MacBook Air (M2, 2022)
As we expected, Apple revealed a brand-new MacBook Air (M2, 2022) at this year’s WWDC 2022 keynote at its headquarters in Cupertino, California.
We were there to get our first hands-on review of the MacBook Air (M2, 2022), spending a decent amount of time playing with the new laptop.
The current MacBook Air (M1, 2020) is our pick for the best laptop you can buy right now, and from our brief time with the MacBook Air (M2, 2022), there’s a very good chance that Apple has another winner on its hands.
Price and availability
We are still waiting on a ship date from Apple, but preorders are now live as of June 6.
This MacBook Air will be available in July starting at $1,199 ( £1,249). The M1-based Air will continue to be available for $999, though education users can grab one for a little less at $899.
This leap in price is understandable, but it means it feels like poorer value than the older MacBook Air, which is a shame, as one of the best things about the MacBook Air (M1, 2020) was its low price and excellent performance.
Design
The MacBook Air (M2, 2022) has had one of the most radical design overhauls we’ve seen Apple make to one of its iconic products. As the name suggests, the MacBook Air is the thinnest and lightest MacBook Apple produces, and with the new MacBook Air 2022 model, Apple has made further improvements, shrinking the overall size and weight of the laptop, while actually increasing the screen size.
It’s managed this in part by slimming down the bezels that surround the screen. The chunky boarders of previous MacBook Air screens were beginning to look rather outdated, especially when compared to high-end Windows rivals like the Dell XPS 13, so the thin bezels in the new model makes the MacBook Air (M2, 2022) look much more modern.
The webcam of the MacBook Air has been upped to 1080p, to match the ones found in the new MacBook Pros, and this boost in resolution (alongside improved image and low-light handling with the new M2 chip), will be welcome for anyone who relies on video conferencing, or making video calls to friends and family. In this age of hybrid working, that’s many of us.
Less welcome will be the news that the combination of bigger webcam and thinner bezels means that there’s a visible ‘notch’ that surrounds the webcam, and drops down into the menu bar. This is the same as the notch found in the MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) and MacBook Pro 16-inch (2021), and when it debuted with those MacBooks, it proved divisive.
We didn't mind mind the notch, as Apple expanded the screen upwards, actually giving you more screen real estate, which made the trade-off worth it.
The same is true with the MacBook Air (M2, 2022), which comes with a 13.6-inch screen, compared to the 13.3-inch of the previous model. The resolution has also been upped from 2,560 x 1,600 to 2,560 x 1,664. This means the larger screen doesn't lose sharpness.
The new liquid retina screen is also brighter by 100nits, so it's now 500nits, and also now supports one billion colors. From our time with the MacBook Air (M2, 2022), we could see an immediate improvement in the vibrancy of the screen in the new model. There's no ProMotion support, however.
Another big design change is that the MacBook Air (M2, 2022) is no longer a 'wedge' shape with a thinner front and thicker back, and is instead uniform.
We're also getting new colors. While people hoping for vibrant, pastel-like colors like the iMac 24-inch, will be disappointed by the relatively low-key Space Gray, Silver, Starlight, and Midnight Blue colors, they do look good in person. We saw all of them at Apple's event, and our favorite by far was Midnight Blue. Each color comes with matching power cables.
Outside of the different shades available, It features MagSafe charging as well as two Thunderbolt ports, and a headphone jack. It's also just as slim and lightweight as we were anticipating at just 11mm thick and weighing in at 2.7 pounds.
The standard base model MacBook Air will ship with a 30W charger, but you can opt to upgrade this to a 67W adapter for $59, which can get you to 80-percen battery capacity in just 20 minutes.
Performance
In our hands on time, we didn't get to fully test out the performance of the MacBook Air (M2, 2022), but we liked what we saw.
The new M2 chip that powers it is a second-generation 5 nanometer chip that Apple claims will offer an 18% faster CPU, 35% faster GPU (now 10 cores), and a 40% faster neural engine than its predecessor.
The past version of the laptop came with Apple’s M1 SoC or system on a chip, which combines CPU, GPU, and other components into an 8-core processor capable of surprisingly stunning performance.
The 2020 model is much more powerful than the Intel-powered version it replaced, working 3.5 times faster when it comes to CPU performance and 5 times faster for its GPU performance. And we know that the M2 chip brings a lot more to the table as well.
We played around with the MacBook Air (M2, 2022), and macOS Monterey (the new macOS Ventura won't launch until later this year) and it was fast and responsive, with multiple apps open at once. We had a quick play in Final Cut Pro, editing a movie with multiple 4K sources, and it performed brilliantly, and was completely silent thanks to its lack of fans.
We'll give the MacBook Air (M2, 2022) a more thorough review soon, but our early hands-on time with it shows that Apple could have another hit on its hands.
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