15″ MacBook Air M2 Review: The Obvious Thing!
The 15″ MacBook Air M2 Review: The Obvious Thing! is a thorough and comprehensive review of the new 15-inch MacBook Air by MKBHD. The video begins by drawing parallels between the 15-inch MacBook Air and the Tesla Model Y, emphasizing that both the larger laptop and the larger car are the obvious, but necessary, expansions of their respective lineups to cater to a larger audience.
MKBHD delves into the design and hardware of the 15-inch MacBook Air, emphasizing that it is the same MacBook Air but with a bigger screen. He highlights that the larger screen offers more real estate for a better viewing experience, but notes that the overall footprint of the laptop is only slightly larger and still maintains a slim and lightweight profile.
The review also covers the benefits of the larger laptop, such as a slightly bigger trackpad, additional speakers for improved sound quality, and a larger battery for extended battery life. MKBHD delves into performance differences between the 15-inch MacBook Air and the smaller model, concluding that while there may be slight differences in sustained workloads, the overall performance is nearly identical due to both laptops running on the same M2 chip.
Finally, MKBHD addresses the price of the 15-inch MacBook Air, pointing out that while the base version starts at $1,299, upgrades are limited, and users may need to consider the higher-priced 14-inch MacBook Pro for more demanding workloads.
In conclusion, the 15″ MacBook Air M2 Review: The Obvious Thing! offers valuable insights into the larger MacBook Air, showcasing its design, performance, and considerations for potential buyers.
Watch the video by Marques Brownlee
– What’s up? MKBHD here and welcome to the 15-inch MacBook Air review. This laptop, thankfully, is exactly what you think it is. It’s a MacBook Air, but bigger. This is the Tesla Model Y of laptops. You see the Tesla Model 3 was the most important model for Tesla.
They had other more expensive flagships, but this was the entry level, attainable version for the masses, and it quickly became their most recommended and best-selling car. And it’s the way that most people got into Tesla and formed their first Tesla experience. But sneakily, bigger cars are actually more popular
And in America especially, people can’t help, but want a version that’s a little bigger, a little higher off the ground. So they did the obvious thing and made Tesla model Y. It’s built on the same platform as a Model 3, but a little bigger and a little higher off the ground
And pretty much instantly has rocketed up to the top of the lineup to the point where it’s now the most popular new car on planet Earth. See, the MacBook Air was the most important Mac for Apple. I mean, they had other expensive flagships, but this was the most entry level attainable model for the masses. And it quickly became their most recommended and best-selling Mac. And it’s the first way most people got into the Mac
And formed their first Mac OS experiences. But sneakily, bigger screens are actually, the most popular and in America especially, people can’t help but want a version with a little bit of a bigger screen. So, they did the obvious thing and made the 15-inch MacBook Air.
It’s built on the same platform as the 14-inch MacBook Air, but a little bit bigger screen, and I predict it’ll pretty much instantly rocket to the top of the lineup to the point where it is the most popular 15-inch laptop and the most popular Mac on planet Earth.
We kinda already know what the M2 MacBook Air is. If you haven’t already seen it, I’ll link the review right below the light button that covers it. My only real questions going into the review of the bigger one were, one, is there any real benefit to the bigger screen?
How much better is it really? And two, are there any other benefits to getting a bigger laptop? So, I think the whole bigger screen thing is pretty clear. There are literally millions of people who today go into stores and ask for a 15-inch laptop,
And when they did, Apple would have to bring people over to the 16-inch MacBook Pro as their cheapest option, which starts at $2,500. So, now they have this. Now, is there a dramatically more information that can fit on the screen? Not really. Is it a dramatically better quality display than the smaller one?
Nah, it mostly just feels bigger. Bigger videos, bigger movies, bigger texts, bigger windows, just just a little more room for everything to be a little bit bigger. And you only pay for that really with a little bit of exercise as far as the laptop goes.
This thing is still 11 and a half millimeters thin and weighs 3.3 pounds. It’s super slim. It’s a quarter of a millimeter thicker and half a pound heavier than the smaller MacBook Air, which I kinda mentioned this earlier, but I forgot that basically, already has 14-inch diagonal screens with its thinner bezels.
So, you can really just measure out 1.3 extra inches diagonally to get to the proper 15.3 inch laptop size. Still, it has decently thin bezels, not the thinnest in the world, still has the notch cutout for face ID. I mean, sorry, no face ID. It has just a webcam and a microphone.
