The 2022 MacBook Air is here. It’s lighter, more powerful, and has a slightly wider form factor. The new Air was announced at the WWDC 2022 alongside the M2 chipset, which also powers this new mean machine in a small package.
The two most outright things to notice in the new MacBook Air are the expected design alteration and brand-new colors. It arrives in four different hues: starlight, sliver, midnight, and gray. The Air is not as colorful as the iMacs, as rumors had suggested, but the power and performance should make up for that for most fans.
Design
It’s thinner form factor now is slightly wider than the previous model, thus you get a larger 13.6-in display as compared to 13.3-in from the previous year. The M2 MacBook Air measures 11mm thick, weighs 2.7lbs, and touts a Liquid Retina display with 500nits of brightness.
The notch, in the pictures we have seen, appears slightly bigger than on the MacBook Pro, but as users we have come to terms with the notch and thickish bezel on MacBook. Herein however, Apple informs, it has enhanced the camera to 1080p, which should have the hybrid workforce enticed.
The M2 power
The base model of the M2 MacBook Air arrives with eight-core GPU while the model just $100 expensive features eight-core CPU and a 10 core GPU, which Apple said, makes the model up to 1.4x better in performance from the M1 MacBook Air. The CPU is paired with 8GB of unified memory, though it can be upscaled to 16GB and 24GB for an extra cost.
As for video editing performance, Apple says, the M2 MacBook Air is about 38 percent faster, though it didn’t outrightly mention the specific apps it may have used for the benchmark. For the record, Apple touts the M2 MacBook Air to run for 18 hours on a single charge and draw power through MagSafe charging, leaving the Thunderbolt ports usable while charging. It comes with a 30W fast charger by default but users can go for more powerful 35W or 67W USB-C fast chargers for an additional cost of course.
Starting off at $1,199, the M2 MacBook Air will start shipping in July with its headphone jack supporting high-impedance. The delays in supply chain could have an impact in the release of the new machine, but for now things seem almost in line with the July launch.
