Straggling to buy MacBook Air or Pro, which chip should buy? M2 or M3? How much ram needed? 16gb or 24gb?

M2 and M3 MacBook Airs have

• 8, 16, or 24 GB of RAM – as on all Mac notebooks released after 2012, this is non-expandable, so be sure to get as much as you need. Adobe recommends at least 16 GB of RAM for the Photoshop, Lightroom, and Lightroom Classic applications, and I suspect the story may be similar with other Creative Suite products
• Two multi-purpose USB-C (USB, USB4, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt) expansion ports
• MagSafe 3 charging port (you can charge either over USB-C or over MagSafe 3)
• Headphone jack
• No HDMI port or SDXC card slot. You can get USB-C to HDMI adapters and adapter cables, and there are some some portable USB card readers that are about the same size as a USB flash drive.
• Single-core CPU speed is about the same on the M3 as on the M3 Pro and the M3 Max – provided that you have enough RAM for the workload you are running
• 13" M3 MacBook Air weighs 2.7 pounds (1.24 kg); 15 M3 MacBook Air weighs 3.3 pounds (1.51 kg)

If you can live with one external monitor (I do – even though I'm using a Mac Studio that could drive five monitors), a M2 or M3 MacBook Air with 16+ GB of RAM could be a very capable machine. (I would not recommend going with a M1 MacBook Air at this point, since those lack the MagSafe 3 and better sound systems of the M2 and M3 models – and are closer to the point at which hardware repair service will no longer be available.)

I would recommend supplementing the MacBook Air with a large (27" – 32") external monitor, keyboard, and mouse for use while you are at home. The 27" Apple 5K and 32" Apple 6K displays are very crisp, but given their price, you may want to go with a good third-party 27" 4K monitor instead.

M3 MacBook Pro adds

• Mini-LED backlit screen with support for playing prerecorded HDR video
• HDMI port
• SDXC card slot
• 14" M3 MacBook Pro weighs 3.4 pounds (1.55 kg)

In terms of raw computing power, the only thing that a "plain" M3 MacBook Pro has over the M3 MacBook Air would be a better cooling system. If you were pushing both notebooks hard for several minutes straight, the M3 MacBook Air would be forced to "throttle" (to manage waste heat) sooner than the M3 MacBook Pro would.

M3 Pro and M3 Max MacBook Pro add

• More CPU and GPU cores; more external display support (see Technical Specifications for details)
• M3 Max chip has more hardware video encoding and decoding engines (which might matter if you were doing a lot of video work and had applications that could take advantage of these engines)
• Option to order a machine with very large amounts of RAM
• Another multi-purpose USB-C (USB, USB4, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt) expansion port
• 14" M3 Pro and M3 Max MacBook Pros weigh 3.5 pounds (1.61 kg) and 3.6 pounds (1.62 kg), respectively
• 16" M3 Pro and M3 Max MacBook Pros weigh 4.7 pounds (2.14 kg) and 4.8 pounds (2.16 kg), respectively

Hi,

Adobe Suite software are RAM hangry applications, so if I were you, I would get 24GB with M3, though you should go to your local retail AppleStore or Apple Authorized Resellers and ask to support staff about your purpose for what to do with the MacBook Pro/Air there.

If you think you might ever want to use two external displays, that might argue for getting a 14” MacBook Pro with a M3 Pro or M3 Max chip.

MacBook Airs and Pros with a plain M3 chip only support two external displays when their lids are closed, and then, with limitations on Retina scaling modes available for a second 4K display.

Mac notebooks with plain M2 or M1 chips only support a single external display, even when their lids are closed.