Macbook Air M2 im Teardown zeigt lüfterloses Design

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After xiv years, iii revisions, and two different processor architectures, the iconic wedge shape of the MacBook Air is now history. In its place is a MacBook Air with a completely new design that'south the aforementioned thickness from front to back. Well-nigh every aspect of the new MacBook Air has been updated or changed — it'southward the biggest update to the Air since it originally debuted nearly a decade and a half ago.

These kinds of changes are a big deal because the Air is the default laptop choice for millions of people. Beyond that, the Air sets the standard for thin and light laptops that every other manufacturer chases.

In add-on to the pattern and hardware changes, this new Air has Apple's latest in-house processor, the M2. Information technology as well comes with a higher price tag — it starts at $1,199, $200 more than than the model that preceded it, and a model with a decent amount of storage runs $1,499 or more. 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 much more than $1,000 on a new calculator.

The M1 MacBook Air was (and still is) one of the nigh impressive laptops we've always tested — Dieter Bohn chosen information technology "a triumph" at the fourth dimension. That's quite a bar to live upwardly to, and with all of the changes Apple fabricated to the M2 model, it's off-white to wonder if this new model can best the prior version.

For the most part, that answer is yes. Merely equally they say, the devil's in the details, and there are quite a few details to annotation here.

The new MacBook Air borrows a lot of its design and shape from the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 that debuted late last year. It's symmetrical and squared off, with a more brutalist presentation than prior MacBook Air models.

Yet it'southward remarkably sparse — merely a smidge over 11 millimeters — and that thinness is immediately noticeable when you open the lid and start typing on information technology. It's besides noticed whenever you slot it into a pocketbook or deport information technology around. The older MacBook Air'south tapered shape had less visual weight and may await thinner, but the new model is indeed slimmer than its predecessor.

It'south also slightly lighter, at 2.vii pounds vs. the older model's 2.viii. That's non a huge departure, and the Air is far from the lightest computer you can buy, simply it does make information technology extremely portable and easy to tote around wherever I need information technology.

The new Air loses the wedge shape only is actually thinner than the previous model.

In all, I'yard a fan of this new design. It's modern and refreshing and functionally works very well. Some might miss the wedge shape, just I'chiliad not 1 of them. This new Air is a cute computer, and I think this design will piece of work well for the next five (or possibly more!) years or so until Apple tree updates it once again.

Unless you become the new Midnight color. This new color is gorgeous out of the box, with a deep bluish-black finish that can modify depending on the low-cal. But as soon as you pick information technology up, information technology gets covered in greasy fingerprints that are a task to clean off. It actually mars what is otherwise a hit finish. Apple's far from the merely company to confront this problem with night aluminum — Razer's laptops have been fingerprint magnets for years — but information technology'south plenty of an issue that I wouldn't purchase the Midnight model. I've also had the opportunity to test a model in the argent-gold Starlight color, and its surface stays fingerprint-free.

Despite that thinner profile and lighter weight, the new Air is no less solid or well-congenital than before. The chassis is stiff, the hat has adjacent to naught flex, and it still tin can be opened with a single finger. Apple remains at the top of the field when it comes to build quality and fit and finish, and the new Air is no exception.

The new Midnight colour pick is a fingerprint magnet.

In addition to its shape, the new Air borrows the resurrected MagSafe charging connector from the MacBook Pro 14 and 16, which lets you charge the laptop without worrying that tripping over the cable will transport the calculator tumbling to the floor. It fifty-fifty comes with a color-matched braided cable in the box, something you don't get on the more expensive Pro models.

Apple'southward as well giving you a selection when it comes to chargers. The base model Air comes with the familiar 30W brick that's been around for years. But the step-up models provide a choice betwixt a new compact 35W charger with two USB-C ports or a larger and more powerful 67W brick borrowed from the MacBook Pro line. That larger brick can accuse the Air's battery 50 percent in 30 minutes.

My review units came with the 35W charger, and while it's meaty and portable, I'd personally opt for the more than powerful charger. In testing, the 35W brick only charged the Air 25 percent in 30 minutes with the lid closed — half the speed of the 67W brick — and those speeds were further slowed downwardly when I plugged my iPhone into the charger'southward other port. I really wish Apple had merely put two ports on the more than powerful brick, though there are plenty of cheaper third-party options with more power and more ports than Apple's options, and they work but fine with the Air's MagSafe cablevision.

Thanks to that MagSafe port, you effectively become an actress USB-C port over the older model. Instead of having to use ane port to charge the computer and the other for peripherals (though you can however charge over USB-C if y'all desire), you tin use both Thunderbolt-capable ports for accessories.

