Apple’s new MacBook Air M2 is the start of a whole new Air-a

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The wedge shape of the MacBook Air is over 14 years old. The MacBook Air has the same thickness from front to back as the previous model. The new MacBook Air is the biggest update to the device since it was first released over a decade ago.

The Air is the default laptop option for a lot of people. The standard for thin and light laptops is set by the Air.

The new Air has Apple's latest in-house processor, the M2. It starts at $1,199, $200 more than the model that preceded it, and a model with a decent amount of storage costs more than the previous model. As a result, Apple is keeping the prior M1 model in its lineup, specifically to provide an option for the many MacBook Air buyers that don't want to spend a lot of money on a new computer.

One of the most impressive laptops we have ever tested is the M1 MacBook Air. With all of the changes Apple made to the M2 model, it's fair to wonder if this new model can match the previous version.

That is the answer for most of the time. The devil is in the details, and there are a lot of details to note here.

The MacBook Air is a lot like the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 that were released last year. The MacBook Air model has a more brutalist presentation than previous models.

When you open the lid, you will see that it is remarkably thin, just a tad over 11 millimeters. Whenever you put it in a bag or carry it around, you notice it. The older MacBook Air has less visual weight and is thinner than the new model.

The older model has a weight of 2.8 pounds. The Air is not the lightest computer you can buy, but it is very portable and easy to carry around whenever I need it.

I like the new design. It works very well. I am not one of the people who misses the wedge shape. I think the new Air will work well for the next five years or so until Apple updates it again.

The new color is midnight. The new color has a deep blue-black finish that can be changed by the light. It gets covered in greasy fingerprints when you first pick it up. What is otherwise a striking finish is ruined by it. The problem with dark aluminum is not unique to Apple, but it is enough of an issue to prevent me from buying the Midnight model. I had the chance to test a model in the silvery-gold Starlight color and it stayed fingerprints-free.

The new Air is just as solid and well-built as its predecessors. The lid is stiff and can be opened with a single finger. The new Air is no exception when it comes to build quality and fit and finish.

The new Air borrows the MagSafe charging port from the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 so you don't have to worry about tripping over the cable. The braided cable in the box is the same color as the one on the more expensive Pro models.

You can choose whether or not you want to use Apple's chargers. The base model Air has a brick that has been around for a long time. There's a choice between a larger and more powerful 67W brick borrowed from the MacBook Pro line or a compact 35W brick. The Air's battery can be charged in 30 minutes.

While my review units are small and portable, I prefer the more powerful 35W charging station. The 35W brick only charged the Air 25 percent in 30 minutes, half the speed of the 67W brick, when I plugged my phone into the other port. There are plenty of cheaper third-party options with more power and more ports than Apple's options, and they work just fine with the Air's MagSafe cable.

The MagSafe port gives you an extra port over the older model. You don't have to use a single port to charge the computer and the other to charge the peripherals.

There are only two ports, one on the left and one on the right. It would have been great to have ports on the right side, too, and it is still useful for a lot of accessories. After all, you will have to keep that hub in your bag.

If you want to plug your laptop into more than one monitor at a time, you'll need to upgrade to a 14-inch MacBook Pro, which can support up to six external displays.

The keyboard from the 14-inch MacBook Pro has been removed. The latest 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 has a Touch Bar, but it doesn't have a full-height function row.

The keys are easy to use. Older MacBooks had a butterfly keyboard, but they are much quieter. If you upgrade from an older Intel-based MacBook, the keyboard may be the improvement you appreciate the most, because the butterfly keyboard on those older models was that bad.

The trackpad isn't very different from older models. It works the same and has excellent scrolling and gesture support.

The new Air does not have the speaker grills that are found on most other MacBook models. The speakers are integrated between the keyboard and the display.

The speaker system supports Apple's spatial audio technology. The new speakers are not as echo-y as the M1 Air. The difference is not huge and they are not as good as the MacBook Pros. The speakers are far ahead of other laptops and sound great for video calls, watching TV shows and movies, listening to music, or whatever else you might need to listen to.

