System question

[The_Traveler]

Recently I have been oscillating between two living locations, 500 miles apart. We usually stay for weeks to months at either one. I keep a large monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc at each one and travel with a MacBook Pro and two external drives (used for time machine and daily backup). 
Two issues are causing me to rethink this:
  The weight of the laptop is annoying and tiresome
  We are trying to find an additional home about 1200 miles away and will have to fly rather than drive.
I get a great deal of pleasure out of working on my photos and want to have them available wherever I am.


I’m trying to minimize what I must carry with me and could use some advice or suggestions.


Are any of the MacBook Air models powerful enough to edit with LR or PS?
(I don’t edit videos)
Are external SSDs fast enough to hold and serve catalog and picture files?


TIA,


Lew

[PeterN]

This video may be helpful to you:

https://youtu.be/8g8-R5RNV0g

[Ashlandish]

Nasim Mansurov's from Photography Life reviewed the Apple MacBook Air with Apple’s M1 Silicon chip:

https://photographylife.com/reviews/apple-macbook-air-m1

[Ann]

Perhaps a smaller MBPro would be the answer?

I have been using a 13-inch MBP for a number of years now. They are really very little heavier than the "Airs" and are much more capable.

My MBP 2013 machine finally died last year so I have been using the better of the two models of the MBP 2020  (the one with four ports) since then. It is light, compact and powerfully fast and it travels with me everywhere — I really never leave home without it.

There is now the new M range from Apple which are reported to be very fast but I have had no experience with them.

I have extra HDD and SSD external drives and they are reliable and excellent for back-ups or for providing extra HD space — and they are also very small and pocketable.

Lr is greedier for HD storage space  than Ps but a 500GB SSD should work nicely for either.