APPLE’S NEW MACBOOK AIR M2 BEGINS A WHOLE NEW AIR-A SERIES.

New design, new display, new processor, new price.

The famous wedge design of the MacBook Air is now history after 14 years, three iterations, and two different chip architectures. In its stead comes a brand redesigned MacBook Air with the same thickness from front to back. Almost every feature of the new MacBook Air has been upgraded or altered – it’s the most significant update to the Air since its launch over a decade and a half ago.

These types of adjustments are significant since the Air is the laptop of choice for millions of users. Aside from that, the Air establishes the norm for thin and light laptops that every other manufacturer aspires to.

This new Air has Apple’s latest in-house CPU, the M2, in addition to design and hardware upgrades. It also costs more – it starts at $1,199, $200 more than the model that came before it, and a device with adequate storage costs $1,499 or more. As a result, Apple is maintaining the previous M1 model in its range, mostly to give an option for the many MacBook Air users who do not want to spend more than $1,000 on a new machine.

The M1 MacBook Air was (and still is) one of the most remarkable computers we’ve ever evaluated; at the time, Dieter Bohn referred to it as a “triumphant.” That’s a high standard to meet, and with all of the modifications Apple made to the M2 model, it’s reasonable to ask if this new model can outperform the previous one.

The majority of the time, the answer is yes. But, as they say, the devil is in the details, and there are a lot of them here.

The new MacBook Air pulls heavily from the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 that debuted late last year in terms of appearance and form. It’s more symmetrical and squared off than previous MacBook Air models, with a more brutalist look.

Yet it’s astonishingly tiny — just a hair more than 11 millimeters — and its thinness is instantly apparent when you open the lid and begin typing on it. It is also noticeable when you put it in a bag or carry it about. The tapered design of the earlier MacBook Air had less visual weight and appeared lighter, but the current model is truly slimmer than its predecessor.

It’s also somewhat lighter, weighing 2.7 pounds vs 2.8 pounds for the previous generation. That’s not a significant change, and the Air is far from the lightest computer available, but it does make it highly portable and easy to transport anywhere I need it.

Overall, I like the new design. It’s new and refreshing, and it works really well in terms of functionality. Some people may overlook the wedge form, but I am not one of them. This new Air is a stunning machine, and I believe the design will serve it well for the next five (or even more!) years before Apple modifies it again.

Unless, of course, you get the new Midnight color. This new hue is stunning right out of the box, with a deep blue-black gloss that changes with the light. However, as soon as you take it up, it is coated with greasy fingerprints that are difficult to remove. It severely detracts from an otherwise great finish. Apple is far from the only business with this issue with black aluminum — Razer laptops have been fingerprint magnets for years — but it’s significant enough that I wouldn’t purchase the Midnight variant. I’ve also tested a model in the silvery-gold Starlight color, and its surface is fingerprint-free.

Despite its slimmer appearance and reduced weight, the new Air is no less robust or well-made than its predecessor. The chassis is rigid, the lid has almost little flex, and it can still be opened with a single finger. Apple continues to lead the sector in terms of build quality and fit and finish, and the new Air is no exception.

Aside from its design, the new Air uses the revived MagSafe charging port from the MacBook Pro 14 and 16, which allows you to charge the laptop without fear of tripping over the wire and sending the device plummeting to the floor. It also comes with a color-matched braided cable in the package, whereas the more costly Pro versions do not.

When it comes to chargers, Apple also gives you options. The base model Air includes the well-known 30W brick that has been around for years. However, the step-up versions include a new compact 35W charger with two USB-C ports or a bigger and more powerful 67W charger derived from the MacBook Pro range. That bigger brick can fully charge the Air’s battery in 30 minutes.

My review units arrived with the 35W charger, and while it’s small and portable, I’d rather have the more powerful charger. In testing, the 35W brick only charged the Air 25% in 30 minutes with the lid closed, which is half the pace of the 67W brick, and those speeds were lowered even more when I inserted my iPhone into the charger’s second connector. I wish Apple had just placed two ports on the more powerful brick, but there are lots of cheaper third-party choices with greater power and more ports than Apple’s options, and they function well with the Air’s MagSafe connector.

You practically receive an additional USB-C port over the previous model thanks to the MagSafe port. Instead of using one Thunderbolt-capable port to charge the computer and the other for peripherals (though you can still charge through USB-C if you choose), you may utilize both Thunderbolt-capable ports for accessories.

However, there are only two ports, both of which are on the left side. It would have been nice to have ports on the right side as well, and while it may be a pipe dream at this time, a USB-A port is still quite helpful for many accessories. After all, you’ll need to keep that USB-C hub in your backpack.

