Apple M2 MacBook Air Review: Gold Standard of Ultrabooks

The M1 MacBook Air changed our perception of laptops in 2020! The slim, slim notebook suddenly packs a punch of power inside for editing video and boasts 10+ hours of battery life.

The new MacBook Air M2 is actually new. The body has been redesigned and houses a new display and many other refreshed parts. It also put a new price tag on it, which is not suitable for consumers. Starting at Rs. 1,19,900, it is more expensive than the previous M1 MacBook Air.

Design

For years, the MacBook Air's design has shown how light and slim laptops can be. With its wedge profile, the M1 MacBook Air still looks like an artifact from the future alongside Windows laptops from Dell, HP and Samsung. The MacBook Air M2 is similarly sleek with a design reminiscent of the 14-inch MacBook Pro. The wedge shape has been traded for a more traditional curvilinear side profile, but the lid is completely flat.

Although it looks thick, it is significantly slimmed down when compared to the M1 MacBook Air. It's also slightly lighter, although the difference is negligible. Being an Apple product, the fit and finish of the laptop are second to none. Every surface and every line has a purpose of comfortable and meaningful computation. All the sides are clean, with only two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports visible via the new MagSafe connectors. Thankfully, the 3.5mm audio jack remains. I would still have liked to see a USB-C connector, but it's "air" so the trade-off is understandable.

Display

The display is another area where gains are most visible. The M2 MacBook Air has a "new" 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, which Apple says is bigger, brighter and better. Simply put, it is an IPS LCD display with a resolution of 2560 x 1664 pixels and a peak brightness of up to 500 nits. This notch frees up space so you can fit more content inside.

It looks brighter and the colours look more vibrant. The automatic brightness sensor is a boon, as is the True Tone feature. However, this pales in comparison to his OLED displays on the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro and Asus ZenBook 14 models. Nevertheless, this is a good display for both work and entertainment.

Performance

This is the true value of the MacBook Air M2! The M1 chip is still one of the fastest chips for computing, and it gets even better with the M2 chip. This is the 2nd generation of his 5nm chip with an octa-core processor and a new 10-core GPU. Memory bandwidth has been boosted to 100 GB/s and it has a new 16-core neural engine. Combined with macOS Monterey, it seems to redefine lightweight portable computing.

Unfortunately, I had the base model with 8GB RAM and 256 GB storage. It features an 8-core GPU and slow SSD storage thanks to a single NAND chip. My work does not require faster SSD speeds, nor do I require sustained performance. As a result, I couldn't tell the difference in speed between this M2 model and the last-gen M1 MacBook Air.

From a layperson's perspective, there's nothing the MacBook Air M2 can't do. Running 12-13 tabs in Google Chrome while writing a page is not much of a deal for the laptop. Editing high-resolution 8K images in Photoshop and online editors was also easy. The M2 does bring performance improvements which result in short video export times.

But even more impressive is the integration of hardware and software. macOS Monterey and the M2 chip work together to deliver a highly efficient and well-organized computing experience. No need to explain macOS. Very sophisticated and fun to work with. macOS offers the typical benefits of the Apple ecosystem. My favourites are AirDrop and the integration with iPhone and other Apple products.

Keyboard and mouse

Open the lid and you'll be greeted by a brand new keyboard deck. It has large keycaps, a well-spaced layout, and the same large trackpad with force feedback. With large keycaps, the Magic Keyboard offers the same comfortable typing experience. The keys have a big drop and offer satisfying feedback. Backlight bleed is well contained, and overall writers will love this keyboard setup. The trackpad is precise and the macOS gestures are just incredible. The Touch ID fingerprint scanner is also fast.

Webcam and Speakers

The new 1080p webcam is also great for video calls. It's crisp and captures skin tones better. I was very happy with the mic reception.

The only slight disappointment is in the audio section, where Apple treats it to a new quad-speaker system that promises improved performance. The speakers are better than most competing Windows laptops, but I prefer the speakers in the M1 MacBook Air over the new MacBook.

Battery

The MacBook Air M2 has the same 52.6 Wh battery as the M1 model, which isn't a bad thing given the improved power efficiency of the Apple Silicon chips introduced in 2020. So even this new MacBook Air of his can get up to 16 hours of battery life out of regular office workflows. My workflow includes power-hungry Google Chrome, streaming Apple Music, writing to Pages, and answering phone calls from my iPhone. In practice, you can work up to two days with a light workload such as mine.

The base model includes a 30W Apple charger and MagSafe cable. MagSafe chargers are convenient and work well. There's also a convenient charging status LED that toggles between orange and green. With a faster 67W charger on hand, I occasionally combined the MagSafe cable with a standard USB-C cable to charge the battery. A 2-50% charge took 30 minutes and was fully charged in about an hour.

M2 MacBook Air Verdict

Either way, the new MacBook Air M2 is simply a great computer, and if you don't have an OS preference, I'd blindly recommend it. It's one of the nicest, lightest, and slimmest laptops you can get, and its design is unmistakably MacBook Air. The display is great, but the OLED displays on competing Windows laptops are just in another league. The M2 chip is fast and powerful and coupled with macOS Monterey, it's a very efficient computer in terms of both performance and battery life. Even the webcam is impressive.

Should you get the new 2022 Apple MacBook Air M2?

If you are looking for a practical and efficient laptop on a budget of around Rs. At Rs 1,20,000, the M2 MacBook Air is a great choice. While many may recommend the lower-priced M1 MacBook Air, the added features and new design actually justify the higher price. The M2 MacBook Air is the benchmark against which all other thin and light "ultrabooks" are measured, and Apple sets that benchmark very high.