MacBook Air M2 overview (2022): Apple’s near-perfect Mac

The new MacBook Air is one among Apple’s most vital computer systems since Steve Jobs pulled the unique Air out of an envelope. It exhibits what’s doable when Apple builds an ultraportable solely round its cellular chips, as a substitute of lazily sticking them in previous laptop computer designs, like with the latest 13-inch MacBook Professional. The Air is impressively skinny and light-weight, nevertheless it additionally has an even bigger and higher display screen, an incredible set of audio system and a nifty MagSafe energy adapter. And because of Apple’s M2 chip, it is also far speedier than the final mannequin, a pc I known as “stunningly quick” only a year-and-a-half in the past. As soon as once more, Apple has set a brand new normal for ultraportables.

Earlier than I dive into what’s below the hood, I am going to simply say what we’re all considering: It is a beautiful pc! The Air’s trademark wedge design is gone – now, it is uniformly skinny from entrance to again. Apple principally repeated the PowerBook-esque design of the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Professional – extra rounded edges, a notch for the webcam – however squished it right into a case that measures simply 11.3 millimeters skinny and weighs 2.7 kilos. Whereas it is solely a tenth of a pound lighter than the final Air, it’s miles extra balanced, making it simpler to carry.

Once I picked up the MacBook Air for the primary time, it felt extra like an iPad with a built-in keyboard than a laptop computer. What’s humorous is that it is truly extra transportable than the 12.9-inch iPad Professional, which weighs about 3 kilos when mixed with its Sensible Keyboard. The iPad Professional has all the time been positioned as a futuristic ideally suited for actually transportable computing, nevertheless it seems it weighs the identical because the 13-inch MacBook Professional. As soon as once more, the standard Air wins out.

It is also good to see Apple providing a greater variety of finishes. Along with the standard house grey and silver, there is a brighter starlight case and a modern black midnight choice. I have been testing a starlight mannequin, and the best way the colour pops off of the aluminum all the time provides me a little bit of pleasure.

To be trustworthy, that sense of pleasure will be discovered nearly in every single place within the MacBook Air, like its new 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display screen. It is solely a 3rd of an inch bigger than earlier than, nevertheless it feels extra expansive and engrossing. It helps that Apple shaved off a little bit of bezel and likewise bumped up the brightness to 500 nits, which makes the Air far simpler to make use of open air.

For essentially the most half, the Liquid Retina display screen is on par with what we noticed on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Professionals – the one distinction is that it does not have ProMotion. I did not anticipate to see that prime refresh fee tech on a mainstream laptop computer, particularly after it did not arrive on the 13-inch MacBook Professional. However, at this level, it is one among the one issues maintaining the Air from being actually excellent. Possibly I am simply being grasping, however my eyes have been spoiled. I would like silky clean scrolling on each machine! I used to be additionally a bit dissatisfied by the brand new 1080p webcam. It packs in additional pixels than the earlier 720p cameras, nevertheless it nonetheless appears fairly drab and grainy.

At the least Apple managed to convey over its improved speaker expertise from the bigger MacBook Professionals. The Air incorporates a quad-speaker system with assist for Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos. And whereas I did not anticipate a lot from such a skinny system, the brand new audio setup sounds shockingly nice. It is sufficient to fill a small room with sound at max quantity with none distortion. There’s additionally a three-mic array to enhance video chat sound high quality, in addition to an ordinary 3.5mm jack. (I am positive there’s some fanatical Apple designer who needs to yank out the headphone jack to make the Air’s case even thinner, similar to they did with the iPad Professional. So take pleasure in it whilst you can!)

All of those upgrades could be spectacular on their very own, however what makes the MacBook Air actually shine is Apple’s new M2 chip. It does not utterly reshape the PC world, just like the M1 did, nevertheless it’s a good sequel. The M2 options 8 CPU cores and as much as 10 GPU cores, and Apple says it is round 18 % sooner for multithreaded efficiency. If you happen to go for the sooner GPU mannequin, you possibly can anticipate graphics speeds about 35 % sooner than the M1. Apple additionally doubled the M2’s reminiscence bandwidth and raised the utmost RAM to 24GB. That is most likely overkill for an Air, nevertheless it’s good nonetheless. There’s additionally {hardware} assist for ProRes encoding and decoding, however I would think about most video editors would go for extra highly effective MacBook Professionals.

Our overview unit was geared up with a 10-core GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, the identical as our 13-inch MacBook Professional tester. And, simply as I anticipated, the scores between each methods have been practically equivalent throughout benchmarks like GeekBench 5 and 3DMark Wild Life Excessive. There was a big distinction in Cinebench R21’s multi-threaded take a look at, however that wasn’t an enormous shock. The MacBook Air is a fan-less system, so its CPU needs to be throttled to maintain issues cool. The 13-inch MacBook Professional, however, has followers and a extra strong cooling setup, so it might probably deal with longer sustained workloads.

All of my testing made it clear that the MacBook Air is simply as quick because the 13-inch Professional for many duties. It even hit the identical 30fps common in Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s benchmark, which implies the sport would truly be playable on a loopy skinny ultraportable. However you may need to stay with a little bit of slowdown in the event you’re doing extra complicated work, like video enhancing or 3D rendering. For most individuals, I feel that is a good compromise given every thing else the MacBook Air has to supply. And in the event you’re an precise media skilled, you are still higher off with the 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Professional, as a substitute of the growing older 13-inch mannequin.

To not knock on that pc too a lot, however now that I’ve seen the Air in motion, I am much more baffled by the 13-inch Professional. The Air has the identical nice keyboard and tremendous clean trackpad. There is no annoying TouchBar, simply trusty perform keys. It even has extra ports! There are two USB-C ports, nevertheless it additionally incorporates a MagSafe connector for energy. Meaning you possibly can truly cost the MacBook Air with out utilizing up one among your valuable USB-C connections! Possibly Apple ought to have simply renamed this the MacBook Air Professional.

The 13-inch Professional does have a bigger battery, which helped it final 17 hours and 5 minutes in our benchmark. The Air, in the meantime, reached 16 hours and half-hour. Nonetheless, that is loads of time to final you past a full day of labor, and it is on par with different ultraportables like Dell’s XPS 13. Apple additionally has quite a lot of energy adapters to select from: one with two USB-C ports (for charging different gadgets) and a 67-watt adapter for quick charging.

The one draw back to the MacBook Air’s revamp is that it now begins at $1,199, $200 greater than the M1 mannequin. That older machine continues to be a good choice in the event you discover it on sale or refurbished, however in any other case I would say the M2 mannequin is totally price the additional value. Simply be ready for the value to rise shortly as you begin including further {hardware}. If you happen to wished to bump as much as our overview unit’s specs, you’d need to pay $1,899. Personally, I would say prioritize throwing in as a lot RAM and SSD storage as you possibly can. The M2 chip will nonetheless be very succesful with out the $100 improve for the extra highly effective GPU.

It’s exceptional to suppose how far the MacBook Air has come since 2008. It was once overpriced and underpowered, a testomony to Apple’s tendency in direction of type over substance. Since then, all the PC business jumped aboard the ultraportable bandwagon, and Apple discovered a approach to pack a ton of energy right into a razor-thin case. Now, the MacBook Air is arguably Apple’s greatest laptop computer but.