MacBook in bed: M1 Air vs. M1 Pro with fans disabled

I work in bed a lot, and I'm undecided between the MacBook M1 Air vs. Pro. I have heard that fans in the bed will cause my MacBook to collect more internal dust. I’m not even sure how to determine if my bed has a lot of dust compared to other offices.

How can I research if having a fan/blower is better or worse in a generic environment?

Think different.

After surgery I needed some recovery time at home, so I had to use a rolling table that cantilevered over my bed for a few weeks. Amazon has a top 100 rolling & over-bed tables list to choose from.

One model (#92) actually looks like it can hold an iMac or perhaps even an external monitor and a laptop:

One added benefit is a real table capable of holding meals, books, and other essentials. Hot liquids are best consumed from a travel mug with an auto-closing top. Trust me.

I like IconDaemons approach, but there are many reasons you would not want to do that. Therefore I am going to give an alternative answer.

In short: I would recommend the MBA over the MBP for several reasons:

• no/minimal dust build-up
• lighter
• cheaper
• no moving parts, less risk of hardware failure
• quiet, no fan sound at all
• minimal performance difference

The only real technical difference between the two machines is active cooling with a fan on the MBP compared to the MBA. This difference implies the major differences mentioned above, which are all positive, except for the performance difference. Yet, if you compare the two MacBooks, this difference is very small and only occurs after long and heavy workloads:

Only after ~10 minutes under full load the MBA experiences thermal throttling. In my opinion, most users even considering such a laptop do not need the higher performance after long workloads.

Considering the battery on the MBA already lasts more than a work-day (and it actually lasts this long, not only in tests), I'd argue you will rarely need the longer battery life on the MBP.

Now lets get to your questions:

Is it true that the Air without fans would be more bed-friendly than the Pro with fans?

In my opinion: Yes, due to the multiple reasons mentioned above.

If it is true, would disabling the Pro fans while in bed make it essentially function and relatively painlessly throttle like the Air?

Looking past the technical difficulties and the fact that that's not recommended, the answer would most likely be yes.

• However, what do you gain in doing so? This would basically make the MBP a more expensive MBA, yet still with fan intakes allowing dust to get inside.

Note: Someone using a laptop in bed is most likely not going to edit videos in FPC X, bounce huge Audio composition in Logic Pro X, test large iOS projects/Apps in Xcode,... and therefore not really gain anything from the MBPs higher performance under sustained load.

I know that the MBP also has slightly better speakers, a slightly brighter display (what do you care in bed?), better mics, but in the end, I don't think these small things are that important.

Here is a list of videos/articles comparing the two machines:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFLf1Cbckl4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnU5FDeH0yw
• https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/23/apple-m1-hands-on-comparison-macbook-air-vs-macbook-pro-vs-mac-mini/

I have worked as a repair technician for several years and the variance in people’s air quality and cleanliness is so much more a factor than whether the Mac has blowers or fans.

In general, there’s clear signs of overheating whether the issue is airflow, ambient temperature or lack of convection in the case - so get the Mac you want and need. Get fanless if you prefer quiet and thin or with blowers if you think you’ll do CPU intensive tasks for 15+ minutes and run into a situation where active cooling will delay thermal throttling.

Where you use the machine will be unlikely to make or break this buying decision in my experience and you’ll need to manage dust for reasons of screen quality and keyboard function well before you get clogged internals in most cases. You’ll know you need to have a technician service a computer due to dust and that’s not generally a large expense if you must use a computer in an environment that requires cleaning. Your lungs are more a concern to me than the hardware.

The only time I would recommend fanless is if there is tobacco smoke and tar in the air - that dramatically accelerates accumulation of fine particulates and can require expensive cleaning in less than a decade of use.