The M2 MacBook Air is available for preorder now! Make sure you know what you're configuring and decide if there isn't another, better option.
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M2 Air:
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CHAPTERS:
0:00 Introduction
0:15 Supply, demand
0:35 M2 storage woes
2:08 Configuration options
3:40 M1 Air?
4:28 Conclusion
FOLLOW
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CREDITS
– Final Cut Pro Plugins by MotionVFX:
– Music by Soundstripe:
– Captions by Rev:
TAGS
#macbookair #apple #m2
The M2 Air is a better fit over the M1 for my college student for the speakers, mic, and webcam improvements.
@nerv mich nicht I cant wait to use my phone as a proper camera in Teams (I will finally will be able to stop this proxy of adding myself as an another person on the call when I work on my M1 Mini). If someone is ok with older design and a lil bit worse screen I think M1 is way more worth it than M2 Air with it’s problems with 256 slow ssd speeds
@Paul Jazzman No one is telling you to upgrade from an M1. Christian Hotter is just saying that if you need to choose between the M1, which Apple is still selling, and the M2, choose the M2.
M1 better value
@adam44gg No but M1 is a cheaper and better option (ssd faster no thermal probs) or the M1 Pro 14 Inch MBP
Reviews just in. The base M2 air is SLOWER than the M1 MBA. and they are cheaper!
Great review of the buying and configuration issues. The M1 MBA still a great buy and ssd 256Gb faster than M2. Waiting to see if any thermal issues on M2 MBA. As you say don’t spec up too far or you might as well get 14” M1 Pro MBP
Thanks! I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on thermals when I get it.
Wrong—if you spec out the M2 MBA it’s still in price below—and much better—than an M1 Pro MBP
@Jim Stella Yes but only by a few hundred pounds/dollars if that. Or if you look on Amazon the 14 Inch MBP is discounted to £1,735 (in UK) for the 8 core M1 Pro 16Gb ram and 512Gb ssd. So that is actually cheaper! It does not really make sense to spec up M2 MBA.
There is one thing that makes the M2 Air fantastic and it is the mag safe / external power. It makes a huge difference. With the M1 Air I always have to choose between power – pro audio – web cam or power – camera input – air pods pro or go on battery and have both. External dongles overheat so they are not an option when using high intensive task or in summer.
@Aaron What model LG is that? It’s only a problem when I am away from my main setup. Even then it is not a big problem because the air has great battery life, ok web cam, and great audio. There are times I have used the usbc for midi controles or whatever. So there are solutions, there are even fantastic ubsc hubs. The M2 Air with new design, mag-safe and a better webcam is a great plus. Its good.
I’ve never had this issue with my m1, just get 1 dongle hub and the other is charging, bam done, no schenanagens.
@samiebuka it’s LG 27UN850-W
@Anires OBS or ECamm Live running
@Anires lookup up Spain weather july
I ordered mine with 16GB of ram and 512 GB of SSD, I don’t use SSD a lot except having demanding apps to illustrate and design projects so I would have like 380GB free, if the one of 256 go doesn’t show any problem in having overheating and slow speed it’s great news. The price is $1716 ($1620 + tax) but Im conscious when I spend on something expensive I take care of it and have it as main device for a long time (5 years specifically), I’m very careful with my devices.
My estimated delivery is July 22th – July 26th
why not 14″ M1 Pro base model? Refurbished/discounted units are just $100~200 more.
should’ve used education store, u get 150 off with the apple gift card and another 100 off the 1620 b4 tax
Ordered my MacBook Air M2 this morning, 7:01 am. 16GB/1TB hard drive, 10-core GPU. Due in early August, can’t wait, super excited. Although roughly the same cost as a 14″ Pro, I prefer the Air thin, light-weight design to lug around in my backpack. Upgrading from a 2013 13″ MacBook Pro.
16/512.arriving in early august as well.same thought.m2 more lighter than m1pro ,1 more usb c free up as magsafe compare to m1
The Pro would be faster in most cases though, screen is also better. M2 slim design is nice though
@Paul For me the thinness & low-weight are key priorites. Also that midnight color is beautiful. Otherwise it’s powerful enough for my purposes – i’m a software developer, not a video editor.
@Mark Slima I’d say there is no right scenario, if it works for you, then its right…
@Paul 100% agreed. This setup is exactly best for me, but not at all for everyone.
I’m still happy with the performance of my M1 Air. Maybe in the future, I will look into getting the 14 inch Pro M2
For sure. You can keep your Air for travelling and your Pro for the more serious stuff. I am waiting for the M2 MacBook Pro lineup before I decide on the path I want to take.
I know going the MacBook Air route will save me a lot more money! But next year, may want to invest more if the benefits are there.
Definitely not upgrading! The M1 Air is already overkill for my needs and I still love the older wedge-shaped design. Plus while the bezels are a bit larger, they’re still so much slimmer than my late-2017 HP Spectre X360. That thing had so much wasted space!
Great overview – but if you have an M1 and upgrading to an M2, the only valid reasons would be to up the memory to 24gb and if you didn’t get enough storage space the first go around, to up it to 2TB – at $2,499 you have something extremely powerful.