It still just has touch ID on the keyboard and nothing else about the display itself really has changed. It’s the same tech, the same pixel density, the same brightness, 500 nits, 60 hertz. It’s fine, the screen is fine. It’s just bigger. So all right, now that the whole footprint
Of the laptop is also bigger, what more can you get out of that? First of all, sneaky, slightly bigger trackpad. So, the keyboard is the same size, but actually, the trackpad does get a little bit bigger, which is nice. Kind of matches the larger display.
And also, there is more room inside for speakers. So, Apple’s added not bigger speakers, but just actually, a second set of force-canceling woofers, which would theoretically make the sound a little punchier, maybe add some bass. And I can say it is louder. It does get louder overall
And have a bit more bass than the smaller MacBook Air, but it’s not like game changing. I’m impressed that they can get louder without distorting, but they are not close to the maybe unfair 16-inch MacBook Pro speakers. But just to give you an idea of the context.
Also, some people have noted it looks kind of weird to have like no speaker grills to the left and right of the keyboard, but the speakers are still in the same place as they were on the smaller one. up in the hinge of the MacBook Air.
And then there’s also more room inside for bigger battery. And my experience actually lines up pretty well with what Apple said, which is, look, it’s the same chip set, very similar laptop, bigger screen and bigger battery sort of cancel each other out. And you end up with roughly
The same battery life as a smaller machine. And that’s to say it’s quite good, full workday of battery life pretty much guaranteed, multiple light days in a row. No problem. So, then the last thing I wanted to test is, actually, is there a difference in performance
Between the small M2 MacBook Air and the big one? Since theoretically, there’s just a little more room inside for a little extra thermal headroom. Like there’s no way it’s significant, but these are very different sized laptops and the old one when it was torn apart, didn’t have a heatsink.
So maybe there’s room for a little passive heatsink in this one. They’re both fan less, but I had to check it. So, in single core bursty performance, I never expect to see any difference and I really didn’t. I ran off back to back Geekbench 6 benchmarks,
Small drop off after the first one for each, but no noticeable difference. But then I ran back to back 10 minute Cinebench multi-core benchmarks, which kind of just run continuously to test some more reliable sustained workloads. And there was a slightly bigger dip on the smaller M2 Air.
And so potentially, yes, over time this may add up to a bit more thermal throttling. But my conclusion is, you can see the numbers on paper, but this difference is unlikely to be noticeable. Like I said, they’re both running the M2 chip and most behavior on laptops like this
Is so bursty and short that they perform basically identically. But if you do happen to get into those long multi-minute sustained workloads in a row, like exporting a video, editing a video, gaming even, then maybe you’d notice a little bit more out of this bigger one over time.
But you’ll notice a bigger difference on the 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is just a little bit above this one in price. So, if you know you’re gonna be doing workloads like that then you probably are looking at a Pro laptop. And matter of fact, let’s just talk about
What I think is the biggest X-factor with this laptop. The biggest hurdle between this and being the Tesla Model Y of laptops, is the price. So, this baseline version, this a little Starlight one, which kind of almost matches this a little bit, little sand color, starts at 1,299.
And that is the base version, which you can’t upgrade these laptops over time. So, you tend to wanna get as much as you can out of the initial purchase. This base version only has eight gigs of shared memory and 256 gigs of storage that can actually pretty quickly become a $1,700 laptop
With just a few clicks to upgrade those things. And that’s pricey. So, there’s a lot of Windows laptops that you can get at that price that will probably do one specific thing better than this one, whether it’s the XPF 15 with a nicer display or the ROG Zephyrus,
Which is gonna be better for gaming and has more ports. You can get flipping and folding laptops that spin over backwards and gaming laptops even. But none of them will be quite the package that this is, which is a really thin and light daily 15-inch screen laptop, like this is kind of just
The ultimate baseline for most people’s activities. So, to have all those things sort of well-rounded into one, the thinness and lightness, the nice display, the great battery life, the impressive performance from the M2, that’s what makes this the MacBook Air. It’s got the A1 build quality,
It’s got the color matching braided MagSafe cable, which also connects to the 35 watt charging brick with dual USB-C ports, which you could actually swap out for a slightly larger 70 watt brick with a single port for faster charging. That’s a free swap on Apple site.
And of course, you can’t forget the ecosystem stuff, the messages, the FaceTime, et cetera, all the stuff that plugs into Apple’s world. Despite its potentially premium price, people will pounce on this popular pick. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys the next one. Peace.
Video “15” MacBook Air M2 Review: The Obvious Thing!” was uploaded on 06/12/2023 to Youtube Channel Marques Brownlee .