So, this is what I just bought for

myself to use as my own personal laptop

for the next 5 years or so. It's the

15-in MacBook Air, and it's also not the

base model, either. I got a couple of

specific upgrades, and I also got an

amazing discount. And in this video, I'm

going to go through my decision process,

you know, why I chose the 15-in version

of the Air, why I upgraded the RAM to

specifically 24 GB and the SSD to 1 TB,

and why I didn't want the more expensive

MacBook Pro. And also, what I would do

differently now that Apple has just

increased the price of all of their

MacBooks, because maybe you are looking

to buy a new MacBook right now, as well,

and maybe you'll find some of this

helpful. Okay, so let's start with the

screen size. Now, the most important

thing for me was that I wanted the

largest possible screen I could get, but

without sacrificing portability or

productivity. Now, one of my biggest

issues with the 13-in MacBook Air was

that the screen was just too small and

cramped for me, and it actually really

affected my productivity. I found it

harder to have two apps open side by

side, and a lot of the apps I use have

lots of small UI elements [music] off to

the side and a main viewing window in

the middle, and it's just easier to do

that on a larger screen. Not to mention,

some websites just feel way less cramped

on a larger screen due to the way the

website's UI scales. Salesforce is one

that comes to mind for me, personally.

Now, the next screen size up from the

13-in Air is the 14-in Pro. And look, I

found that helped a little bit, but when

I then moved to the 15-in Air, I noticed

a massive difference. It felt very

similar, actually, to the 16-in MacBook

Pro, but much more portable, of course.

So, UI elements scaled better,

side-by-side multitasking was easier,

even things like Excel, like I noticed I

would just get a few more columns and

rows versus the 13-in Air, or, you you

websites, for example, they would just

show more text at the bottom before I

would have to scroll down. I could also

fit more notion or click up tasks at a

time, etc. I genuinely just felt more

productive on the larger 15-in screen.

Also, I played around with scaling and

found that I could switch the scaling to

the smallest possible option to maximize

available screen space, and I could

still easily read text on that 15-in

screen. Now, to get this larger MacBook

screen, I had two options: the 15-in Air

or the 16-in MacBook Pro. Well, firstly,

the 16-in Pro is significantly more

expensive. You know, I could only buy it

with the more premium M5 Pro chip, which

was like three grand, way out of my

budget,

and was just way beyond what I wanted to

spend on my laptop. I've also used one

before on this channel, and it is

deceptively heavy and bulky,

significantly more so than the 14-in

Pro. Like, I actually had trouble

fitting it in the laptop sleeve of some

bags. There's really no comparison in

terms of portability between the 15-in

Air and the 16-in Pro. The Pro is just

like carrying around a brick, and the

15-in Air is really no less portable

than a 13-in Air in my experience. But,

of course, I get the extra two inches of

screen, and two inches is a lot. At

least, that's what my wife tells me. I

also just wasn't interested in a MacBook

Pro in general, either the 14-in or

16-in versions. Now, some people might

say, "Well, you know, what you paid for

the Air is pretty close to the MacBook

Pro. Why not just get that instead? The

Pro has better ports, you know, that

120-Hz ProMotion screen, better

performance." The simple answer is that

I just don't need most of that extra

stuff. Like, my goal was to keep the

laptop as portable as possible while

having as large of a screen as possible.

For example, the additional ports on the

MacBook Pro, yeah, look kind of annoying

not having them on the air, but I don't

use SD cards or need HDMI capability

that often. Even if I had the Pro with

all those extra ports, I'd still need to

carry a dongle just in case I needed a

USB A port anyway. The screen though is

something I do prefer on the Pro, and if

I could change one thing about the Air,

it would probably be this. It uses mini

LED and just you know, looks a little

bit nicer, but that 120 Hz ProMotion is

preferable to 60 Hz. But I honestly

don't mind the 60 Hz screen on the Air.

Like I spend most of my time looking at

static stuff on the screen, like text.

