Is the M1 MacBook Air still good enough for Lightroom?

Regarding the MacBook Air: Yes. The M1 is still plenty for Lightroom unless you’re editing huge batches of high-res RAW files all day. The M2 is only 10–15% faster in exports, and Lightroom doesn’t rely heavily on GPU acceleration for most edits. The real bottleneck is RAM, and both support 16GB, which is the sweet spot. For hobbyists and semi-pros, the M1 does the job without making you wait.