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Comment by t3rabytes | Hacker News Reader

I’m quite in love with this machine. If my corporate IT group offered them over our top spec MacBook Pro options, I would take it in a heartbeat — I don’t care about the loss of compute power.

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Is there any loss anyway? I don't see any difference between Macbook Pro M2 and Macbook Air M2.

It's only noticeable when there's a sustained workload. The Pro model can use active cooling (fans) while the air can't.

Sustained performance due to better heat management

The Pro M2 has excessive thermal throttling and significantly lower flash storage throughput.

This Air has the exact same chip as that MBP.. If the M2 in the 13" MBP (not the M2 Pro, which is currently unreleased) gets thermally throttled, we'll have to see how it performs in a device without a fan.

Isn't the SSD only slower on the 256GB models, due to fewer flash chips?

I think the main difference (besides storage and peripherals) is active cooling. MBA's are passive cooled now (since the original M1) whereas MBP's have always had fans. The M1 & M2 chips are so cool that they generally don't need any active cooling most of the time. Where it does make a difference is under heavy sustained compute workloads. The passively-cooled MBA's will start to throttle under these workloads whereas the MBP's will maintain full speed indefinitely by spinning up the fans.

> I think the main difference (besides storage and peripherals) is active cooling

Haha, I read your comment, and my first thought was a dismissive, “who cares about active cooling”. Which really says something about how insanely power efficient these chips are. I’ve had the M1 Air since launch and I’ve yet to observe any thermal throttling under my workloads (I’ve yet to feel the machine even get hot)

Same here. I have never seen any throttling on mine, even when playing games (although admittedly I don't play demanding games). I think the target market for the Pro's active cooling is rendering (3D and video). For programmers I see little reason to get a Pro, unless you're running large C++ or Rust builds.

> difference is under heavy sustained compute workloads

How long can my compile be, before throttling begins? Say using 4 cores? 2 minutes? 5 minutes?

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