Uh and if I'm consuming content on

YouTube or Netflix, it plays back at 30

to 60 FPS anyway. And I also realized

that if I'm doing like serious

productive work, I'm usually at a desk

where I have the option of using a high

refresh rate monitor if I want to. So

yes, uh I do prefer 120 Hz ProMotion,

but not enough to sway me away from the

Air. Now, something that has helped a

lot with my productivity is trying to

use voice-to-text instead of just typing

everything. I find that I can quickly

reply to messages easier or just, you

know, ramble for 30 seconds and get a

usable AI prompt or quickly reply to an

email. Now, I tried using Apple's

built-in dictation feature, but it would

constantly get it wrong and I'd have to

correct it, which kind of defeats the

purpose of voice dictation, right? Which

is where the sponsor for this section of

the video comes in, Whisper Flow. Now,

not only is Whisper Flow accurate,

getting uncommon names or technical

terms for example correct, but it

requires almost no editing. Here's an

example of a shopping list I dictated

using Apple's built-in dictation versus

Whisper Flow. Plus, it gets better over

time because Whisper Flow learns what I

say and I can manually add unique words

to my personal dictionary. Taking it a

step further, and this is something that

saves me a ton of time. I can actually

create text templates and simply say the

name of the template and everything is

instantly pasted in a message or email

reply. Plus, WhisperFlow works in any

app with no setup or integrations and is

synced cross-platform, so also works on

my iPhone and my PC. So, if you're

interested, use my link in the video

description and pinned comment and use

promo code created to get 1 month of

WhisperFlow Pro for free. Okay, so

moving on. Now, the reason I wasn't

interested in a more powerful processor

like the M5 Pro is that the base M5 chip

is now so powerful and capable that I

realized I really don't need anything

more, right? Like the M5 is

significantly more powerful than

previous versions like the M2 or the M3,

for example. So much so that I can now

do those more like demanding things on

it that would up until now usually

require the more powerful like Pro

series of chips. I currently run a

marketing agency, so I spend a lot of

time in Photoshop. Sometimes I make

custom stuff from scratch. Sometimes

I'm, you know, modifying Claude design

templates as well. I also do some video

editing here and there, stepping in for

clients when our editor can't meet a

deadline or for, you know, this YouTube

channel, of course. Now, those aren't

super demanding on their own, but when

I've got like 30 or 40 browser tabs open

across multiple browsers,

Claude running, Photoshop, DaVinci

Resolve, ClickUp, Slack, and the mail

app open and I'm flicking between all of

them at once,

that is when I really notice the less

capable Apple silicon chips start to

struggle. Also, fun fact, the 15-in

MacBook Air automatically comes with

that $100 optional GPU upgrade,

increasing the GPU cores from 8 to 10.

Now, I did find a marginal benefit to

this. Like GPU-intensive tasks will

perform slightly better. Um but only

those short kind of like bursty things

that take under a few minutes to

complete, which I rarely do anyway. So,

why did I choose to pay significantly

more money on top of the base model for

a larger SSD and more RAM? Well, for the

SSD, you know, I was okay with 512 GB,

but 1 TB just gives me way more

flexibility and means, more importantly,

I can finally ditch my external drive

95% of the time, which quite frankly, I

am sick and tired of carrying around and

it's just constantly hanging out of the

side of my Mac. And for that reason

alone, at the time, so prior to these

price increases, uh I was happy to pay

what worked out to be about 150 US

dollars after the discount for double

the SSD size. With 1 TB, I can store all

of my important files and apps directly

on the Mac and still have about 6-700 GB

free for stuff like heaps of movies when

I travel or a couple of games or a

couple hundred GB of raw footage for a

client project, for example. My decision

to upgrade the RAM was similar. Um I

found that 16 GB is actually fine for

me, like it's totally usable, but 24 GB

again just gives me more flexibility.

Like I constantly switch between

multiple apps and I don't want to have

to close a client project in Photoshop,

for example, to free up more RAM. I just

want to leave it open and ready to go,

right? And not to mention with how

capable AI is becoming these days, I may

implement some kind of like AI agent

running locally on my Mac to help with

some repetitive tasks. I do use Claude

quite frequently already, so I do want

that extra RAM headroom. You can kind of

see what my workflow looks like here. Uh

I've actually recently switched from

Firefox and Chrome to 100% just using

Safari. Uh now, Safari has had a few

updates recently, and I've been kind of

finding the overall experience is much

better than it used to be. So, let me

know if you want me to make a separate

video on that. The advantage of Safari

is that it uses way less RAM than

Chrome. So, I have more available for

all of my other apps on top of the extra

RAM I bought. So, uh right now I use

Mail, Proton Mail, Photoshop, Claw,

Whisper Flow, Slack, Notion, and

ClickUp. Uh that's my usual stack during

the day. You can see I'm using about 21

GB of RAM with all those apps open. Uh

almost no swap memory, and memory

pressure is green. In fact, if I close

Photoshop, I'm only using about 18 and

1/2 GB, so plenty of room for additional

apps. And spending more and getting 32

GB of RAM would have been just a

complete waste of money for me. And

price is a good topic to get into, as

well, because, as you probably know,

Apple recently increased the prices for

all MacBook lineups due to the

skyrocketing cost of RAM. And also, fun

fact, flash memory, so the stuff that

makes up your SSDs. So, the MacBook Air

has increased by 200 US dollars. Now,

rumors of a price increase had been

circulating for a few months prior to me

making this video. Um and was actually a

part of the reason why I pulled the

trigger on my MacBook Air. Um I actually

got this about 10 days before the price

increase, which was pure luck. Um and

was also able to get my configuration

for 9% off on Amazon. Brand new, as

well, so it wasn't refurbished or used

or anything, um which saved me $150

versus buying it from Apple, bringing

the price to 1549.

Now, unfortunately, that same

configuration is now 1999

brand new from Apple. Um although, you

know, there will be more sales in the

future on resellers like Amazon or Best

Buy. And even with that recent price

increase, I still would have bought it.

Although, I would have almost certainly

ditched the 1 TB SSD upgrade and just

stuck with 512 GB. That would save me

$300 and bring the price closer to what

I was willing to pay. But yeah, overall,

the experience with this thing over the

last roughly 2 weeks since I've been

using it has been awesome. Like it's

completely resolved all of the

complaints I had with the smaller 13-in

MacBook Air. And I also get this huge

screen size, which has had, as I said

before, a noticeable impact on my

productivity. Yes, it has some

compromises versus the Pro. Yes, it's

not cheap, especially compared to say a

13-in base model MacBook Air. It's just

kind of like right in the middle of

everything. Like it's

kind of like that Goldilocks and the

Three Bears. Like, you know, this

porridge is too hot, this porridge is

too cold, but the one in the middle is

just right. That's kind of the best way

to explain this laptop for me.