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But in doing so, it also gets a nasty £250 price increase, making the starting model £1,249 ($1,199/A$1,899).
The outside frame has adopted the simplified, retro design of the 14in MacBook Pro from last year, with no tapering, just a flat top and bottom with smoothed sides. However, the M2 Air is 4.8mm thinner, 50g lighter and 20% smaller by volume than the old model, making it much slimmer than the comparatively chunky-looking Pro.
Despite its slim frame, the laptop feels incredibly solid, with no flex in the deck and a rigid lid. Open the lid to reveal a larger, 13.6in screen, which is 25% brighter and just as crisp and beautiful while providing a little more real estate for work than the 13.3in size it replaces.
It has a notch at the top of the screen that, like the MacBook Pro, houses an improved 1080p webcam, which is a well-overdue upgrade for those of us still chained to virtual meetings. The Air has four speakers hidden in its deck that are pretty good for a laptop and project a reasonably wide and immersive sound.
The M2 makes the MacBook Air a rapid, highly capable machine that will easily handle any general computing requirement and bursts of more demanding things. It is a fanless machine, making it completely silent in operation. The laptop stayed cool for three hours of fairly demanding photo manipulation work with large image files while attached to a separate 4K display. Unless you know your work is very computationally demanding, I would expect the Air to be more than capable for most, despite the lack of a fan for cooling.
It took two hours 15 minutes to fully charge the Air with the included 35W charger and MagSafe cable, hitting 50% in about an hour, but it can fast-charge to 50% with a 67W or higher-power adaptor if you have one.
The computer is generally repairable, and the battery can be replaced for £129 by Apple. Apple offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.
The MacBook Air runs the same version of macOS Monterey as the MacBook Pro from last year. It is generally an excellent platform with high reliability and low maintenance.
Since last year, Apple has added the Universal Control feature, allowing the keyboard and trackpad on a Mac to control other Apple devices, which is particularly handy when used with an iPad but it can be unreliable in patchy wifi conditions.
The Apple MacBook Air costs £1,249 ($1,199/A$1,899) with an 8-core GPU, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Doubling the storage or RAM costs £200 ($200/A$300) respectively.
The model with a 10-core GPU, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage costs £1,549 ($1,499/A$2,349) and comes with a two-port 35W USB-C charger or 67W power adaptor.
For comparison, the M1 MacBook Air costs £999, M2 MacBook Pro starts at £1,349, 14in MacBook Pro starts at £1,899, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 starts at £999, and the Dell XPS starts at £949.
The MacBook Air has been given a thoroughly modern makeover and looks better than ever on the outside.
Having founded the thin and light laptop category in 2008, the Air has always been the portable to beat. The larger 13.6in screen makes a material difference for getting work done, while the thinner and lighter body makes it easier than ever to fit in a bag. The return of the MagSafe charging cable frees up a USB-C port for more peripherals, too.
Combined with class-leading battery life of about 16 hours, rapid performance of the M2 chip and a top-class trackpad and keyboard, you have the best premium consumer laptop available.
The only thorn in its side is the price increase to £1,249 or more, which makes the M1 MacBook Air that is still on sale at £999 undoubtedly better value.