The final design point is the branding. The Apple logo on the new Air is 30 percent larger than before. Unless you put it side by side with an older model, you won't notice it. The only branding on the laptop is that of that brand. The display is not below it. The bottom panel does not contain it. It isn't anywhere. This is a MacBook Air, not a computer. It is possible that Apple will change the name of this model to just a plain MacBook at some point, and then it won't have to make any changes to the exterior when it does.

A new display accompanies the new design. Most of the screen is gained vertically since it is a little taller. The corners of the screen have been rounded in order to provide a more modern look.

The new display is 500 nits brighter than the old one, which makes it easier to use outdoors and more comfortable to look at. It scores well on color accuracy and reproduction metrics, covering 100 percent of the spectrum, 84 percent of AdobeRGB, and 95 percent of P3.

The black levels and punchiness of the MacBook Pro models are not as good as what you get with the MiniLED screens. The models that benefit from the ProMotion higher refresh rate don't have it.

The new screen is better than the one on the 13-inch MacBook Pro. If you spend a lot of time in web browsers and documents, it is roomier, less cramped, and more comfortable to work on.

Like the MacBook Pro models, the Air has a notch in its display. The notch presents some real problems when I use the computer.

The notch messes up how I use the menu bar when I use a Mac, not that it is unattractive or distracts. I like menu bar apps a lot, and I have a lot of them for things like clocks, calendars, to-do lists, and other utilities. Most of the time, my menu bar apps don't show up, and I can't even access them, because of the notch's position and size. It is annoying that a third-party app is needed to make Apple's own design usable, but there are third-party menu bar apps that can make this workable. The annoying notch would have been better dealt with by a slightly thicker top bezel.

The newer 13-inch MacBook Pro has a better 720p camera than the older Air, but it is the same as the larger Pro models. It is sharper, with more detail, better color and contrast, and just a better looking image. The new camera works well with the Air. The M1 Air was not able to get a perfect score due to the lousy camera.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro we recently reviewed has Apple's latest M2 processor inside. According to Apple, the new chip gives up to 18 percent better multi-core performance over the M1, with up to 35 percent faster graphics.

• 13.6-inch, 2560 x 1664 display
• Apple M2 chip (8c CPU / 8c GPU, configurable to 10c GPU)
• 8GB RAM (configurable to 24GB)
• 256GB storage (configurable to 2TB)
• Two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports
• MagSafe 3 charging
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Four-speaker sound system with three-mic array
• Magic Keyboard with full height function row and Touch ID
• 1080p webcam
• 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0
• 0.44in x 11.97in x 8.46in (11.3mm x 30.41cm x 21.5cm)
• 2.7 pounds (1.24kg)

The base model has an eight-core processor, eight-core graphics card, 8 gigabytes of memory, and 512 gigabytes of storage, while the step-up model has a 10-core processor, 10 gigabytes of memory, and 512 gigabytes of storage. If you don't mind spending two and half thousand dollars on a MacBook Air, you can equip up to 24 gigabytes of RAM and 2 terabytes of storage. If you want to make sure the computer lasts longer, you might want to add another $200 to the price.

The base model adds up to a noticeably more expensive computer than before, and there is a good reason to avoid it. The base model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 has the same amount of storage as the M1 model, but it is stored on a single chip. It can make the storage perform half as fast as the older base M1 Air's and will slow things down if you try to copy large files around or use swap memory. The only models I feel comfortable recommending are the ones starting at $1,500.

The following statement was provided by Apple's spokesman.

Thanks to the performance increases of M2, the new MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro are incredibly fast, even compared to Mac laptops with the powerful M1 chip. These new systems use a new higher density NAND that delivers 256GB storage using a single chip. While benchmarks of the 256GB SSD may show a difference compared to the previous generation, the performance of these M2 based systems for real world activities are even faster.

The M2 Air outguns the M1 model in every test, though the differences aren't particularly striking. The M2 Air is slower than the MacBook Pro M2 because it has a thicker case and a fan to keep the chip cooler. The Air will limit the amount of power it sends to the M2 chip in order to keep the temperature under control. The bottom of the computer is very warm during these tests. The fanless design of the M2 Air makes for a silent computer, but it is not good for more intense work.

