MacBook Air with M2: Everything you need to know
It’s that time of the year again. WWDC 2022 has brought with it many new announcements, including a refreshed, customizable lock screen, changes to the Home app, and more. A more exciting reveal was the new MacBook Air, powered by a M2 chip. It’s a completely new thinner design, with 20% less volume and without the wedge.
Size and colors
The new MacBook Air with M2 measures just 0.44 inches (11.3 millimeters) thick and weighs just 2.7 pounds. It comes in four colors: silver, space grey, Starlight, and Midnight.
Charging and ports
In a rare move, Apple has brought back a popular feature from days of yore: MagSafe charging! That’s right, a dedicated MagSafe port for charging offers a quick release if you trip over your cord while charging.
Two Thunderbolt ports (not needed for charging) are free for you to use to connect to your accessories and more. There is also a headphone jack for hi-res headphones.
Screen and camera
The MacBook Air’s 13.6-inch Liquid Retina Display has a notch (love it or hate it) and thinner borders than the previous model. The screen is 25% brighter, with 500 nits of brightness and one billion colors. The 1080p HD FaceTime camera with twice the resolution and twice the low light performance will be great for video calls and more.
Sound
The speakers and microphones are integrated between the keyboard and the display. A three-mic array, advanced beamforming algorithm, and four-speaker array sound better than ever. As hoped, it has spatial audio support for Dolby Atmos.
Keyboard and power
The MacBook Air with M2 has a full-height function row Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. It’s five times faster than the Intel MacBook Air. Users will love the silent fanless design. Get up to 18 hours of use from a single charge. You’ll be able to buy a compact power adapter with two USB-C ports. The MacBook Air with M2 has Fast Charge support with a 67-watt adapter, charging up to 50% in 30 minutes. The trackpad also has Force Touch.
Internals
- Up to 2TB SSD
- Up to 24GB memory
- Up to 10-core GPU
- Up to 8-core CPU
M2 performance
As outlined in our article about the M2 chip:
The new second-generation hardware comes built on a 5nm manufacturing process and features 20 billion transistors. Apple says we can expect up to 100GB/s of bandwidth which is 50% more than the current M1 chip, the chip that started the Apple silicon transition.
The chips themselves come with an 8-core CPU — four of which are performance with a larger cache than before. Apple expects 18% better performance Vs power usage results compared to the M1 chips while 10 GPU cores represent a doubling of the previous M1 part. That, in, turn, means 25% improved graphics performance at the same power level as the M1 and 25% improved performance when working at its maximum power output.
Video creators will enjoy the ability to handle multiple 4K and 8K streams at once, with a high bandwidth video decoder supporting 8K encoding and decoding.
Price
Prices start at $1,199 for the base model MacBook Air with M2. The MacBook Air with M1 will remain in the lineup for $999.
Release date
The MacBook Air with M2 will be available in July.
We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.
It’s that time of the year again. WWDC 2022 has brought with it many new announcements, including a refreshed, customizable lock screen, changes to the Home app, and more. A more exciting reveal was the new MacBook Air, powered by a M2 chip. It’s a completely new thinner design, with 20% less volume and without the wedge.
Size and colors
The new MacBook Air with M2 measures just 0.44 inches (11.3 millimeters) thick and weighs just 2.7 pounds. It comes in four colors: silver, space grey, Starlight, and Midnight.
Charging and ports
In a rare move, Apple has brought back a popular feature from days of yore: MagSafe charging! That’s right, a dedicated MagSafe port for charging offers a quick release if you trip over your cord while charging.
Two Thunderbolt ports (not needed for charging) are free for you to use to connect to your accessories and more. There is also a headphone jack for hi-res headphones.
Screen and camera
The MacBook Air’s 13.6-inch Liquid Retina Display has a notch (love it or hate it) and thinner borders than the previous model. The screen is 25% brighter, with 500 nits of brightness and one billion colors. The 1080p HD FaceTime camera with twice the resolution and twice the low light performance will be great for video calls and more.
Sound
The speakers and microphones are integrated between the keyboard and the display. A three-mic array, advanced beamforming algorithm, and four-speaker array sound better than ever. As hoped, it has spatial audio support for Dolby Atmos.
Keyboard and power
The MacBook Air with M2 has a full-height function row Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. It’s five times faster than the Intel MacBook Air. Users will love the silent fanless design. Get up to 18 hours of use from a single charge. You’ll be able to buy a compact power adapter with two USB-C ports. The MacBook Air with M2 has Fast Charge support with a 67-watt adapter, charging up to 50% in 30 minutes. The trackpad also has Force Touch.
Internals
- Up to 2TB SSD
- Up to 24GB memory
- Up to 10-core GPU
- Up to 8-core CPU
M2 performance
As outlined in our article about the M2 chip:
The new second-generation hardware comes built on a 5nm manufacturing process and features 20 billion transistors. Apple says we can expect up to 100GB/s of bandwidth which is 50% more than the current M1 chip, the chip that started the Apple silicon transition.
The chips themselves come with an 8-core CPU — four of which are performance with a larger cache than before. Apple expects 18% better performance Vs power usage results compared to the M1 chips while 10 GPU cores represent a doubling of the previous M1 part. That, in, turn, means 25% improved graphics performance at the same power level as the M1 and 25% improved performance when working at its maximum power output.
Video creators will enjoy the ability to handle multiple 4K and 8K streams at once, with a high bandwidth video decoder supporting 8K encoding and decoding.
Price
Prices start at $1,199 for the base model MacBook Air with M2. The MacBook Air with M1 will remain in the lineup for $999.
Release date
The MacBook Air with M2 will be available in July.
We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.