apple announced a new m2 macbook air and macbook pro at the latest event and they are definitely an upgrade from the previous models but not in the same way so let’s talk about what i liked what i’m not so sure about and then where i thought there were some opportunities for improvements the starting price of the m2 macbook air is 1199 which is 200 more than the previous model with the m1 chip now that gives you eight gigabytes of unified memory and 256 gigabytes of ssd storage which i have to say that i’m not super happy about the design has been updated though the new macbook air no longer has the wedge shape and it now resembles the 14 and 16 inch macbook pro but of course it’s a lot thinner like almost unbelievably thin we’re looking at 11.3
millimeters which is less than half an inch and it weighs in at 2.7 pounds or 1.24 kilograms and when you check out that display it’s almost paper thin it’s it’s pretty impressive along with the new design we’re also getting new colors so like the previous model it’s available in space gray and silver but instead of gold we now have starlight and midnight which is the one i’m leaning towards now back to the display this is definitely an area where we see several upgrades so first we’re moving from a 13.3 inch retina display to a larger 13.
6 inch liquid retina display and we’re not getting the liquid retina xdr display that we have on the 14 and 16 inch macbook pro models but we are getting a very slightly higher resolution than the m1 macbook air we’re moving from 2560 by 1600 to 2560 by 1644.
We’re also getting 500 nits max brightness versus 400 on the previous model so this new display will be brighter now the bezels have been reduced with the m2 macbook air but we do get a notch just like we do with the 14 and 16 inch macbook pro and this notch houses the new camera module which i’ll get to in a minute in addition to being bigger the new display is a 10 bit display with support for 1 billion colors so photos and videos will have more accurate color reproduction now as far as ports we’re getting the same two thunderbolt slash usb4 ports that we had on the previous models and again both of them are on the left side and this means that we’re still unable to connect accessories or to charge the laptop from both sides i really wish that this was something that apple upgraded on the newer model because it can be inconvenient in certain situations but what we are getting is the return of magsafe with magsafe 3 which means that you can now charge the m2 macbook air
and then still keep both ports available for things like an external display with up to 6k resolution or something else like a portable ssd the base m2 macbook air comes with a 30 watt power adapter there’s also an optional 35 watt compact power adapter with dual usb c ports so you can charge two devices at the same time or if you really want you can get a 67 watt power adapter that can charge the macbook air to 50 in 30 minutes i think that’s great there’s also a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack on the right side with support for high impedance headphones the magic keyboard now has a full height row of function keys with a larger touch id button and of course we’re still getting the force touch trackpad now this keyboard and trackpad combo was excellent on the m1 macbook air and full size function keys on a larger touch id are going to be more comfortable to use the camera was also upgraded from 720p on the m1 macbook air to 1080p and this new camera doesn’t only have a higher resolution it also has better low light performance and in fact it’s twice as good as the previous model which should really help with video calls in poor lighting conditions now this was one of my critiques of the m1 macbook air and the macbook pro so i’m glad to see that apple upgraded it we’re also getting a new isp or image signal processor on the m2 chip so more advanced computational video will result in an even better overall image the speakers were upgraded to a four speaker sound system which is pretty impressive and such a slim laptop and it should
offer superior audio quality to the previous model which was already pretty good we’re also getting a new 3-mic array to capture cleaner audio and i can’t wait to let you hear the test now finally we get support for spatial audio when you’re playing music or watching movies with dolby atmos apple spent a lot of time highlighting the performance of the m2 chip which is powerful and impressively efficient so stick with me as i go through these numbers because they can be confusing but they are meaningful and there’s one incredibly important part we’re getting a second generation five nanometer tech chip with 20 billion transistors which is 25 more than the m1 chip but what does this actually do for you so for starters we’re getting a hundred gigabytes per second of unified memory bandwidth which is a 50 increase over the m1 chip and speaking of unified memories the m1 chip had a maximum of 16 gigabytes the m2 bumps this up to 24 gigabytes so you’ll be able to push this entry level
laptop even harder and you’ll be able to accomplish things that would have taxed the m1 chip while we’re still getting an eight core cpu the four high performance core are even more powerful and the four high efficiency cores are even more efficient so we’re seeing improvement at both ends now overall we’re getting an 18 improvement in multi-core performance over the m1 chip and almost two times the performance of the latest 10 core pc laptop chip while using the same power consumption and it can deliver the maximum level of performance of the 10 core pc chip at a quarter of the power and apple does reference this chip as the i7 1255u on the samsung galaxy book 2 360 with 16 gigabytes of ram when compared with the 12 core i7 1260p and the msi prestige 14 evo the m2 chip delivers 87 percent of the peak performance of that chip at a quarter of the power consumption which is pretty ridiculous if you think about it so it’s very clear that apple is focusing on power efficient performance instead of simply reaching for the highest
peak now when we look at the next generation gpu and the m2 we see that it now offers up to 10 cores there’s also no seven core variant like there was with the m1 chip in terms of performance we’re looking at a 25 increase with the same power consumption as the m1 and up to 35 percent higher peak performance compared with the integrated gpu and the same 10 core pc chip that we talked about we’re looking at 2.3 times the performance with the same power consumption or the same peak performance of the 10 core pc chip at a fifth of the power now probably the most impressive part is that the m2 macbook air can achieve this level of performance without an active cooling system so there’s no fan and just like the m1 macbook air it’s going to be absolutely silent all in all if you’re just browsing the web and watching video this isn’t going to significantly improve your user experience but if you’re doing things like editing video and final cut pro then you’ll be getting a 38 bump in performance with a slightly larger 52.6 watt hour battery we’re also able
to maintain the same battery life of the m1 macbook air with 18 hours of video playback and 15 hours of web browsing my m1 macbook air really felt like it lasted all day like i never really worried or thought about having to charge it so i’m super excited to get this new model in the studio and then see how it holds up now when we get to the 13-inch m2 macbook pro it looks like apple essentially kept everything about the body the same and then just plugged in the m2 chip there’s no 8 core gpu version only 10 cores and it starts at 1299 with 8 gigabytes of unified memory and 256 gigabytes of ram when you compare it with the m1 model there’s no upgrade to the display the keyboard still has the touch bar which i happen to like but i know a lot of users don’t so other than some relatively minor audio upgrades i have to say that the 13 inch m2 macbook pro is a bit underwhelming now apple did a good job with upgrading the macbook air we’re getting a more powerful m2 chip a new display a completely new design with new colors new charging options
and upgraded camera improved speakers and all of that with the same battery life so if you are thinking of getting the m1 macbook air but want these new features i would definitely wait on the other hand the m2 macbook pro seems like there’s a little bit of an afterthought where the focus was primarily on the new chip but i’m not quite sure where it fits into the current macbook lineup i would have also like to see both machines start with a 512 gigabyte ssd i think that they’re both going to be powerful enough to last you for the next five or seven years and since they can’t be upgraded it would be hard for me to recommend going with the 256 gigabyte model i’m super excited to get both of these in the studio and start playing with them and then share my experience with you if you have any questions you want me to cover in my detailed reviews and comparisons let me know in the comment section now you should watch this comparison between the 14 and the 16 inch macbook pro hopefully this video was helpful click on my face to subscribe you know what i always say buy it nice or buy it twice good luck and see you soon
