By comparison, my 2014 MacBook Air—with its 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5-4260U processor and 8 GB of RAM—needed 2:40 to complete this encoding test. So one might argue that the new machine is indeed. The biggest advantage to solid state drives is speed. Solid state drives are by nature much faster than regular hard disk drives. The other advantage is power. Because solid state drives don't have any moving parts, they use much less power, which is why they are currently used is almost every MacBook (except the non-retina MacBook Pro).
I'd suggest you a) check out the technical specifications on both Machines and then also b) check out benchmark testing on both.
As a general observation, a fast i7 processor is best with that kind of app as well as lots of RAM (the new OS versions all require far more RAM and so does Adobe), so 16 GB would be a minimum.
And, a laptop is designed for portability, not necessarily processing power (unless it's a top model Macbook Pro).
Macbook Air Illustrator Performances 2019
Pick a model you're considering and check out the specs, then do the same with iMacs:
