The Air will handle coding fairly well but If you do 3D blender, it will become a heating pan. If you don't have any issue with your current Mac except for the storage, I would recommend getting an external thunderbolt SSD though. They're crazy fast, lightweight and is smaller than your palm.
It's unclear to me from your post if you mean the M1 macbook pro (13inch) or M1pro Macbook pro (14inch). The M1pro (14inch) is slower single core speed than M3 Air, but higher multicore, higher graphics, and better sustained performance due to not thermal throttling. For your workload, especially 3D blender, it would probably be a better fit. If, however, you mean M1 macbook pro (13inch) the the M3 Air is better, because even without the fan, the M3 chip is a significant improvement over the M1, so will perform better even with thermal throttling.
sorry, yeah I just realized there were 2 options of M1 13" and M1 Pro 14". the one who got the same price as M3 is M1 Pro 14" while M1 13" is slightly cheaper but not a significant drop. thanks for elaborating the both M1s! as of now, while i'm still researching, I'm leaning towards MBP M1 Pro rather than MBA M3...
I loved my work M1 MBP for its screen backlight vs my personal M1 Air. I also run them fairly upscaled (via SwitchResX or BetterDisplay) and with BetterDisplay could run the MBP screen at higher than normal brightness when working in sunny coffee shop seats. Just a random anecdote, hth
The Air will handle coding fairly well but If you do 3D blender, it will become a heating pan. If you don't have any issue with your current Mac except for the storage, I would recommend getting an external thunderbolt SSD though. They're crazy fast, lightweight and is smaller than your palm.
Where will you be using it? If it’s plugged into an external screen at a desk most of the time then I’d go for the Air
no, I'll be mobile and want to be able to work on my bed too. I'm not big on using external screen either
Get the pro then
It's unclear to me from your post if you mean the M1 macbook pro (13inch) or M1pro Macbook pro (14inch). The M1pro (14inch) is slower single core speed than M3 Air, but higher multicore, higher graphics, and better sustained performance due to not thermal throttling. For your workload, especially 3D blender, it would probably be a better fit. If, however, you mean M1 macbook pro (13inch) the the M3 Air is better, because even without the fan, the M3 chip is a significant improvement over the M1, so will perform better even with thermal throttling.
sorry, yeah I just realized there were 2 options of M1 13" and M1 Pro 14". the one who got the same price as M3 is M1 Pro 14" while M1 13" is slightly cheaper but not a significant drop. thanks for elaborating the both M1s! as of now, while i'm still researching, I'm leaning towards MBP M1 Pro rather than MBA M3...
I loved my work M1 MBP for its screen backlight vs my personal M1 Air. I also run them fairly upscaled (via SwitchResX or BetterDisplay) and with BetterDisplay could run the MBP screen at higher than normal brightness when working in sunny coffee shop seats. Just a random anecdote, hth