M2 MacBook Air Impressions: Midnight Madness!

We got this announcement at wwdc on stage a couple days ago and i did get to spend some actual hands on time with the new laptop, which is what this video is and after the half hour, so i actually got to spend with it. I was left with one main thought and one new question: the thought about the color and the question about the lineup. So, first of all, i love the design refresh apples. New laptop design language, as weve seen from the previous macbook pros, is very squared off. So this macbook air is no longer a wedge shape, its very much rectangular with the sharper edges, but its still an air, its still razor thin 11.3 millimeters, total z, height less than half an inch and 2.7 pounds. It kind of to me looks like two ipads sandwiched together. Basically, still all metal still really well balanced and easy to hold definitely earns the air name right so on the right side, theres, a headphone jack with the new high impedance headphone support and on the left. Theres two thunderbolt ports and they added magsafe and itll, actually come with a color matched magsafe cable, which is new and its a really nice touch so theres. Four new colors of this laptop silver space gray, then starlight and midnight. So each magsafe cable matches the color of the laptop you plug it into the side. It looks pretty seamless, i just love them, bringing back magsafe here and then with magsafe.

They also added fast charging up to 67 watts with an optional power. Brick thats good for adding 50 charge in half an hour, which is pretty good apple, also showed us on stage there was this slide of a dual usb type c charger which looks pretty sweet. Just a heads up, though, that one is not 67 watts thats, not the super fast charging that is 35 watts. I got to actually hold it and read that on the back of the brick, so you can get either the fast charger or dual usb c charger. Anyway, this laptop also gets a new quad speaker setup sort of those tucked in the hinge underneath the display, which is kind of cool and a new, triple mic array with beam forming audio. I i cant test that stuff in the limited hands on time. I have with it in a huge echoey, steve jobs. Theater so definitely get subscribed to see the review of that and all the other stuff i get to test when i actually get my hands on one, but i think really the biggest change that im gon na notice with this new laptop is at the front its The display so in basically the same footprint as the last macbook air, they thinned out the bezels all the way around making room for a slightly bigger 13.6 inch display, which is now also brighter at 500. Nits basically matching the 13 inch macbook pro and, of course, it now has the notch with the new 1080p webcam up there.

Also, this is again part of the new apple pro aesthetic that honestly were already getting used to as dorky as it looks when you just stare at it. But anyway, you also have a full height function row up at the top of the magic keyboard with touch id in the corner, backlit keys the whole deal i mentioned in the last video midnight this. This new dark color might not be the way to go. I and i say that reluctantly, because we love a good matte black but, as you may know, from the name of the color, its actually the same as the apple watch series 7., so its not quite black, its slightly blue, as hopefully, you can tell from my Clips, but also in my very very limited time playing with it uh. It picks up a lot of fingerprints, a lot and it was kind of hard to clean off. So in my time handling it getting fingerprints all over the thing and getting kind of annoyed with trying to clean them off. It made me lean way more towards like just safe space, gray or maybe silver, which would never show those fingerprints i dont know. Maybe maybe you just get a dbrand icon skin slap it on the back and never worry about it. Maybe you just dont care about the fingerprints and you just deal with it im just saying just putting it out there. Cant say i didnt warn you, but the new m2 chip inside is of course, super important, and this is whats gon na make this ultra thin and light laptop actually perform and be very, very impressive, again gon na do some testing and using it, but apples promising.

Some broad things like roughly 20 percent, better cpu performance than m1 and 30 to 35, better gpu performance, which is a pretty big jump over the m1, which is already very capable uh all within the same 18. Hours of video playback, really good battery life. So its impressive theres, more memory, bandwidth up to 100 gigabytes per second, more maximum system memory at 24 gigs, but its worth remembering this is still very much the baseline chip right, the m1 pro and the m1 ultra chips are definitely still higher end chips and we Can expect new generations of – i guess, an m2 pro and an m2 ultra at some point, but yeah this m2 is targeted for baseline, everyday computing and then occasional, maybe some more demanding stuff it can handle stuff. Like video editing light gaming stuff, you want to throw at it once in a while, but heres where it gets interesting. It is more expensive, so i had no problem recommending the m1 macbook air at 9.99 right. This is now like two years or so later. This m2 macbook air starts at 11.99, so 1200 laptop its a little more pricey, but theyre keeping the two year old, m1 macbook air with the old design in the lineup still at 9.99. So now you know at this price its its not like a instant recommendation for me and having a two year old, laptop, not drop in price is also a little interesting.

But to me the weirdest part of this whole announcement of this lineup is the one other machine that they put this new m2 chip in is the m2 macbook pro, and this one got absolutely no redesign at all. It is the exact same body and display and outside as the m1 13 inch macbook pro they just bumped a new m2 chip inside and so that machine will start at 12.99, and i just want to just talk about that for a quick second like. I actually feel like you could make an argument that the m2 air which is cheaper, is actually a better computer for most people for 90, something percent of people. You should probably just get the air look at this chart. I expect a new m2 macbook air and m2 macbook pro to cost the same amount with the same specs 14.99 right at this price, though the air is thinner and lighter, has the new better design has a larger display has touch id with a real function row Which is, i think, better than a touch bar. It has magsafe with the color matching cable. It has fast charging that the pro doesnt have. It has a much better webcam. It has new speakers and microphones, and it literally has more ports than the pro. So the only advantage to the pro would be pairing the m2 chip with a fan. So the active cooling system can get you some extra performance out of sustained workloads like long renders and gaming, i guess and then the slightly longer battery life from the bigger laptop.

Having a physically larger battery, but if youre, already a person, thats thinking about performance for sustained workloads and things like ports, youre already going to be looking towards the m1 pro macbook pro the 14 inch. So its just kind of a weird sliver of people that i dont think are gon na, actually get very many m2 macbook pros just my thoughts on that real quick anyway, uh thats, pretty much it. The air is a really good machine, the one weird quirk about it that i noticed is it still only supports one external display, even though it has two ports now still only one up to 6k external display, but is a good. This is a good machine, its fun to hold and use and carry around, and it makes a perfectly reasonable computer in a vacuum. The m2 macbook pro look like a pretty bad deal, either way, im for sure gon na get my hands on and test. This thing, let me know in the comments which color you think i should get im considering midnight right, but weve seen the fingerprints, so i im, leaning, maybe starlight instead or space gray, anything but silver. I dont know. Let me know in the comments.

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