The MacBook Air has been an iconic laptop design since Steve Jobs took it out of a manila envelope in 2008. This year’s model, which Apple just announced at WWDC and is also the first Apple laptop that includes an M2 chip, leaves the famous wedge. shape but also improves almost all the rest of the Air.
The wedge is gone!
The first thing you notice? Colours! The new design is 11mm thick and weighs 2.7 lbs, and although it is now a more traditional slab-shaped design, it comes in a very beautiful dark blue called “midnight” and a light gold called “starlight” in more than family silver. and space gray. They’re not as colorful as the new iMacs, for example, but midnight color is a particularly interesting dark option on the line.
The new Air webcam is now inside a notch. Photo: David Pierce / The Verge
The screen is now larger at 13.6 inches and closer to the edge of the lid because the 1080p camera has been hidden in a notch. On this smaller unit, the notch looks a bit larger than the MacBook Pro, but over time, it looks likely to fade out like any other screen notch. The screen is also capable of reaching 500 nights brightness and supports the wide range of P3 colors for a billion colors, both of which are nice enhancements. We played around a bit with the camera and it looked great in Apple’s hands-on area, but we’ll have to test the company’s claims about a 2-fold improvement in low light compared to the old Air when we have a review.
The new Air reloads with MagSafe. Photo: David Pierce / The Verge
As for the ports, it’s not much, but the notable addition is the MagSafe load, which allows both Thunderbolt ports to be available while they load. The audio jack supports high impedance headphones, which is nice. The full-size Touch ID button is also a good addition, as it will be much harder to get lost when you try to turn on your computer.
It’s a little lighter and smaller than previous Airs, even with the larger screen. Photo: David Pierce / The Verge
Of course, the biggest change to the Air is inside the box, with the new M2 chip that Apple says offers 1.4 times the performance of the M1 model depending on the task, assuming you choose the one that has a CPU of eight cores and one 10. – GPU cores. That’s an additional $ 100 sale compared to the standard M2, which only has eight GPU cores; the laptop also includes only 8 GB of unified memory by default, with the 16 GB and 24 GB configurations costing $ 200 and $ 400 more, respectively. During the conference, Apple said the MacBook Air M2 offered 38 percent faster “video editing performance” and 20 percent faster “image and effects filter performance,” but did not specify. which applications I used for this benchmark.
Apple also quotes “18 hours” of battery life, but this number is for video playback with all radios turned off. I guess the M2 has the same all-day stellar battery life as the M1 Air, but 18 hours is definitely not realistic.
Here is the dual port charger, which does not come with the base model. You get a color cable for your MacBook Air.
In addition to the matching colored MagSafe charging cables that come with each laptop, you can choose from up to three different chargers. We’ve taken a look at the new dual-port 35W USB-C charger on top and there’s also a 67W fast USB-C charger, both bestsellers of the 30W charger that comes with the base model. You can get any of the upgrade chargers for an additional $ 20 with your purchase or your selection of a free one with the more expensive $ 1,499 model.
Overall, the new Air definitely feels less like an iconic, unique device and more like the rest of Apple’s line; this square shape and keyboard layout are remarkably similar to the combination of the iPad Pro and the Magic Keyboard. But it’s still a pretty, neatly made computer, and I have to say, the bezels on my M1 Air suddenly look giant.