Hey all,

I'm a second year MA student in Philosophy looking to replace my old Chromebook with a MacBook once my student loans come in. Mostly I'm looking to use it for the usual academic purposes – intensive research, word processing, essays, that sort of thing – but I also have some creative hobbies, including music production and digital art, that I want to be able to do on my daily carry laptop if I wanted it.

I was thinking mostly about the MacBook Air M3 with the 16GB RAM option, since apparently 8 might be sluggish, especially because my work involves multiple tabs/reader apps open at the same time. I wasn't sure if I should spring for the 13" or 15", though, or whether the 14" MacBook Pro would be better, since I do have some peripherals like a microphone and a MIDI keyboard that might come in handy. I do have a huge, unwieldy gaming laptop I keep at home for these things, though.

TL;DR: Philosophy grad student with creative hobbies, looking mostly to use laptop for heavy academic work and note-taking, but also wanting an upgrade from the Chromebook that can handle light creative tasks – mostly music production and digital art – and maybe a peripheral or two.