But it's still merely two ports, and both are on the left-hand side. Information technology'd have been great to have ports on the right side, too, and while it'south perhaps a pipe dream at this signal, a USB-A port is still very useful for a lot of accessories. You'll have to keep that USB-C hub in your pocketbook later all.

Lastly, Apple tree is still limiting the new Air to a unmarried external display, so if yous want to plug your laptop into more than than one monitor at a time, you'll need to step upward to a xiv-inch MacBook Pro (which supports upwardly to 4 external displays) or figure out another workaround.

The Air's keyboard and trackpad were lifted right from the MacBook Pro 14 and are excellent.

The new Air's keyboard has besides been lifted from the 14-inch MacBook Pro. Information technology has a total-top function row and Touch ID and fortunately doesn't have the questionably useful Touch Bar that's still inexplicably available on the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro M2.

The keys have adequate travel and are comfortably spaced. They are also much quieter than older MacBook models that had the dreaded butterfly keyboard. If you're upgrading from an older Intel-based MacBook, the keyboard might be the improvement you lot capeesh most but because the butterfly keyboard on those older models was that bad.

Similarly, the trackpad isn't hugely different from older models, though it's slightly wider. It functionally works the same, though, and has splendid scrolling, gesture support, and palm rejection.

In an interesting modify, the new Air'due south deck lacks the speaker grills that are found on nearly every other MacBook model. Instead, the speakers are integrated between the keyboard and the display for a cleaner expect.

The new speaker system consists of ii tweeters and ii woofers and supports Apple's Spatial Audio technology. Compared to the M1 Air, the new speakers are slightly fuller and less echo-y sounding, especially at full volume. But the difference isn't huge, and they aren't on par with the bassy thumpers that come up on the fourteen and 16-inch MacBook Pros. Nevertheless, the speakers remain far ahead of other laptops and sound bully for video calls, watching Telly shows and movies, listening to music, YouTube, or whatsoever else yous might need to listen to on a sparse and light reckoner similar this.

The last blueprint point worth noting here is the branding. Compared to prior models, the Apple logo on the new Air is roughly thirty percent bigger than earlier. Information technology'south not something yous notice unless you put information technology side by side with an older model, merely it's certainly there. Ironically, that'due south the only branding on the laptop — it doesn't actually say MacBook Air anywhere on it. It's non beneath the display. Information technology'due south not on the bottom panel. It's nowhere. Y'all simply have to know that this is a MacBook Air and non some other computer. Maybe Apple will modify the proper noun of this model to just a patently MacBook at some signal, and then it won't have to make any changes to the exterior when it does.

The new Air has a slightly larger brandish that's noticeably taller than the quondam one. Only information technology also comes with a notch.

Forth with the new design comes a brand new display. The Air's screen is a piffling bigger than earlier — 13.vi inches vs. 13.3 — but most of that size is gained vertically since it's a little taller. The bezels around the screen have been trimmed, and the corners of the screen are now rounded, besides, providing a more modern look than before.

The new display is brighter, too — Apple tree claims 500 nits vs. 400 of the one-time ane; it rated 434 in my tests — which makes information technology easier to apply outdoors and but more comfortable to wait at all day long. In typical Apple mode, it scores well on color accurateness and reproduction metrics, covering 100 per centum of the SRGB spectrum, 84 percent of AdobeRGB, and 95 percentage of P3.

The brightness isn't as impressive as what you go with the Mini LED screens on the higher-end MacBook Pro models, and the blackness levels and overall punchiness can't match those displays. It also doesn't have the ProMotion higher refresh charge per unit for smoother scrolling that those models benefit from.

Simply the new screen is a marked improvement over what was available earlier, and it's better than the one that comes on the xiii-inch MacBook Pro. It'southward roomier, less cramped, and simply more comfortable to piece of work on, especially if you spend a lot of time in web browsers and documents similar I do.

Unfortunately, just like the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, the new Air now has a notch in its display. And just like on those other models, the notch presents some existent issues when I'm using the computer.

The new screen is also slightly brighter than the prior model'due south.

Information technology's not that the notch is particularly ugly or distracting — information technology'south that it completely messes up how I employ the card bar when I'k using a Mac. I happen to similar menu bar apps a lot, and I've got a ton of them for various things like clocks, calendars, to-practise lists, organisation monitoring, and other utilities. The notch'southward position and size mean that most of the time, my menu bar apps just don't show up similar they are supposed to, and I can't even access them. Ironically, there are third-party bill of fare bar apps that tin make this workable — the latest version of Bartender solves a lot of my bug — but it's abrasive that a third-party app is necessary to make Apple'due south own design usable. I'd have much rather had a slightly thicker top bezel than deal with the annoying notch.

