The presentation of the Vision Pro viewer eclipsed the dense presentation of Apple last Monday at the inauguration of its World Developers Conference (WWDC), in which the main novelties of the next operating systems that will arrive in the fall were shown, but also in the range of Macs, which rounds off the most complete line of computers in the history of the block. The Mac Pro (which will equip the M2 Ultr superchip together with the Mac Studio), finalizes the brand’s transition to Apple Silicon processors and marks the final goodbye to Intel, but a new 15-inch MacBook Air was also unveiled at the event. inches with a very interesting approach: the power of the M2 chip, a large screen (15.3 inches) and a computer that is lighter and cheaper than a MacBook Pro.
Clearly, the new MacBook Air fills a gap among Apple consumers that has been neglected, that of those who want to work with a big screen but don’t need the sheer power of the MacBook Pros with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. This last range has 14 and 16-inch versions, but for those who wanted to work preferably with applications that do not require high performance, the large screen seemed to be off limits.
Features are not lacking in the new model to respond to these needs. The 15-inch MacBook Air, at just 11.5 millimeters thin, is the world’s thinnest computer with that size screen, and thanks to the M2’s high performance per watt it has a battery life of up to 18 hours of video playback. Despite being made entirely of aluminum, which gives it great rigidity and a quality finish, its weight is not too high: 1.5 kilos.
This new MacBook Air has a six-speaker sound system with spatial audio. Unlike what happens with the MacBook Pro, in which the sound output is produced on the same surface in which the keyboard is integrated, in this model it comes out the back, in a series of hidden holes in the area of the hinge The solution is interesting to manage to limit the thickness. As with the other MacBook Air and iPad Pro, the use of the Apple Silicon chip allows very good performance without the need for the computer to have a fan.
Getting that thickness limits other things. Among them, the connectors. On the right side, the MacBook Air only has a headphone jack. On the left, two Thunderbolt (USB-C) ports and a MagSafe magnetic connector for power. Apple puts a power adapter with two 35 W USB C ports in the box of this computer and has a new 70 W charger available as an option as an accessory (65 euros).
The performance is very good, although it is not a computer to reach large limits. The MacBook Air with the M2 has a central processor (CPU) that has a very good ratio of size and performance. The chip has 8 cores (four performance and efficiency, a 10-core graphics processor (GPU) and a 16-core neural engine. The new model’s RAM configurations can be 8 GB, 16 GB (tested unit ) and 24 GB The storage capacity starts from 256 GB and reaches 512 GB, 1TB and 2 TB.
The unit tested, in the Star White color, is a very nice kind of subdued gold with virtually no fingerprints, as is the case with the Midnight color, a dark blue. The other two colors in the range, always in aluminium, are Space Gray and Silver. The new MacBook Air was the last thing missing on the scale of what Mac users may need. Its Retina display has a full color gamut (1 billion colors) and reaches 500 nits of brightness. A very practical and well finished computer for those who need a large screen and lots of portability.
The MacBook Air range is now made up of the 13-inch model that maintained the previous design, with curved surfaces and an M1 chip; the 13-inch one with straight lines rounded at the corners, introduced last year, which has the M2 chip; and this new model of 15 also with the M2. To establish a price scale according to the range, Apple has lowered the 13 model (M2), which now costs 1,299 euros, 220 euros less than before. The new model starts at 1,599 euros.