#POWER CHIME PRO#
If you’re looking for yet more power, the MacBook Pro 14-inch (or even the MacBook Pro 16-inch) is a great alternative but does come with a huge price tag. The slim profile, portability, and powerful chipset make it easily one of the best MacBooks for students out there.
#POWER CHIME MAC#
If you have a MacBook Air M1, the performance jump alone here isn’t enough to make the M2 version a “must buy.” If you’re coming from an Intel Mac, though, it’s the best MacBook Air Apple has ever made, and the changes thanks to Apple Silicon will be transformative.įor students new to the Mac ecosystem who have the cash to spend, it’s also a very easy recommendation.
#POWER CHIME PORTABLE#
Many have praised the size of the display in such a portable laptop, the speed of the M2 chip, and the excellent battery life. The MacBook Air M2 has an average customer rating on Amazon of 4.7 stars out of 5 (opens in new tab), with the main drawback noting the lack of storage as mentioned above. Whatever you go for, make sure you’re absolutely certain with your choices – the MacBook Air isn’t upgradeable after purchase.
While Apple does offer an additional two GPU cores and 512 GB storage for $1,499 / £1,549 (opens in new tab), we’d recommend building to order with double the RAM and double the storage for $1,899 / £1949 if at all possible (though at that point, you're moving into the MacBook Pro price range). That’s a good deal cheaper than the MacBook Pro 14-inch (opens in new tab) which starts at $1,999, but we’d still advise against that base variant because 256 GB of storage is unlikely to be enough in the medium to long term. The MacBook Air M2 starts at $1,199 / £1249 (opens in new tab), which will get you an 8-core GPU, 8-core CPU, 8 GB of Unified Memory, and 256 GB of SSD storage. That doesn’t sound a lot, but even at the low-end, this is an $1,199 machine. While the MagSafe cable matches the laptop’s color (something even the Pro models don’t get), it caps out at 30W and the faster charger will cost you an extra $20 when purchasing.
Other than the small amount of base storage, our only other real complaint here is that Apple didn’t add the 67W fast charger in the box. It also helps that the M2 is fanless, meaning it runs silently, even when you’re juggling multiple tasks. Keeping the components together also allows for fantastic battery life (up to 18 hours) because things aren’t constantly being copied between parts of the system. We’d have certainly liked a right-sided USB-C port, especially since you can charge via those ports too, but the key takeaway is that unless you’re all in on USB-C you’ll need a dongle or two to get going. On the left-hand side, you’ll find a pair of USB-C ports and a MagSafe connector for charging, and the right has just a 3.5 mm headphone jack. It doesn’t take much to cover it in smudges, but we’d expect it to be a little less obvious on the other color options. Our review unit is the Midnight version and, as you can no doubt tell from the photos, it attracts fingerprints like nobody’s business.
It also comes in four different colors: Space Gray, Silver, Stardust, and Midnight. While there’s still part of us that wants a light-up Apple logo on the lid, the MacBook Air M2 remains immediately recognizable as a MacBook – it has rounded corners, a slim profile, and (sadly not illuminated) logo on the top.
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