MacBook Air is back, with the new M2 chip and the return of MagSafe
Overnight Apple announced the new MacBook Air, which comes packed with the upgraded M2 chip, Apple’s own CPU, which allows for up to 20 hours of use.
Perhaps the most interesting thing is that it is now available in four finishes — silver, space grey, midnight and starlight.
“We’re so excited to bring our new M2 chip to the world’s two most popular laptops — the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Completely redesigned around M2, MacBook Air is thinner, lighter and faster with a bigger display, better camera and all-day battery life, in four beautiful finishes. Only with Apple silicon can you build such a thin and light notebook with a fanless design, and this combination of performance and capabilities. M2 also comes to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, featuring incredible performance, ProRes acceleration, up to 24GB of memory and up to 20 hours of battery life — making our most portable pro notebook even better.”
For a while now, Apple has been using the M1 chip, their all in one CPU that powers their iPads and other Mac computers, but the M2 is the next evolution of that. M2 features a next-generation 8-core CPU with advancements in both performance and efficiency cores, along with Apple’s next-generation GPU, which now has up to 10 cores — two more than M1. M2 delivers 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth and supports up to 24GB of fast unified memory, so it can handle even larger and more complex workloads with ease.
Designed to dramatically speed up video workflows, M2 also adds a next-generation media engine and a powerful ProRes video engine for hardware-accelerated encode and decode, so systems with M2 will be able to play back more streams of 4K and 8K video than before.
You might think that with all that power this generation of the MacBook Air is bigger, but you would be wrong, the entire laptop is just 11.3mm thick and weighs only 1.24kg, which translates to a roughly 20% drop in volume, compared to previous models.
Something that will make long time Apple fans happy, the MagSafe connector is returning to the MacBook Air as well, giving you fast charging, but not tethering you to the wall.
MacBook Air also features two Thunderbolt ports for connecting a variety of accessories, and a 3.5-mm audio jack with support for high-impedance headphones. Additionally, the Magic Keyboard features a full-height function row with Touch ID, and a spacious, Force Touch trackpad.
Finally, lets look at the display, the MacBook Air comes packed with a 13.6 inch Liquid Retina Display, which now fills out more of the side of the device, resulting in a larger display with much thinner borders, giving users more screen real estate to view their content in brilliant detail.
Now price, how much will one of these new machines cost, thankfully not too much more than previous MacBook Airs as the MacBook Air with M2 starts at $1,899. Availability is set for next month, but Apple didn’t provide an exact release date, in any event you can order yours today direct from Apple.
