M2 MacBook Air 13" (July 2022 model) Review

 M2 Macbook Air 13” Review [$1100 MSRP, always $1049.99 at Costco, occasionally on sale around $900 or $950]

[Tl;dr: This laptop is nuts. It’s the first computer I’ve ever owned where I have essentially no notes other than a slight complaint about USB-C ports and reliance on Bluetooth. And the fact that it’s surprisingly affordable, especially for a Mac … yeah, I’m a fan. I have genuine concerns about how this computer is going to undercut Apple sales of higher-end models going forward. When on sale, it’s also roughly the price point of some of Microsoft’s Surface models, and … this is a MUCH better machine.

 

At long last, Apple’s remade a fanboi out of me.]

 

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 10 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 11 out of 10 Denalis

 

[Caveats: the model reviewed is the July 2022 MacBook M2 Air 13” with 8 GB unified memory, and a 256 GB SSD hard disk, in midnight. This is the lowest-priced model generally available wit the M2 (a number of retailers still have the M1 generation available, albeit sometimes at a higher price point). Purchased at Costco in April 2023 for $1150, and price matched down to $950 in June 2023, recently seen there at $899.99.]

 

Intro. Back in May of 2023 I wrote about my no-good, very bad technology day in September 2022 that resulted in me buying a beautiful, but ultimately poorly-suited MacBook Pro, my first Mac laptop in a decade and a half. In April 2023, having figured out how few times the Pro had left my house (twice? Maybe three times?), with a bunch of travel coming up for work and personal business and having watched a couple of stellar reviews of the new M2 MacBook Air, I decided to grab one at Costco on my way back from Hood River. I’ve carried it in my work bag basically since that first week, and I’ve taken it on a half dozen trips including two weeks in Europe in December 2023.

 

The machine: I probably wouldn’t use this machine if I were trying to edit or render 4k video, but not because it couldn’t handle it. I primarily use this machine as a word processor and internet browser, but I’ve also used it to play some reasonably demanding video games (Borderlands 2, Baldur’s Gate 2, etc.) and it’s both worked perfectly and not gotten particularly warm. It’s never hung up or struggled to do anything I’ve asked it to do, but to be fair I also have both a dedicated gaming machine and a M2 Ultra Mac Studio that I would use for anything particularly intensive; this machine is definitely primarily intended for use case 2.

 

The battery is really impressive. Running in airplane mode with just music and a word processor running, I got about 8 hours of work done on like … a third of the battery? I’ve had to plug it in while working on it maybe twice in a little less than a year. The one challenge has been leaving it in my bag sleeping rather than shut down—if I do that for a couple of weeks, my battery will be pretty low when I open it back up but that may be an artifact of my settings (generally I don’t have laptops set to sleep when I close the lid because I expect to use them docked a lot. I really should change that setting for this machine given how little I use it docked …).

 

The keyboard is a full-sized QWERTY keyboard. I do miss having a ten-key but it’s mostly not important for the kinds of things I do on this machine, and I can always get an external one if it becomes a problem.

 

TouchID is also surprisingly nice; I’d gotten used to my work laptop recognizing my face and unlocking, and this is basically as easy; I just press the upper right key with the correct finger and the laptop unlocks.

 

Monitor: The current generation Liquid Retina display is gorgeous. Mac figured laptop and all-in-one screens out years ago and this is a worthy successor. The screen on my MacBook Pro was a little brighter and richer than this, but it definitely will get painfully bright even in a well-lit room. It’s bright enough and shiny enough to make me uncomfortably aware of how dirty my screen gets, and maybe the one knock against it is that it looks like it *should* be a touch screen, but is *not* actually a touchscreen.

The one downside is the size; compared to a 15” laptop screen like my work laptop or the 49”/27” monitors I use for desktops, it’s definitely a bit small. It took some getting used to; for example, I have had to change my workflow for using Gmail on it because I can’t have the sidebar, inbox, and reading pane side-by-side-by-side without losing the ability read a lot of e-mail. If you’re someone who needs more than a 13” monitor, this machine is probably not for you (though Apple is now offering a 15” version of this machine starting at $1299). The bezel at the top of the screen may also be disruptive for some people; you end up losing 2” by .5” of your menu bar to the forward-facing camera. I don’t currently use any software that has enough menu bars to be affected, but other people’s mileage may vary.  

That said, I used it as my only machine for several weeks over the holidays and I got used to the size really quickly. And the smaller size translates to a lighter weight and ease of carrying/using it out and about in the world.

 

Audio: Headphone jack. This is one of the more surprising aspects of current Mac models. Apple has long been pretty dedicated to not accommodating audiophiles with their gear.[1] Because of that, I was stunned when I learned that Apple has built high-impedance, low-noise amplifiers into all of their modern models. This laptop drives high impedance headphones like the Drop x Sennheiser 6XX (300 ohms) (review planned for last week, but coming eventually) and Beyerdynamic DT 990 (250 ohms) (review here) really beautifully, but also is able to drive really sensitive IEMs like my Chi-fi Campfire Audio knockoffs without a ton of noise. Even some pretty decent desktop headphone amplifiers struggle with one or the other; most amps that I like with high-impedance headphones are super noisy for sensitive IEMs and amps that are good with sensitive IEMs often struggle to drive high-impedance cans at reasonable volumes.

