Get a cheap Chromebook or whatever. Remote desktop into Mac Studio. Keep the $$$ in the wallet.

For high school level, you don’t necessarily exploit all the features in a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro would use.

An ipad with a keyboard would do the trick.

It’s not 500Gb/s HDD

but it ain’t 3000Gb/s either. Those SSDs are found only on 512GB models and up.

The 256GB/1500 Gb/s transfer speeds will be a device short lived if use it for anything other than surfing, productivity, checking emails.

If both of them are presented in front of you, you lift one up and weight the other, it’s immediate that the MBA is subjectively lighter.

But if one purchased the MBP without having touched the MBA, the weight is actually a non-issue. Its not an everyday occurrence to have access to both that it would make a true difference.

Just like how the display is very very close that it could be negligible, as to your point, the weight could be negligible too.

I was at the Apple Store today and gave these a test drive.

The 15" feels way more lighter, it’s a great size when closed, super thin. It’s the better choice if you the majority of your usage is surfing+light productivity work. Battery life is also a winner because it’s not as powerful with just 8 cores. I also love how there is absolutely no fans. Passive heatsink. Will throttle when you really push it.

The 14" definitely felt heaver, thicker. More powerful and I expect it to also not be as a long lasting battery because of the high refresh rate display, more CPU and GPU cores. It’s the better laptop if you are going to be doing more than just surfing+light productivity, and you are doing those tasks more often. Video editing, music production, xCode, I would classify as tasks that definitely take advantage of a MBP features. If those are those types of things one does daily, the weight and thickness and can totally be overlooked as the non pro M2 can struggle, I’ve read anecdotally. MBP also have the better heat dissipation as it has a cooling fan. You want power, you will get it. But also moving parts like a fan will be the first to go on a computer.

The displays are only 1" different. It was like a 50/50, no clear winner.

My personal pick is I chose the 15" simply because of the weight and how thin it is. I have way more powerful computers that I can RDP into. So the MBA serves as the perfect thin client.