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I really wanted to love the 13" Air but two things made me switch to the Pro after trying it for a few weeks. One is that the internal speakers suck in comparis

by blehn 3y ago

I really wanted to love the 13" Air but two things made me switch to the Pro after trying it for a few weeks. One is that the internal speakers suck in comparison to the Pro. I 'm not looking for audiophile quality from laptop speakers, but the Pro speakers are good enough for casually watching youtube videos, TV shows, podcasts, etc, whereas the Air speakers are harsh and tinny. The second is that the default resolution isn't .5x the native resolution, as it is for most Apple desktop/laptop displays. It's some weird in-between resolution that creates aliasing on text and such. If you bump it down to a true .5x, it's 1280x~800, which is borderline unusable for desktop browsing these days.

princevegeta89 3y ago
The speakers on Pro are definitely audiophile range. To me the screen quality alone was enough to drive me away from Air.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  What's the Pro sweet spot currently for RAM/disk/screen? Edit: nvm, looks like the Air supports two external displays but the Pro only supports one.
  - justusthane 3y ago
    - MacBook Pro with M3 chip = one external display - MacBook Pro with M3 Pro chip = two external displays - MacBook Pro with M3 Max chip = four external displays Given that I would personally go for the M3 Pro with 18GB memory, but it depends on your needs of course.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      This is helpful, thank you!
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/04/14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-display-support/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/04/14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-...
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Lets not gulp down the koolaid. The speakers on the pro are nice for a laptop but thats it, they are nice for a laptop. A basic bluetooth speaker laps it. Honestly they are balanced poorly and very “boomy” where I feel like I need to turn the volume up more than I have to just to start to discern spoken words from a sort of mumbly bassy sound.
carlesfe 3y ago
I have an Air and I felt like its speakers were pretty decent, but my wife bought a Pro and they're just incredible. Sometimes I hear her watching some movie or show a few rooms away, and I can never know if she's watching it on the TV or on the Pro just by the audio alone. Those speakers do fill the room, and them some.
mattbrewsbytes 3y ago
Do a lot of folks actively watch media content on laptops these days? I have never really watched more than short content on that form factor. I like a bigger screen and a remote, watching anything like a movie on a laptop feels klunky.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  You’d think it feels small but go ahead and sit in front of your tv and pull out your laptop. In terms of effective size from where I have the tv and the laptop, the laptop screen is bigger in my field of view. 40 inch tv too, no slouch.
- penjelly 3y ago
  anecdotally i know of people who bring their laptops to bed for tv/movies
- LUmBULtERA 3y ago
  Yeah... My wife adamantly opposes a TV in the bedroom, but watching on my laptop is not a problem =/.
  - ngrilly 3y ago
    I’m exactly like your wife :)
whynotminot 3y ago
I'm curious what your comparison point was for the audio quality of the MacBook Air. In the Windows world, I rarely if ever come across a laptop where the speakers weren't clearly last in precedence for engineering and BOM consideration. Just astoundingly bad sound quality accepted as normal in the Windows laptop world, even in supposedly premium machines. In comparison, even the least impressive MacBook Air speakers are good. But if you were coming from another MacBook Pro when evaluating the Air I can see why you would have come away wanting better. The Pro machines are indeed a clear step up, and the larger 16" models are even better given the extra space they have to work with.
- blehn 3y ago
  Yep I was coming from an older Intel MBP, so the downgrade to the Air was dramatic enough to be irritating. But I agree, the sound engineering in the Air isn't bad in absolute terms, probably even pretty good... just not close to the Pros.
justin66 3y ago
As an Air user who pretty passionately hates hearing a laptop fan, my wonderment at the quality of the Pro's audio would end the moment I heard that fan whine.
- spinningarrow 3y ago
  I haven’t heard the fan on my Pro turn on in _years_.
  - kirso 3y ago
    Isn't that the entire point of PRO?
- meatmanek 3y ago
  I've had a similar train of thought, based on my experience with earlier Macbooks -- that I would pick the Air over the Pro specifically because it does _not_ have a fan and therefore could never make fan noise. But like spinningarrow, I don't think I've ever heard the fan on my work-issued M1 Pro MBP.
- xcv123 3y ago
  The M series laptops do not have fan noise. I have a M1-Pro 16" (personal) and M2-Pro 16" (work) and never heard the fans.
jim180 3y ago
Although I'm still using Air with M1 chip and still love. However, that resolution thing, totally annoys me :(
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
vjerancrnjak 3y ago
This is also the case with Pro M1 Max. Font is very blurry. It's funny how they turn off "scaling/sharpening filter" when video is watched. I've tried a bunch of things to fix it and none of them worked. A 4K monitor I use works perfectly fine on Linux, but with Macbook Pro, even though resolution perfectly matches, it still has blurred font (the filter they apply completely changes the look of the font, even though I use the same one), everything just remains blurry and again, watching video disables it.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  What are you comparing the font rendering to? Linux/Windows? That's one of the things that pushed me to Mac from Linux: fonts finally looked nice. (This was around 2010.) I tried everything I could to get Linux to render decently but eventually gave up. I recognize that this is so much down to personal taste. If you prefer Windows-style ClearType to Mac's rendering, Mac (especially on a non-Retina screen) will look awful. If you like Mac's rendering, Windows tends to look awful at any resolution.
  - vjerancrnjak 3y ago
    Linux. When I put my face to the screen, Pro M1 Max is blurry, text is visibly smudged, both on my 4K monitor and the laptop display.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      I only have 20/15 vision, so my eyes aren't good enough to see the smudging on my 32" 4K monitor. On my laptop, I definitely can't see it. By any chance, do you have the display preferences to use a different resolution than the hardware's native dimensions?
eviks 3y ago
> It's some weird in-between resolution that creates aliasing on text and such yeah, the fact that such basics are still broken is the biggest scandal to me in these premium machines with so much tech progress otherwise
seuraughty 3y ago
So you can get the 0.5 resolution without text aliasing (which I agree is annoying) you just get a smaller viewing area. I keep hearing complaints about aliasing on the Air, and I can respect that since the default resolution causes it, but it is fixable at the expense of reduced viewing area.

