Suggestions for a new Macbook

The decision may come down to what you want in the way of portability, expansion ports, and display support. The 13" M3 MacBook Air is easily the least expensive and most portable option. Once you go up to a larger screen, the 15" M3 MacBook Air and 14" M4 MacBook Pro (plain M4 chip) are a lot closer to each other in weight and cost (for a given amount of RAM and SSD space).

A 13" or 15" M3 MacBook Air will

• Have two Thunderbolt ports, and a MagSafe 3 port – but no HDMI port or SDXC card slot
• Be able to drive one external display with the lid open – two (with limitations) with the lid closed
• Have 16 or 24 GB of RAM

A 14" M4 MacBook Pro with a plain M4 chip will

• Have three (*) Thunderbolt ports, a MagSafe 3 port, a HDMI port, and a SDXC slot
• Be able to drive two external displays with the lid open (*)
• Have 16, 24, or 32 GB of RAM
• Have a mini-LED backlit screen with support for playing prerecorded HDR video content

The two items with (*) next to them are "firsts" for any Mac notebook with a plain M-series chip.

Birkhoff92 wrote:

Many thanks , so I suppose that M3 MB Air not have mini-LED display right ?

As far as as I know, among Apple-Silicon-based notebooks,

• None of the 13" or 15" MacBook Airs, or 13" MacBook Pros, have mini-LED-backlit displays. They have LED backlighting, but not the mini-LEDs that allow for local dimming zones.
• All of the 14" and 16" MacBook Pros, even those with plain M3 or M4 chips, have mini-LED-backlit displays. Whether the mini-LEDs help with anything other than watching HDR movie content, I'm not sure.

The 14"/16" displays have somewhat higher pixel densities (PPI) than the 13"/15" ones. If you are using default settings, text will be smaller on the screen of a 14"/16" MBP than on the screen of a 13"/15" MacBook Air. Since your eyes are sensitive to physical size, you might find yourself wanting to crank Displays Settings one notch in the direction of Larger Text.

I’m certainly no expert but I don’t believe the M3 is much of a huge leap. I would probably wait for the M4. I have a Mac Studio with the M2Max and 64GB RAM. This cost me about $A5000 about 1 year ago. Now the new Mac Mini to the same spec is only about $A3700 and it probably exports faster. I am really impressed.I would seriously question if you really need to edit on the fly. I’d keep your MacBook and get the Mac Mini with 32GB Ram. I use a Samsung T7 SSD ext drive (the T9 offers no benefit for Macs) Before you buy the DR Studio licence (you’ll definitely benefit) check out the BlackMagicDesign website for free Studio Licence offers when you buy the Speed Editor.