I have worked in many companies that give MacBook Airs to their employees. Almost universally those employees complain about not having enough power to do their jobs.

One person tried to have tens of thousands of email in Outlook and complained it was slow. Yeah! I helped her delete and archive emails and then her performance was better. Another person complained that video was poor. Of course. The Air has a poor video cam and it doesn’t have enough processing power for many video apps like BlueJeans/Cisco Webex. Zoom is ok, but security problems are an issue currently.

Another problem that Airs have is that they have limited disk space. Most companies buy them to save money, but it also causes problems when they try to load apps like Adobe Creative Cloud. That isn’t a great combination. Yes it can be done, but practically speaking if you were try to use it for video it would be a challenge. It makes far more sense to buy a MacBook Pro since that is meant for professional use.

I get why people want a small light computer. I loved the Air I first got. I supported it during all its life and continue to support it now. It is a great machine when it is not asked to be used heavily. However working at home is a line that means that an Air is no longer the right choice for most people. An Air is good if you don’t collaborate with people but once you do, it just doesn’t have the CPU/memory/disk space that you need to use more demanding applications.

Its great if you find an Air perfect for use at home. It is great if you can use it and find it useful. I am not saying what all people should do. I am just trying to share what I have seen so that if people are considering an Air for working at home they have some perspective. A MacBook is only .3lbs more, and the 16inch MacBook Pro is 1.5 lbs heavier. Since most of the time it will be sitting on a desk if you can afford it get a MacBook Pro.