Apple has broke the tradtion of WWDC by introducing the new MacBook Air that’s powered by the M2 chip.
For starters, the Apple M2 chip is built on a 2nd generation 5nm process and comes with a 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU architecture, it delivers up to 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth and can support up to 24GB of unified memory, there’s also a next gen media engine and ProRes video engine that could playback more 4K and 8K video streams simultaneously.
The M2 MacBook Air features the very same design language as the higher end MacBook Pros, it features a fanless deisng like its predecessor and is a lot more compact with a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display that has a standard 500nit brightness, it also gets a notch like the MacBook Pro that houses a 1080p FaceTime camera that supports Center Stage, there is a 4-speaker system that supports Spatial Audio and three beamforming microphone array that’s built into the top part of the keyboard.
In terms of ports, you get two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports and MagSafe 3 on the left and a headphone jack on the right, there’s no SD card slot and HDMI port like the Pro due to its slim form factor, which is rather forgiveable in that sense when you consider that it weighs a mere 1.24kg and measures 11.3mm thick.
Apple quotes up to 18 hours of battery life for movie playback on the Apple TV app and 15 hours of wireless web browsing, the M2 MacBook Air will ship with a 30W charger for the base model and a 35W dual USB-C charger for the more expensive configuration, it is fortunately fast charge capable up to 67W with USB PD.
On top of that, the current 13-inch MacBook Pro has also been refreshed with the M2 chip but unlike the Air, it comes with a single fan that can cool down the system when running intensive tasks, battery life is claimed to be up to 20 hours which is the same as the previous model and can be configured with up to 24GB of unified memory similar to the Air.
The M2 MacBook Air will be available in colors of Silver, Starlight, Space Gray and Midnight, it will start at US$1199 for the base model that comes with an 8-core CPU and 8-Core GPU, 8GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage.
Apple will continue to sell the M1 MacBook Air with a lower starting price of US$999, though it will only come in a single variant of an 8-core CPU, 7-core GPU M1 chip with 8GB unified memory and 256GB storage.
