Once the new low-cost MacBook launches this week, buyers of portable Macs will face a choice between three ranges: the MacBook, the MacBook Air, and the MacBook Pro. For users with moderate demands - like amateur photographers editing modest 4K video or musicians doing multitrack audio work - the choice between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro is now more nuanced. Reviews of the new machine will clarify, but comparisons with older MacBook Air models already suggest the upcoming MacBook, powered by the A18 Pro chip, will perform admirably.

This smartphone-derived chip is remarkably similar to the M1, as benchmarks confirm, offering competitive multi-core performance that is neck-and-neck with Apple's previous silicon. The A18 Pro even leads in single-core performance and AI tasks like NPU tasks, making it a surprisingly capable core for a laptop. 8GB RAM is the new standard for the MacBook, a limitation compared to the M1 MacBook Air's 16GB, but the author's informal testing on an 8GB M1 Air found it still 'absolutely fine' for most tasks, suggesting the MacBook will be more than sufficient for many users. The key question remains: do you need the extra power and RAM of the MacBook Pro, or is the new MacBook's A18 Pro and 8GB RAM enough?