 

Do I have desktop amps that I think provide better, clearer sound? Sure. But they’re not the cheap ones, nor the transportable ones. I end up relying on the on-board sound instead of plugging in the Dragonfly Red dongle DAC I carry most of the time, which tells me that I really like the sound profile.

 

Bluetooth. Bluetooth sucks for music, as always, but it’s a pretty decent implementation that plays well with other devices in the Apple ecosystem. It automatically detects AirPods and Beats associated with my Apple account and asks me if I want to connect them, and provides information about battery charge etc. The .alac codec is fine, and the laptop does a good job of converting everything into it to pipe to Apple-capable headphones.

 

Speakers: They’re reasonably loud. They’re fine. I don’t really use them much, as the universe of situations where I am working on a laptop AND want/can courteously play music out loud is pretty damned small.

 

Airplay: This is one of the weirder things about this laptop, just because I haven’t really encountered it before: the MacBook Air automatically lists active Airplay speakers on your wifi network as options for audio out. I can’t imagine I’d ever deliberately use this because I have an entire Roon network set up around my house using a music protocol that’s a lot better than Airplay, but it is kind of cool especially when you have HomePods in several rooms in your house (and Airplay-capable Bluesound amplifiers in most of the others).

Connectivity: The ports are limited, which has been true of almost all of the Macs I’ve owned other than the Mac Studio. One modern Magsafe port and two Thunderbolt/USB-4 ports on the left side of the keyboard, and one 1/8” audio jack on the right side, and that’s it. No USB-A, no HDMI (mini or otherwise) or any other video out. As someone who dislikes Bluetooth (especially for mice) it’s a little annoying, and I end up carrying a USB-A hub and a few USB-C to A adapters in my bag all of the time. It’ll get less annoying over time as more and more of my devices end up being USB-C (my iPhone and new AirPods case are both USB-C finally, and I’m gradually cutting over all of my peripherals). In a pinch, you can charge via the USB-C ports too, if you damage, lose, or forget the Magsafe adapter.  It charges fine with the 65W USB-C charger for my Lenovo Carbon X1; it doesn’t require the expensive, bespoke Apple charger, fortunately.

[Also the Magsafe is amazing and I’m so glad Apple brought them back. Anyone who lives with a large dog with an active tail can appreciate how important they are, and it’s legitimately one of the reasons I didn’t buy any of the Apple models that didn’t include them.]

 

Wifi is good. Bluetooth is as good as Bluetooth gets. Airdop is actually REALLY well implemented and useful for moving files back and forth.

 

Design/Aesthetics: It’s pretty. It’s an Apple product. I appreciate that they’re giving us more options than white and brushed aluminum. I’ve long been a fan of Apple’s version of Space Grey, but for this one the midnight called to me. It’s a very clean looking device, though I’ve (for the first time) gone and covered it in stickers. I’ve also thrown on a case, just because I’d read enough reviews about people inadvertently scratching them, or realizing how many fingerprints ended up on the aluminum case.

Upgradability: Upgradability? What upgradability? You think you should get to question what Apple has so generously provided to you?!?!

Macs are all now system-on-chip[2], which means that whatever configuration you pick, you will forever be stuck with it. No ability to upgrade the processor, memory, hard drive, etc. So make your decision wisely! (Seriously though, this is the base model and it’s perfect for everything I want to use it for so I doubt I’ll have any regret about the configuration I chose. Also I have different machines for other uses.)

 

Pricing: It’s not cheap-cheap, but by computer standards (and particularly by Apple standards) it’s an absolute steal at MSRP, let alone at $899.99 I saw it for at Costco last weekend. It’s about the same price as a comparable Microsoft Surface and cheaper than the Carbon X1 line from Lenovo. It’s the kind of price where it would really suck to have to replace it, but it’s also totally doable. And that means that I’m willing to carry it with me and actually use it, something I couldn’t or wouldn’t do with the $2400 MacBook pro.

 

Conclusion: Apple is running into an issue where their new line of machines (with Apple silicon instead of Intel chips) are so good that people aren’t bothering to upgrade to the new hotness each year, and this machine seems like it will inevitably cause the same problem. They could announce the M3 version of the MacBook Air tomorrow and I wouldn’t even bother to look because this machine is so perfect for what I need it to do. With the introduction of the 15” version of the Air, I can’t imagine recommending the M3 MacBook Pro (either 14” or 16”) to anyone but a true power user (*waves at Robin*), and even most of them would probably benefit more from one of the other models unless they’re doing their power-user work primarily out and about in the world.

 

Apple may have screwed themselves with this one; when you’ve lost even me from the MOAR POWER crew ....

 

It’s a great device. I recommend it without any reservations to anyone who needs a new machine for anything less than serious video editing or similarly intensive work (or anyone who wants a gaming machine; you don’t buy a Mac for gaming at this point. Ever.). Get it on sale. Use it. Love it. Replace it if it breaks or gets stolen.

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[1] See e.g. removal of the headphone jack on iPhones, no USB ports and a questionable implementation of Bluetooth and no support for actual lossless codecs on most iOS devices, stripping the optical audio out of 4k Apple TVs, the way Airplay 2 handles streams, etc.

[2] Except the $7k+ MacPro/Cheese Grater, and even that is mostly system-on-chip.