBook Pro and the 15″ MacBook Air. The big questions are:

• Do I need more than 32Gb of unified memory?
• Do I need anything more than the basic M4 chip?
• Do I need the extra ports offered by the MacBook Pro?
• Do I want a colour other than black or silver?
• How much storage do I need?
• What is my budget?

Like every big purchasing decision you answer one question and another asks itself. Both of my current production Macs have 512Gb of storage and I am careful what I keep on the computers. I don’t have issues with what a lot of my peers would regard as so little but I’ve decided to go to 1Tb just in case. My Mac Studio has 32Gb of unified memory and so this would strike me as “enough” but more would be comforting.

Asking around I have pretty much decided that the M4 chip will be fine – which means that all three options are still in the running. Having a computer with a sky blue or starlight casing has never appealed to me and all three options come in a basic silver which is fine too.

The MacBook Pro has more ports, a better screen and better battery life. When I was just shooting with cameras with SD cards then having the SD card slot built-in would have been a big advantage but the arrival of CF Express Type B in my workflow changes things a little.

With the 14″ model weighing in at 1.6Kg compared with the 13″ Air at only 1.24Kg and the 15″ Air at 1.51Kg then weight considerations are most definitely in favour of the smaller MacBook Air.

Similarly price makes the 13″ MacBook Air look very attractive. I am VAT registered so I effectively end up paying the exVAT price. The 13″ Air specified for what I’d want (32Gb unified memory and 1Tb SSD storage) is £1499.17 whilst the 15″ version with the same spec’ is £1665.83. The jump to the 14″ MacBook Pro with the same spec for memory and storage is another £166.67 at £1832.50. Between these three models I don’t think that price is a major factor and to make another jump up to the M4 Pro processor would be another £500.00 on top although that brings the unified memory up to 48Gb. I’m ruling that out (for now).

I ought to be as confused as ever but in practical terms 1.6Kg isn’t all that heavy (although the power supply is a bit heavier than the one supplied for the Air models) and with the better screen and slightly better battery life the 14″ MacBook Pro for the extra £333.33 over the 13″ Air is looking like the best option.

One day soon I’m going to hit the “buy button” but, until I do, I’d love to hear why I might be wrong…

Footnote: If anyone is interested in a 2017 MacBook Pro as described in my blog post from the time then it will be for sale. I also have a 2011 11″ MacBook Air that still works but, frankly, shows its age that I’d also be happy to part with.

Another footnote: About an hour after I had sent this post live the UK Apple Store was updated and the M4 MacBook Pro that I had been looking at was replaced by one with an M5 chip. The price and specification remained the same other than the chip but I noticed that you no longer get a power supply in the box! So that’s an extra £49.17 + VAT to pay…