Apple offers a compact 35W dual-port charger, which is handy if you want to have your computer charger and another cable right at hand. I think it's safe to say most people can charge overnight and then not worry about plugging in again until their day is over. I easily got through the work day and still some power left for some couch browsing and messaging. And while the battery didn't quite last as long during my normal work routine, I still got about 12 hours before I needed a charger. It exceeded the 18 hours that Apple claims for video playback by about an hour before eventually running out of juice. But given that Apple just released this computer with the M2 chip inside, it’s fair to say the company is in no hurry to release an M3.Īll of the Apple silicon laptops I've tried have had outstanding battery life, and the 15-inch Air is no exception. If you want bleeding-edge Apple silicon you might be better served with a MacBook Pro or waiting for the next Air refresh. The M2, as capable as it is, has been around for a while already. If you’re going to spend more than $1,000 on a laptop that you’ll likely own for years, the ideal situation is to start out with the newest, fastest, most future-proof tech that you can afford. It’s so powerful that this shouldn’t be a problem for the Air’s target audience, but it’s still something worth considering. My only concern is that this brand-new Air is running a chip that’s already about a year old. To be fair, these aren’t taxing apps, but dipping into Lightroom to edit some large RAW photos didn’t tax the computer either. But my workflow, which consists of dozens of tabs open across multiple Safari windows along with apps like Mail, Slack, Music, Trello, Todoist, Bear and Lightroom, didn’t cause any hiccups. Of course, that changes a bit if you’re running games or doing more intense tasks like video editing. The 16-inch MacBook Pro (left) next to the 15-inch MacBook Air (right).īeyond the benchmarks, the 15-inch Air is just as capable as the smaller model we reviewed last year - it can handle most computing tasks without breaking a sweat, and despite having no fans, I never really noticed it getting warm. Geekbench 5 scores were almost the same as those we got when testing both the 13-inch Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro, both of which also use the M2 chip. Performance-wise, the 15-inch Air is also essentially identical to the smaller model. That said, for most users, there's plenty of power here. It's worth noting that while single-core performance is similar to the 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 Max chip, multi-core and graphics performance is where the M2 can't quite keep up. The same goes for Cinebench R23 and a few others we tried. The butterfly keyboard debacle is fortunately a distant memory. The keyboard, large trackpad and Touch ID sensor are all excellent, which is true of all Mac laptops at this point. The laptop comes in the same four colors (or, more accurately, shades of gray). It has the same relatively meager port selection: just two USB-C ports, MagSafe for power and a headphone jack. Cranking the volume up to the max reveals the lack of bass, but I was happy to listen to music at mid-range volume all day long.īeyond those things, the 15-inch Air is just a slightly bigger version of the 13-inch model. But the speakers in the Air still sound lively and fun to listen to. They’re not nearly as good as the ones in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but that laptop is significantly thicker and heavier than the Air that extra space surely helps with resonance and bass. Apple has been making surprisingly excellent laptop speakers for a few years now, and these also sound very lively and full when playing back music or movies. The 15-inch Air also has a six-speaker sound system with “force-canceling woofers” for improved bass, compared to a four-speaker setup in the smaller model. (The model I’m testing has 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, a configuration that costs $1,699.) The other internal specs are similar for both base models: 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The base 15-inch model comes with the 10-core GPU variant of the M2 to power the bigger display’s extra pixels the 13-inch has an 8-core GPU by default. The rest of the differences between the two Air models are minor.
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