Fortunately, the camera inside that notch is the same 1080p unit that's in the larger Pro models, and it'south much improved over the crappy 720p camera that was in the older Air and the new 13-inch MacBook Pro. Information technology's sharper, with more than particular, improve color and contrast, and just a better-looking image overall. Combined with the Air's three-mic array, the new camera works not bad for video calls. The lousy camera was the i thing that kept the M1 Air from getting a perfect score, then I'yard very happy to encounter it has been addressed.

The MacBook Air M2'southward 1080p webcam (left) vs the MacBook Air M1's 720p webcam (right)

Inside all of that new design is Apple'south latest M2 processor, which is also found in the xiii-inch MacBook Pro we recently reviewed. Apple claims this new chip provides up to eighteen percent better multi-cadre functioning over the M1, with up to 35 percent faster graphics.

The base of operations model has an eight-core CPU and viii-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage, while the $ane,499 step-up model that I accept been able to test comes with a 10-cadre GPU and 512GB of storage. You can even equip up to 24GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, provided you don't mind spending ii and half k dollars on a MacBook Air. Near people are probable to be fine with the $1,499 configuration, though you might want to spring another $200 for 16GB of RAM to ensure the computer lasts longer, especially if yous multitask a lot.

All of those configuration options add up to a noticeably more expensive estimator than before, and there's very good reason to avoid the base model entirely. Apple tree confirmed to me that just like the base model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2, the base of operations Air's 256GB of storage is stored on a unmarried NAND chip instead of two like on the M1 models or new M2 models with 512GB or more than storage. That can make the storage perform half equally fast as even the older base M1 Air's and volition deadening things downwardly whenever yous try to copy big files around or multitask plenty to max out the 8GB of RAM and force it to use swap retentiveness. Information technology'southward a disappointing regression and actually means the only models I feel comfortable recommending start at $1,500.

Apple spokesperson Michelle Del Rio provided the following argument on the matter:

Cheers to the operation 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 scrap. 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.

In my criterion testing, the M2 Air outguns the M1 model in every test, though the differences aren't particularly stark. But the M2 Air is noticeably slower than the MacBook Pro M2, which has a thicker chassis and a fan to help keep the chip absurd nether long-running heavy workloads, like a 30-infinitesimal Cinebench 23 multi-cadre benchmark. The Air will quickly throttle back the power it's sending to the M2 bit and keep its speeds capped in an effort to keep temperatures manageable. Even then, the bottom of the computer gets considerably warm during these tests. The M2 Air'due south fanless blueprint is great for normal workloads and makes for a silent computer, but it holds the system back when it comes to more intense workloads.

The performance difference shows up in other stress tests, likewise, similar when I ran the PugetBench test in Adobe Premiere Pro or tried to edit and consign a lot of loftier-resolution RAW photos in Adobe Lightroom Classic. The M2 Air scored better on the PugetBench test than the M1 simply worse than the M2 MacBook Pro. It also buckled under the pressure of 60-megapixel RAW files from a Sony A7R Marking IV camera when I tried to import and edit them, which is non much unlike from how an M1 Air behaves with like tasks.

The M2 Air'due south improved graphics are besides held back by its thermal design — though it scores better than the M1 Air in things like the Shadow of the Tomb Raider criterion, it'south not equally good as the M2 Pro's results, despite having the same number of GPU cores.

One side notation — we always run a 4K video export examination on laptops in Premiere Pro as office of our benchmark testing, but we've noticed a significant regression in performance with Premiere Pro 22. The M2 Air took the same amount of time to export the clip as the M1 Air in version 22, and both were considerably slower than the M1 Air's fourth dimension with Premiere Pro 15. I've reached out to Adobe to ask about this and will update if I get an answer.

