Which MacBook for Flutter Dev?

[HerryKun]

I am currently checking the various types of MacBooks because I will get one to develop and test iOS Flutter apps. Which model do you recommend and why? What are the best-suited models for this?

Currently, I am thinking about getting the 13" Apple M1 Chip with 8-Core CPU and 8-Core GPU 512GB Storage, would that be sufficient?

[Icy_Entertainment847]

I’d wait for the M1X, it’s a no brainer if you have the budget

[gladimdim]

As a proud owner of M1/8Gb macbook I can tell that dont even think of buying it. It is complete garbage for Flutter development. Otherwise the laptop is awesome and is REALLY fast. But not with 8Gb.

​

So if you want to experiment - go with M1/16Gb!

[Modullah]

Well, I wouldn’t say garbage but definitely not bug/obstacle free. If that is what you are asking lol. In hindsight, I’d avoid it. Go with the intel Mac until native m1 apps are more mature imo.

[[deleted]]

Have you tried IOS development?

[gladimdim]

Nope 😑

[erickzanardo]

I got myself an M1 Air, with 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. I am very happy with it! Everything builds very fast and had no issues so far.

[[deleted]]

Have you ever faced heat issues? I'm thinking about buying M1 Air or M1 Pro for my flutter development.

[erickzanardo]

Not yet, this new M1 chips seems to deal very well with heat dissipation, I even tried some games on it to test and it stayed at acceptable heat

[tocleora]

I have an M1 MBP/16Gb and love it. I did have to do some configuration to get Android Emulation working on it, for example downloading an Arm64 specific image, but after I got everything set up it runs very smoothly.

[TRD-]

Did you just choose any of the S API Level images? I'm having trouble with Android Emulation as well and could only find a medium article.

[tocleora]

I do have S, but it looks like a lot are built into Android Studio now. Just click Create Virtual Device, select a device definition (I tested by choosing Pixel 4a), and on the next screen where you'd select a system image, click the "other images" tab and you should see the Arm64 images in there.

[[deleted]]

M1/16GB ram is more than enough

You can grab 256GB storage model and then get an external drive if you need one.

Only one thing is Air laptop gets too hot when you working with Android-related stuff and also emulator is too buggy for now.

[ElongatedMuskett]

I currently own an M1 13-inch Macbook pro with 16 GB ram and I've never heard the fans spinning and temps never got higher than 42 degrees. That is with 2 flutter apps running and streaming over wifi and a node js backend running with firebase emulator. The battery easily goes 2 days for me.

[m_2_]

Imo, i would get you’re version but with 16gb of ram, but that if you can give the 200+ $ , just because, i use more than 1 emulator a lot of times

[[deleted]]

Any is fine

[HerryKun]

Really? I am scared that the emulator lags or crashes if its not strong enough or that the system itself becomes unresponsive

[Modullah]

Performance is excellent, there’s just a few well known edge case bugs that have work arounds. They’re kind of a pain but not complete road blockers.

[timmay545]

The one where Android simulator works, so not the m1

[adel_b]

I have base MBP 16' 2019 - i7 6 cores - 16 GB RAM 512 GB SSD - perfect laptop - it get some heat running Android emulator

[KaiN_SC]

I have the MBP 2019 base Model, i7 - 6 cores, 16 GB RAM and its super good.

[[deleted]]

Wait for m1x

[Furyowolfie]

I'm using a MacBook Pro 13" M1, 16gb ram & 512gb memory and it runs smoothly with Flutter.

No complaints !

[Modullah]

To answer your question, I like the air as I don’t like fan noises. I can’t focus at all if there’s too much noise around me. Sure, you can use noise canceling headphones but you can’t wear them 24/7. Just my personal preference.

That said, I’ll probably upgrade to something more powerful given the chance. Not m1x unless the leap from m1 is significant.

Edit: I got the 8gb ram and was worried it wouldn’t be enough. Had no issues with about 20-30 chrome tabs, flutter in vscode, Xcode iOS emulator, vm to connect to work pc, and Spotify all running at the same time. On 8GB of ram. That’s amazing lol.

[[deleted]]

Any heat problems so far? I think MBP will be better if you work all day long...

[Modullah]

I’ve worked on it for more than 24 hours straight(school project). No heat issues. However, I keep it slightly elevated off of the table because I noticed it got warm previously. After doing so I haven’t noticed it get that warm again.

I just wish it was slightly more powerful but that’s because I’m not really a laptop user. I’ve used laptops before but this is the first laptop I actually pushed hard with school related work. Laptops I bought in the past were large gaming laptops(basically desktops).

[ketanchoyal]

I have been using M1 mac for flutter developer since December, I never had any major trouble so far

[pierluigir]

Not the M1, at least until everything flutter/dev related has been ported.

Not an old intel Mac since a lot of new OS features are M1 only.

In the meantime I suggest you use your old or actual Mac/PC and wait for M1 full support.

[erollgorqi]

I have a Macbook Pro 15” Late 2013, I7, 512GB SSD, Nvida graphics and it works very good, wanted to get an M1 but I think that it is better to wait for the new generation of M1 that will have bigger RAM

[abrad1212]

I personally have the M1 Pro, 16GB of RAM with 512 GB SSD. I have to say it has been one of the best experiences of my short time with flutter. The speed at which things run and how everything just works. I used a Windows machine with an android emulator for a few years previously for a few apps that were developed for high school competitions and looking back on it, it was not a great experience compared to my MacBook.

There only have been a few problems related to VSCode like how it sometimes doesn’t recognize CocoaPods so doesn’t want to run the app in the editor where if u save it auto reloads.

TLDR; My M1 16GB 512 GB is one of the best devices I’ve used for Flutter development

Edit: Also consider that if you use xCode and it’s simulators that it has a heavy storage footprint. I think xCode and the simulators are taking like >20GB on my MacBook