by blehn 3y ago

princevegeta89 3y ago

The speakers on Pro are definitely audiophile range. To me the screen quality alone was enough to drive me away from Air.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
What's the Pro sweet spot currently for RAM/disk/screen? Edit: nvm, looks like the Air supports two external displays but the Pro only supports one.
- justusthane 3y ago
  - MacBook Pro with M3 chip = one external display - MacBook Pro with M3 Pro chip = two external displays - MacBook Pro with M3 Max chip = four external displays Given that I would personally go for the M3 Pro with 18GB memory, but it depends on your needs of course.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    This is helpful, thank you!
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/04/14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-display-support/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/04/14-inch-m3-macbook-pro-multi-...
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Lets not gulp down the koolaid. The speakers on the pro are nice for a laptop but thats it, they are nice for a laptop. A basic bluetooth speaker laps it. Honestly they are balanced poorly and very “boomy” where I feel like I need to turn the volume up more than I have to just to start to discern spoken words from a sort of mumbly bassy sound.

carlesfe 3y ago

I have an Air and I felt like its speakers were pretty decent, but my wife bought a Pro and they're just incredible. Sometimes I hear her watching some movie or show a few rooms away, and I can never know if she's watching it on the TV or on the Pro just by the audio alone. Those speakers do fill the room, and them some.