Finally, Apple continues to limit the new Air to a single external display, so if you want to connect your laptop to more than one monitor at the same time, you’ll need to upgrade to a 14-inch MacBook Pro (which allows up to four external displays) or find another solution.

The keyboard on the new Air has also been stolen from the 14-inch MacBook Pro. It boasts a full-height function row, Touch ID, and, thankfully, no Touch Bar, which is still curiously available on the current 13-inch MacBook Pro M2.

The keys have enough travel and are well-spaced. They are also far quieter than previous MacBook models with the notorious butterfly keyboard. If you’re switching from a previous Intel-based MacBook, the keyboard may be the most noticeable upgrade, simply because the butterfly keyboard on those older versions was so terrible.

Similarly, the trackpad isn’t noticeably changed from previous generations, although being significantly broader. It performs similarly in terms of functionality, with good scrolling, gesture support, and palm rejection.

In an unusual departure, the new Air’s deck lacks the speaker grills featured on practically every prior MacBook model. Instead, for a cleaner appearance, the speakers are incorporated between the keyboard and the display.

The new speaker system features two tweeters and two woofers and is compatible with Apple’s Spatial Audio technology. The redesigned speakers sound significantly broader and less echo-y than the M1 Air, especially at maximum volume. However, the change isn’t significant, and they don’t compete with the bassy thumpers found on the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. Still, the speakers are significantly superior to those found in other laptops, and they sound fantastic for video chats, viewing TV shows and movies, listening to music, YouTube, or everything else you would need to listen to on a thin and light machine like this.

The branding is the final design feature worth mentioning here. The Apple logo on the new Air is approximately 30% larger than on previous generations. It’s not noticeable unless you compare it to a previous model, but it’s definitely there. Ironically, it is the sole branding on the laptop; there is no mention of the MacBook Air anywhere on it. It is not beneath the exhibit. It is not located on the bottom panel. It’s not anywhere. All you need to know is that this is a MacBook Air and not another machine. Maybe Apple will alter the name of this model to just a normal MacBook at some time, and then it won’t have to modify the outside.

A new display is included with the redesigned design. The screen on the Air is a touch larger than previously — 13.6 inches vs. 13.3 — but much of that extra space is obtained vertically since it’s a little higher. The bezels around the screen have been shortened, and the screen’s corners have been softened, giving it a more contemporary appearance than before.

The new display is much brighter — Apple boasts 500 nits compared to 400 on the previous one; it registered 434 in my testing — making it simpler to use outside and more comfortable to stare at all day. In true Apple fashion, it performs admirably in color accuracy and reproduction measures, covering 100% of the SRGB spectrum, 84% of AdobeRGB, and 95% of P3.

The brightness isn’t as striking as the Mini LED panels seen on higher-end MacBook Pro models, and the dark levels and general punchiness can’t compete. It also lacks the ProMotion faster refresh rate for better scrolling than other versions’ features.

However, the new screen is a significant upgrade over what was previously available, and it outperforms the one found on the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s more spacious, less cramped, and more pleasant to work on, especially if you spend a lot of time in online browsers and documents as I do.

Unfortunately, the new Air, like the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, now has a notch in the display. And, like with the previous models, the notch causes some major problems while I’m using the computer.

It’s not so much that the notch is especially unsightly or distracting as it is that it fundamentally changes how I utilize the menu bar on a Mac. I’m a big fan of menu bar applications, and I have a ton of them for things like clocks, calendars, to-do lists, system monitoring, and other utilities. Because of the notch’s position and height, my menu bar applications don’t always appear as they should, and I can’t even access them. There are third-party menu bar applications that can make this work — the current version of Bartender fixes a lot of my problems — but it’s aggravating that a third-party program is required to make Apple’s own design acceptable. I’d rather have a little thicker top bezel than deal with the annoyance that is the notch.

Fortunately, the camera inside the notch is the same 1080p device used in the bigger Pro models, and it’s far superior to the terrible 720p camera found in the older Air and the new 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s crisper, has more detail, greater color and contrast, and overall looks better. The new camera works well for video chats when combined with the Air’s three-mic array. The bad camera was the only reason the M1 Air didn’t earn a perfect score, so I’m glad to see it’s been fixed.

Inside all of that new look is Apple’s newest M2 CPU, which we just tested in the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Apple says that this new processor outperforms the M1 by up to 18% in multi-core performance and up to 35% in graphics performance.

