There is no one answer that will work for everybody. If you have an M1 MacBook Air, and you are already happy with it, I would stick with that unless you really value the new design and MagSafe.

“The M2 chip (internally known as “Staten”),” the report notes, “is based on the A15 chip. Although it has an eight-core CPU just like M1, M2 will bring a more powerful 10-core GPU.” ...

Overall, the M2 GPU appears to be more power efficient – but if you want to use the full power, then it’ll use more power than the M1. Apple is touting two performance figures for the M2’s GPU.

The new $1,199 MacBook Air M2 is a near-perfect MacBook. It delivers record-breaking power and a wealth of smart quality-of-life upgrades, all packed into a completely new (and gorgeous) design ...

Grid Legends runs well on all models, with M1 achieving stable 50 FPS, M2 at 57 FPS, and M3 at 60 FPS on medium settings at 1080p. Minecraft shows CPU-bound performance differences, with the M2 ...

Apple says that the M2 uses 20 billion transistors, a 25 percent increase from M1, and that it boasts 100GB/s of memory bandwidth; this should benefit integrated GPU performance, among other tasks ...

The M1 design might be outdated, and the M2 might “actually” be thinner on paper. But, purely from a visual standpoint, I think the M1 looks 100x better than the M2.