I’ve been using the 15” MacBook Air as my
every-day laptop for over a month and I think this is the closest Apple has ever gotten to the
perfect laptop—but that doesn’t mean I'm going to keep using it; nor should you should rush out to
buy one. Lemme cook here. Since the MacBook Air debuted 15-years-ago, it hasn't been offered in
a size greater than 13". For a few years there, we had an even smaller version available at
11.6", but never larger than 13 and it... never made sense. The simple reality is that a lot of
people want big screens: be it aging eyesight, larger workspace requirements, laptop-only
workflows, whatever... and until last month, the only way to get an Apple laptop larger than
14" in size was to spend at least $2,500 for a 16" MacBook Pro that is hulkingly overkill for many
that merely seek more display real estate. Adding a larger panel to the M2 MacBook Air everyone
already liked was a no-brainer and most everything that was good about that machine transfers over:
the phenomenal keyboard is the best Apple has ever put in a laptop with excellent travel and
a full-size function row, the webcam won't hold a candle to a smartphone but provides better
picture quality than most competing products and offers a number of useful effects. Our testing
discovered that the screen offers surprisingly even backlighting and about 470 nits sustained
brightness which is adequate for most buyers. Now, that larger display does require a beefier
battery, but our testing still achieved 10-11 hours of fairly heavy mixed use—which is, in a
word: great. And the good doesn't stop there. In fact, there's a number of things that the
15" does even better than it's smaller sibling. I was really underwhelmed by the tinny
13" Air's speakers—they were bad. The 15" Air has much better low-end response
and avoids distortion altogether; however, I did still find it to get a tad muddy
near about 70% volume or higher. They don't hold a candle to the MacBook Pro,
but they're adequate. Here's a comparison: We discovered in our review of the 13" M2
Air that the silicon throttled fairly heavily during sustained workloads due to the lack of a
spinning fan. The 15" continues this trend and it can't match the sustained performance of an
actively cooled M2 Mac mini; however, it makes fairly major improvements over the smaller Air
in sustained workloads across the board: from synthetic tests like Cinebench to real-world loads
such as video encoding tasks and Xcode project compile times. Given the nearly identical looking
cooling strategy, this basically comes down to good 'ol physics: greater thermal mass can absorb
and dissipate greater thermal energy. Go figure. While the keyboard doesn't add any features over
the 13" Air, the trackpad certainly does gaining a massive size increase. Other small changes found
between models are that I find the 15" easier to open one-handed given its heavier bottom case, and
despite having the same webcam, the 15" Air seems a little bit sharper than the 13". Additionally,
the same-sized-notch-on-a-bigger-screen means that you're less likely to encounter apps that
push menubar items across said notch—though, it'll still happen pretty often
if you're a heavy pro apps user. Whereas these computers share the same strengths,
they also share the same weaknesses. I mentioned in last year's M2 Air review that the advertised
starting price is a bit of a lie because anybody wanting to future-proof themselves would
do well to avoid this insane stock config: 256GB of storage and 8GB of memory. In 2023. For
reference, those were the same stock specs on the 2015 MacBook—a computer with the same starting
price tag as this one—but released 8 years ago. Additionally, like the 13" Air before it, the
upgrade pricing for memory and storage on this machine is ludicrous. We live in a world where
you can pick up a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro with 3x greater disk speeds than the SSD in this machine
for $100. What does Apple charge to upgrade to 2TB of storage? Oh, you know, just eight times more
than that. By the time you hit what I'd consider a reasonable configuration for now and the future,
you're no longer at $1,300—you're at $1,700. And guess what you can get for $1,700? A 14" M2 Pro
MacBook Pro. That's a machine that has a massively improved display—best in class, in fact—with a
high refresh rate, HDR, miniLED backlighting, better color accuracy, and dual-pixel native
resolution. It's a machine with a significantly faster SoC that also stays whisper quiet offering
better performance and similar battery life. It's a machine with better speakers, a better
microphone array, a better webcam, better I/O, the ability to drive multiple displays, it's better
at literally everything save one area: weight and size. But here's the thing... it's only marginally
heavier with a moderately smaller screen.k And that's something I haven't brought up
yet. The 15" MacBook Air is not Air-like. You will not find yourself marveling how
light it feels relative to how large it is like Apple's smaller notebooks. This thing
is 22% heavier and 27% larger than the 13" MacBook Air and you feel every percent. In
a backpack, I cannot tell the difference between the 15" Air and the 14" Pro. The new
Air is not even class-leading when comparing itself to Windows notebooks in weight. Both the
latest Microsoft Surface and LG Gram are lighter. Don't misunderstand... I'm not saying the 15"
MacBook Air is a bad buy—if you value screen size relative to weight above all else, you'll
be very happy with this machine. Furthermore, this is going to be a big hit amongst businesses
that want to offer a larger display size option to employees without the expense of a 16" MacBook
Pro. But if you're a regular joe that finds 13" just a little too small, I urge you to go check
out the 14" MacBook Pro. If that's a screen size that seems viable, you'll be happier with the
display, silicon, I/O, and everything else now and into the future. The 15" MacBook Air is nearly
perfect—but it has to compete with the best value laptop Apple's ever made—a computer I don't think
Apple themselves will be able to ever top again. If you'd have told me 5-years-ago that we'd
need to weigh our options when considering a new MacBook because they're all too good,
I'd have never believed you—but the future is now, baby. And I'm here for it. Thanks so
much for watching, and as always, stay snazzy.
