Is a MacBook Pro worth it for casual everyday use, or is the Air enough?

The MacBook Air should be more than powerful enough for that. It has excellent battery life, is completely silent, and handles normal everyday tasks easily. The Pro only really becomes worthwhile for sustained heavy workloads, such as frequent video editing or 3D work. The main compromise with the Air is its lower-refresh-rate display, but many people are perfectly happy with it.

For casual use, I’d choose the Air and then decide between the screen sizes. The Pro’s extra performance probably won’t make a noticeable difference for browsing, streaming, and documents. A larger Air screen may be more useful than paying for a Pro, especially if you want to see more information at once.

The Pro’s advantages are its brighter and smoother display, better speakers, additional ports, and active cooling. The fans help it maintain performance during long, demanding workloads, while the fanless Air can slow down when it gets hot. For your use, though, those benefits are mostly luxuries rather than necessities, so the price and extra weight usually aren’t justified.

A Pro can still make sense if you value a larger SSD, more memory for lots of browser tabs, better speakers, or want to keep the laptop for many years. I bought one for those reasons and it has held up very well, but none of them were essential. Also remember that the Air has only two USB ports, so you may need an adapter for some accessories or external displays.