Which Macbook with an Apple Silicon chip should I take?

Question

macbook

Good day to all! The owners of the latest Macbooks on the M1 chip respond: I just can’t decide what to take. I am considering buying Air and Pro with identical characteristics (16 Gb RAM, 1 Tb SSD, 8 core graphics chip). Nowhere can I find information about how different the frequencies of the chips are - everywhere they write that on Air the frequency can be underestimated due to the lack of cooling, although in synthetics the chips seem to be identical. And the most important question: Touch Bar. I'm not sure I need it. Now I'm sitting on Pro 2015, before that I had Pro 2013, so I have no experience with the Touch Bar. However, there are suspicions that this miracle of engineering thought will at least not work for me. It's not that I often use the F1-F12 keys, but Esc is a must-have for me (hello Vim). Surely there is someone here with experience on the Touch Bar, tell me, how is it for you? Does it make sense to overpay for a firmware, given that they are almost identical to Air in terms of characteristics.

PS The software I use most often: Terminal, VS Code, Atom, PyCharm, GoLand, Anaconda Navigator, Telegram. Does the Touch Bar provide any advantage when using this software?

Answer 1

by and large they are the same. differences in details (battery, screen, sound, touchbar), the importance / necessity of which only you can appreciate.
Personally, the touchbar does not interfere with me, and esc was returned to the keyboard.

Answer 2

Used both laptops.
From myself I can say the following - Air is not taken seriously (purely psychologically). Pro works longer: a maximum of 15 hours was (Air did not work more than 10). I didn't notice any significant difference in performance.
TouchBar: I am not familiar with all applications from the TS list, but I will assume that when using Fn keys in work, it is better to abandon the touch buttons. I almost don't use it myself => I'm very happy with the presence of the TouchBar