MacBook Air M2 2022 benchmarks

Benchmark	M1 Air	M2 Air	M2 MacBook Pro
Benchmark	M1 Air	M2 Air	M2 MacBook Pro
Geekbench five.iii CPU Single	1730	1876	1937
Geekbench 5.3 CPU Multi	7510	8829	8968
Geekbench 5.3 Open CL / Compute	18357	27068	27496
Cinebench R23 Single	1494	1591	1584
Cinebench R23 Multi	6803	7706	8689
Cinebench R23 Multi 30 min loop	5369	6757	8968
PugetBench for Premiere Pro	333	468	556
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	19fps	23fps	29fps
4K Consign (Adobe Premiere Pro 22)	9:54	9:54	seven:09
XCode Benchmark	--	142 sec	132 sec

It's clear that we can't expect the same leaps in performance we saw when Apple went from using Intel processors to its M1 chips in 2020 with successive generations of Arm chips. It'due south more likely that we'll see incremental improvements that will be hard to observe in back-to-back models only will add up to more sizable jumps when jumping multiple generations of MacBooks, and that's exactly what we're seeing with the M2 generation this year.

Despite the lower performance in benchmark tests compared to the M2 MacBook Pro, the M2 Air didn't nowadays any problems for me when I used it to exercise my regular cognition worker job. I was able to utilize dozens of tabs in multiple windows of Chrome, bounce between multiple Spaces with Slack, email, and other apps, take endless Zoom calls, and play media in the background while I continued to get my work done without missing a vanquish. Information technology too didn't rut up on the bottom console or under the keyboard during my daily workload. For the tasks that a thin-and-lite computer like the Air is ideal for — productivity work, browsing the web, video calls, watching Television set shows or movies, writing term papers, etc. — the M2 is more than capable.

Information technology's likewise totally fine for the occasional calorie-free photo and video editing, especially if yous're using Apple'southward Photos or iMovie apps for those tasks. On my review unit of measurement with 8GB of RAM, I was able to saturate the memory and force the system to bandy memory to the SSD with my daily workload, only cheers to the speedy enough storage, that didn't slow me downwards. If I had been using a base model with that single-chip 256GB of storage, the story might be different, notwithstanding.

If you lot only exercise photo or video editing occasionally, there's no good reason to trade away all the benefits that the Air has over the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro, such as the better screen, meliorate webcam, MagSafe, thinner and lighter weight, and so on simply to save a few seconds on those tasks. If yous are going to be relying on your computer for regular, intensive creative work, such as professional video editing, RAW photograph editing, or even a lot of coding work, the Air is probably not the right computer for yous, and you should be looking at a MacBook Pro and likely a 14 or 16-inch model.

But for the vast bulk of laptop users, the M2 Air more than suits their needs and comes in a lighter, quieter package than the MacBook Pro models.

In my battery testing, the M2 Air performed exactly the same as the M1 model. That means I got between viii and 10 hours of existent-globe use out of it with the display set to a comfortable 200 nits of brightness and using Chrome, Slack, multiple Spaces, all my menu bar apps, Zoom calls, and lots of other inefficient things I do throughout the solar day.

That's not as impressive as the battery life Monica saw on the thirteen-inch MacBook Pro M2, which remains our battery life gnaw for this size computer. But I tend to go worse bombardment life in my general usage than many of my colleagues and other reviewers I know, and then I don't recollect these results from the Air are a reason for business. If you're coming from an older Intel MacBook Air, similar well-nigh people who are likely to buy this estimator, you'll be thrilled with the bombardment life you go with it.

Despite the thinner and lighter design, the new Air is just as well-built as other Apple tree laptops.

The new MacBook Air is a success on nigh every level. It's got a better screen, thinner and lighter pattern, better speakers, a much-improved webcam, an excellent keyboard and trackpad, more convenient charging, and fantabulous build quality.

Merely that success comes at a cost, literally, and the performance advancements over the M1 model aren't as stark as the design and feature improvements are. The M2 Air is a better selection for the vast majority of people over the thirteen-inch M2 MacBook Pro model, even though the Pro has slightly meliorate performance and longer battery life.

The harder choice for many laptop buyers coming from older Intel MacBooks or fifty-fifty switching from Windows to Mac for the first fourth dimension will exist choosing between getting similar performance and battery life with the M1 Air for a significantly lower toll (especially when you consider how easy it is to find M1 models discounted) or paying more for the ameliorate quality of life features that come with the M2 model.

I'd personally lean towards the M2 Air — the thinner pattern and better screen are very compelling for me — but simply if I was willing to spend $one,500 or more to get one with at least 512GB of storage and perhaps 16GB of RAM. If that's but likewise much for your budget, then the M1 Air remains an excellent option.

Correction, x:00AM ET, July 14th, 2022: An earlier version of this article stated that the 14-inch MacBook Pro supported upwards to half dozen external displays. It tin merely back up upward to four. We regret the mistake.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/laptop-review/23207440/apple-macbook-air-m2-2022-review

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