The performance difference can be seen in other stress tests, like when I ran the PugetBench test in Adobe Premiere Pro or tried to export a lot of high-resolution photos. The M2 Air scored better on the test than the M2 MacBook Pro. When I tried to import and edit the 60-MIP files from the Sony A7R Mark IV camera, it buckled under the pressure, which is similar to how an M1 Air behaves with similar tasks.

The M2 Air has better graphics than the M1 Air, but it isn't as good as the M2 Pro, despite having the same number of graphics cards.

We always run a 4K video export test on laptops in Premiere Pro as part of our benchmark testing, but we have noticed a regression in performance with the newer version of the software. The M2 Air took the same amount of time to export the clip as the M1 Air, and both were considerably slower than the M1 Air. If I get an answer from Adobe, I will post.

Apple went from using Intel processors to its M1 chips in 2020 with successive generations of Arm chips, but we can't expect the same leaps in performance Incremental improvements that will be hard to notice in back-to-back models but will add up to more sizeable jumps when jumping multiple generations of MacBooks is what we are seeing with the M2 generation this year.

The M2 Air didn't present any issues for me when I used it to do my regular knowledge worker job despite the lower performance in benchmark tests. I was able to use dozens of tabs in multiple windows of Chrome, bounce between multiple spaces with Slack, email, and other apps, and play media in the background while I continued to get my work done. It didn't warm up on the bottom panel or under the keyboard when I worked. The M2 is more than capable for the tasks that a thin-and-light computer like the Air is ideal for.

For the occasional light photo and video editing, it's fine if you use Apple's Photos or iMovie apps. Thanks to the fast enough storage on my review unit, I was able to saturate the memory and force the system to swap it for the solid state drive, but that didn't slow me down. The story might be different if I had been using a base model with a single chip.

If you only do photo or video editing occasionally, there is no reason to swap the benefits of the Air for the benefits of the M2 MacBook Pro. If you are going to be relying on your computer for regular, intensive creative work, such as professional video editing, or even a lot of coding work, the Air is probably not the right computer for you, and you should look at a Macbook Pro.

The M2 Air is more suited to the needs of most laptop users than the MacBook Pro models.

The M2 Air did the same thing as the M1 model. I got between eight and 10 hours of real-world use out of it with the display set to a comfortable 200 nits of brightness and I use a lot of inefficient things.

Monica found the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 to have a better battery life than this one. I don't think the results from the Air are a reason for concern because I tend to get worse battery life in my general usage. You will be happy with the battery life you get with an older Intel MacBook Air.

The new MacBook Air is a big hit. It has a better screen, thinner and lighter design, better speakers, an excellent keyboard, and more convenient charging.

Performance improvements over the M1 model aren't as stark as the design and feature improvements are. The majority of people prefer the M2 Air over the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro because of its better performance and longer battery life.

When you consider how easy it is to find M1 models discounted, it's hard to choose between getting the same performance and battery life with the M1 Air for a significantly lower cost.

The thinner design and better screen of the M2 Air are very compelling for me, but only if I was willing to spend a lot of money to get one with at least 512 gigabytes of storage and 16 gigabytes of ram. The M1 Air is an excellent option if you don't want to spend a lot of money.

Every smart device has a set of terms and conditions that you have to agree to before you can use it. It is not possible for us to read and analyze all of them. We started counting the number of times you have to agree to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people can't negotiate.

To get past the setup and actually use the MacBook Air, you must agree to the following.

• The macOS software license agreement, which includes Apple’s warranty agreement and the Game Center terms and conditions

You can't use the laptop if you don't agree to the agreements.

Several optional agreements are included.

• Location services
• Using an iCloud account adds iCloud Terms and Conditions and Find My location services
• Sending crash and usage data to Apple to help app developers
• Allowing Apple to use your Siri transcripts to improve voice recognition
• Apple Pay Terms and Conditions

There are mandatory and optional agreements.