mattbrewsbytes 3y ago

Do a lot of folks actively watch media content on laptops these days? I have never really watched more than short content on that form factor. I like a bigger screen and a remote, watching anything like a movie on a laptop feels klunky.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
You’d think it feels small but go ahead and sit in front of your tv and pull out your laptop. In terms of effective size from where I have the tv and the laptop, the laptop screen is bigger in my field of view. 40 inch tv too, no slouch.
penjelly 3y ago
anecdotally i know of people who bring their laptops to bed for tv/movies
LUmBULtERA 3y ago
Yeah... My wife adamantly opposes a TV in the bedroom, but watching on my laptop is not a problem =/.
- ngrilly 3y ago
  I’m exactly like your wife :)

whynotminot 3y ago

I'm curious what your comparison point was for the audio quality of the MacBook Air. In the Windows world, I rarely if ever come across a laptop where the speakers weren't clearly last in precedence for engineering and BOM consideration. Just astoundingly bad sound quality accepted as normal in the Windows laptop world, even in supposedly premium machines. In comparison, even the least impressive MacBook Air speakers are good. But if you were coming from another MacBook Pro when evaluating the Air I can see why you would have come away wanting better. The Pro machines are indeed a clear step up, and the larger 16" models are even better given the extra space they have to work with.

blehn 3y ago
Yep I was coming from an older Intel MBP, so the downgrade to the Air was dramatic enough to be irritating. But I agree, the sound engineering in the Air isn't bad in absolute terms, probably even pretty good... just not close to the Pros.

justin66 3y ago

As an Air user who pretty passionately hates hearing a laptop fan, my wonderment at the quality of the Pro's audio would end the moment I heard that fan whine.

spinningarrow 3y ago
I haven’t heard the fan on my Pro turn on in _years_.
- kirso 3y ago
  Isn't that the entire point of PRO?
meatmanek 3y ago
I've had a similar train of thought, based on my experience with earlier Macbooks -- that I would pick the Air over the Pro specifically because it does _not_ have a fan and therefore could never make fan noise. But like spinningarrow, I don't think I've ever heard the fan on my work-issued M1 Pro MBP.
xcv123 3y ago
The M series laptops do not have fan noise. I have a M1-Pro 16" (personal) and M2-Pro 16" (work) and never heard the fans.

jim180 3y ago

Although I'm still using Air with M1 chip and still love. However, that resolution thing, totally annoys me :(

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

vjerancrnjak 3y ago

This is also the case with Pro M1 Max. Font is very blurry. It's funny how they turn off "scaling/sharpening filter" when video is watched. I've tried a bunch of things to fix it and none of them worked. A 4K monitor I use works perfectly fine on Linux, but with Macbook Pro, even though resolution perfectly matches, it still has blurred font (the filter they apply completely changes the look of the font, even though I use the same one), everything just remains blurry and again, watching video disables it.

kstrauser 3y ago
What are you comparing the font rendering to? Linux/Windows? That's one of the things that pushed me to Mac from Linux: fonts finally looked nice. (This was around 2010.) I tried everything I could to get Linux to render decently but eventually gave up. I recognize that this is so much down to personal taste. If you prefer Windows-style ClearType to Mac's rendering, Mac (especially on a non-Retina screen) will look awful. If you like Mac's rendering, Windows tends to look awful at any resolution.
- vjerancrnjak 3y ago
  Linux. When I put my face to the screen, Pro M1 Max is blurry, text is visibly smudged, both on my 4K monitor and the laptop display.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I only have 20/15 vision, so my eyes aren't good enough to see the smudging on my 32" 4K monitor. On my laptop, I definitely can't see it. By any chance, do you have the display preferences to use a different resolution than the hardware's native dimensions?

eviks 3y ago

> It's some weird in-between resolution that creates aliasing on text and such yeah, the fact that such basics are still broken is the biggest scandal to me in these premium machines with so much tech progress otherwise

seuraughty 3y ago

So you can get the 0.5 resolution without text aliasing (which I agree is annoying) you just get a smaller viewing area. I keep hearing complaints about aliasing on the Air, and I can respect that since the default resolution causes it, but it is fixable at the expense of reduced viewing area.