If you are going to only use 16gb or less and don’t plan on doing 8k video, then the M1 MacBook Air is more than plenty for most people and like he said, you can buy from the refurbished store and save $200 or more.
I have the MacBook Air M1 with 16gb memory and 1TB storage. For what I do, the 2TB storage, 24gb memory, and 8k video rendering would be beneficial. But, since I am not doing 8k yet and the configuration does well for now, I am going to hold off. Next year, they may have a 15″ MacBook Air (rumored) and when the M2 propagates into the MacBook Pro line-up, I might go for the gusto and get 64gb (more if they offered it).
So I can wait. Put my money in savings and have more options end of this year or early next year.
I ordered the Midnight 16GB with an upgraded cpu. I’m excited. I’ll need this computer for my last semester of college and my professional career. As an Econ major I’ll need to work with some large excel files and convert them into charts, and I plan on doing some web scraping for my research.
I’m coming from a 2016 13 inch MBP so it’s a major upgrade for me.
For M2 MBA 8GB RAM is perfectly fine for vast majority of users who use for general productivity, web browsing and media consumption. It’s wrong to recommend RAM upgrading for basic users. That should be made clear.
I’m getting the base M2 model, in midnight. It’s my secondary computer, for traveling. A very necessary device but in my case it doesn’t need high-end specs. It needs to be portable and reliable and long-lasting.
The base model M1 MacBook Air (256 GB SSD, 8 GB ram) was more than sufficient for everything I threw at it in the last year of my undergrad computer science curriculum
Would you recommend at least upgrading the ram or was 8GB plenty for you? Just curious
@Inferno 8GB was plenty for me – I even did a Twitch stream with the machine. I haven’t seen a video comparing how 4K video editing with adding a lot of graphical effects is on the M1 with 8 or 16 GB, but my guess is that the difference is marginal. If I could upgrade anything it would be the storage.
The bigger issue with these M1 and M2 MacBook Air’s (and many of the Pros) is the inability to easily attach more than one external monitor. Unlike an Intel Macbook Air/Pro. I’m continuing to hold onto my 2013 MacBook Pro (for personal use only), which was one of the last MacBooks where you could easily add more RAM and storage. But still hoping for a quality MacBook to come out in the $1000-$1500 range which will meet my RAM and display requirements.
I know right? It seems ridiculous to have such a limitation in 2022.
I bought the M2 MacBook Air 16GB with 1TB SSD. It’s scheduled to arrive august 9th. I’m pretty excited since I’m upgrading from the 2018 MBA. Sucks that I have to wait 2-3 weeks after launch to get it but that’s the times we’re living in
Oooo Thats a nice configuration
M2 has a better screen, audio system, battery, design and MagSafe. That’s what really makes me considered to buy it. Not the chip.
@Sirio Yes the M2 Air does have those things but wait for tests if you can, Because if has a slow ssd like the M2 Pro it will be less fast than the M1 air. Apple made a Downgrade machine with the M2 Pro. We need to see if the M2 Air is also worse than M1 air
@Paul Jazzman thanks. I’ll wait.
The issue for SSD speed is there but the right choice is not conveyed by any of these tech reviewers. Can the SSD bandwidth be offset by RAM upgrade alone?
M1 16GB may not be as effective an upgrade as a M2 16GB one. Buy the whole debate is gone into SSD dicussions confusing every user.
We already know dual SSD parallel read increases ram to SSD speed but if a 16GB ram upgrade alone simply helps you avoid the performance issue then the choice becomes simplest. Buy M2 with 16gb 256GB and be future proof as well as better perf.
@Sirio M2 MacBook reviews by Created tech show the M2 MBA is SLOWER than the M1 MBA. better to buy the M1 as faster and cheaper, maybe not as pretty, but still.
@$hellVar=undef yes I think I saw that on a Maxtech review of the M2 MacBook Pro because then you don’t get the swap issue. But you shouldn’t have to upgrade to get a decent machine. The base model should good enough. You could also go 8GB ram and 512Gb ssd. But why should you have to make that impossible choice?
Excellent video!! I ordered the 16GB/512GB Midnight M2 Air today. I’ve been using an M1 iPad Pro 12.9” + magic keyboard as a kind of laptop replacement for about a year. It’ll be interesting to see how it feels to use a true laptop again.
Enjoy it. In UK that would cost (if cheaper 8 core) £1,649 but for £1,735 I could get 14″ MBP with M1 Mac Pro 8 core chip. I wouldn’t know which to choose.
It would be a choice based around the new design to go with the air 2. I will probably wait until the M2 gets brought to the new Pro models and buy an M1 pro with the additional ports eg hdmi, sd etc.
Will get the air m2. Just the best fit for my use as a student. Want to go with the most new on the line so it last me a long time.
I’m majoring in computer science & I preordered a base model M2 Air. I think this will be more than enough for me.
I purchased a few months ago a decent PC laptop with 11gen i5 for slightly less than price of base m1 mac mini, so holding on from purchasing macbook air, but it’s Linux rather than x86 hardware that I got a lot use out of it for my needs. But will likely buy M2 mini when it comes out to replace my aged Mini Late 2014.