The base model features an eight-core CPU and eight-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage, but the $1,499 step-up model I was able to test has a 10-core GPU and 512GB of storage. If you don’t mind paying two and a half thousand dollars on a MacBook Air, you can even get up to 24GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. Most individuals will be happy with the $1,499 setup, however, you may want to spend an extra $200 for 16GB of RAM to guarantee the computer lasts longer, especially if you multitask frequently.

All of those configuration possibilities add up to a far more costly computer than previously, and there are compelling reasons to forego the base model completely. Apple verified to me that, like the basic model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2, the 256GB of storage in the base Air is stored on a single NAND chip rather than two as in the M1 models or new M2 models with 512GB or more storage. That can cause the storage to operate half as quickly as even the earlier basic M1 Air’s storage and can slow things down when you try to copy huge files around or multitask enough to max out the 8GB of RAM and force it to utilize swap memory.

It’s a disappointing decline, which means the only models I’d suggest starting at $1,500.

The new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro are exceptionally quick, even when compared to Mac notebooks with the powerful M1 CPU, thanks to M2 performance gains. These new devices make advantage of a new higher density NAND that provides 256GB of storage on a single chip. While the 256GB SSD’s benchmarks may differ from the previous generation, the performance of these M2 based devices for real-world tasks is significantly quicker.

The M2 Air outperforms the M1 model in all of my benchmark tests, albeit the differences aren’t very significant. The M2 Air, on the other hand, is substantially slower than the MacBook Pro M2, which has a larger chassis and a fan to assist keep the chip cool during long-running intensive tasks, such as a 30-minute Cinebench 23 multi-core benchmark. In order to keep temperatures under control, the Air will swiftly reduce the power it sends to the M2 chip and keep its speeds restricted. Even so, the computer’s bottom becomes rather warm throughout these tests. The fanless design of the M2 Air is wonderful for routine tasks and allows for a quiet computer, but it limits the device when it comes to more intensive applications.

“THE M2 AIR IS FASTER THAN THE M1 IN VIRTUALLY EVERY TEST BUT BEHIND THE M2 MACBOOK PRO”

Other stress tests revealed the performance disparity, such as when I performed the PugetBench test in Adobe Premiere Pro or attempted to edit and export a large number of high-resolution RAW photographs in Adobe Lightroom Classic. The M2 Air performed better than the M1 but poorer than the M2 MacBook Pro in the PugetBench test. It also crumbled under the strain of 60-megapixel RAW files from a Sony A7R Mark IV camera when I tried to import and edit them, which is identical to how an M1 Air performs in similar situations.

The M2 Air’s superior graphics are similarly hampered by its thermal design; while it outperforms the M1 Air in benchmarks like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it falls short of the M2 Pro’s performance, despite having the same number of GPU cores. One side note: as part of our benchmark testing, we typically conduct a 4K video export test in Premiere Pro on laptops, however,

we’ve found a considerable decrease in performance with Premiere Pro 22. The M2 Air exported the clip in the same length of time as the M1 Air in version 22, and both were much slower than the M1 Air’s time with Premiere Pro 15. I’ve contacted Adobe about this and will update you if I receive a response.

APPLE MACBOOK AIR M2 (2022) SPECS

• 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)

MACBOOK AIR M2 2022 BENCHMARKS

We can’t anticipate the same performance leaps that Apple had when it switched from Intel processors to its M1 chips in 2020 with subsequent generations of Arm chips. It’s more probable that we’ll see incremental improvements that are difficult to see in back-to-back models but add up to larger increases when hopping successive generations of MacBooks, which is precisely what we’re seeing this year with the M2 generation.

Despite its lesser performance in benchmark testing when compared to the M2 MacBook Pro, I had no problems using the M2 Air for my normal knowledge worker job. I was able to utilize hundreds of tabs in several Chrome windows, bounce between numerous Spaces with Slack, email, and other applications, have endless Zoom conversations, and play media in the background while still getting my job done. During my regular workload, it also did not overheat on the bottom panel or under the keyboard. The M2 is more than adequate for the things that a thin-and-light computer like the Air is excellent for – productivity work, online surfing, video chats, watching TV shows or movies, writing term papers, and so on.

It’s also perfectly good for light picture and video editing, especially if you’re using Apple’s Photos or iMovie applications. With my daily workload, I was able to saturate the memory and force the system to switch memory to the SSD on my review unit with 8GB of RAM, but because of the fast enough storage, this didn’t slow me down. However, if I had used a basic model with that single-chip 256GB of storage, the story could have been different.

Update: We’ve had a chance to test out a base 256GB MacBook Air M2 and you can see our results here.