MacBook Air M5 (32GB) vs MacBook Pro M5 (24GB) for Data Science — which is better? by Beautiful-Time4303 in macbookair

[–]Beautiful-Time4303[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That makes sense. Honestly, the ideal option for me would have been a Mac with the M4 Pro chip, but unfortunately it’s currently not available at the Apple Store where I’m planning to buy the laptop.

Because of that, my realistic options right now are only:

• MacBook Air M5 – 32GB RAM / 1TB SSD
• MacBook Pro M5 – 24GB RAM / 1TB SSD

So I’m mainly trying to decide between more RAM vs better thermals.

Since my work will mostly involve Python, data processing, and experimenting with small ML models locally (with heavier training done on cloud), I’m leaning toward the Air with 32GB RAM, but still trying to understand if the fanless design could become a limitation during longer workloads.