The Apple MacBook Air has undoubtedly been one of the small and light laptop series for professionals and students. In 2018, Apple gave it a significant design change, and this year it has experienced another significant update. The new MacBook Air, unveiled in June at the WWDC 2022 conference, is an addition to the current-generation MacBook Pro family and comes with a brand-new Apple-designed chip named M2. According to reports, this new M2 beats the M1 in terms of speed and power efficiency while maintaining excellent battery life.
Let’s find out its price and variants, design and performance, and battery life.
Price and Variants
- With this edition of MacBook, you get the M2 SoC with an eight-core GPU, a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, and a 30W Type-C power brick with the new MacBook Air, with a starting price of Rs. 1,19,900 in India.
- The second pre-configured model, has a 10-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and a 35W dual-port Type-C power supply and costs Rs. 1,49,900.
Design
- It is a smaller 14-inch MacBook Pro, with fewer ports, a base that is the same thickness throughout, and a flat top.
- Since this model lacks a MagSafe charging port, you have two more Thunderbolt ports available. These have a 40Gbps maximum speed while supporting the USB 4 standard.
- The latest MacBook Air is able to run an external monitor at 60Hz in resolutions up to 6K. On the opposite side of the ports, there is a 3.5mm headphone connector that can adjust high-impedance headphones.
- Furthermore, the brightness is extended from 400 nits on the M1 Air to 500 nits. Other Apple technologies like True Tone and P3 wide-color spectrum coverage are also included, and the refresh rate of the display is still 60Hz.
Performance and Battery Life
- The M2 MacBook Air’s display is clear and bright, making it ideal for both work and play.
- The M2 Air’s trackpad is accurate, its keyboard is great for typing, and its display has good color and brightness.
- The M2 Air’s new four-speaker system sounds slightly warmer and fuller than the M1’s, but not noticeably so.
- According to Apple, heavier functions like video editing or converting ProRes RAW video files should show the performance gap between M2 and M1 MacBook Airs.
- On the M2 MacBook Air, casual games can be played very well.
- Talking about the battery life of the M2 MacBook Air, after seven to eight hours of use for work, the battery would typically still have about 40% of its capacity on a typical day.
- Furthermore, Apple now delivers a 67W power adapter so one can charge the M2 Air from zero to fifty percent in around 30 minutes for Rs. 5,800. This adaptor has only one Type-C port.