The M1 is still plenty for Lightroom.

Pretty much. The M2 is a little faster, but not enough to matter unless you’re editing huge batches of high-res RAW files all day.

The M1 MacBook Air already rips through Lightroom. I’ve edited thousands of images on mine — raw files from a Sony A7III, all the typical adjustments, some masking. It’s snappy. Exports are fast. You won’t sit there waiting.

The M2 gives you maybe a 10–15% bump in export speeds and slightly smoother scrolling through large libraries. The GPU is better, but Lightroom doesn’t lean that hard on GPU acceleration for most edits. The real bottleneck is usually RAM — and both support 16GB, which is the sweet spot.

If you’re a pro photographer cranking out hundreds of photos daily, the M2 might save you a few minutes. If you’re a hobbyist or even a semi-pro, the M1 does the job without making