Students, buy this - MacBook Air M2 Review

[Music] if you were a student looking for a macbook in 2019 things were complicated first off all macbooks had the horrible butterfly keyboard as for models you could get an inexpensive air that was slow and hot or you could pay up for an even hotter pro you know i don't know a single person who bought a macbook from the usb-c generation and i don't blame them it's why the m1 macbook air was such a revolution when it came out it turned what was a slow hot and horrible laptop into a great one it made buying a mac easy it isn't anymore and this here is why the all-new m2 macbook air a laptop so good i want to call it perfect but yet underneath its surface lie weird flaws that you a beautiful student might never find but hate knowing exists [Music] even if you do find the flaws which i will tell you about in a minute you'll still want this laptop i want this laptop gone is the iconic macbook air wedge shape and instead we have the macbook pros aesthetic thinned down to its most essential i really like it it's so sturdy yet light sometimes i wish i was sitting opposite somebody using this so i could admire this squared off black screen hi excuse me do you mind just using this laptop for a little bit uh sure thank you it is the new air solves a lot of the minor day-to-day criticisms we still had left for the m1 model instead of always having one thunderbolt port tied up for charging the addition of mag save freeze up both instead of big bezels the screen is bigger and taller thanks to the inclusion of the notch and the webcam is now 1080p instead of looking like [Music] poo the taller screen is great i feel like i can fit so much more in even in default display scaling the extra tallness is afforded by the notch but some of it is robbed by it as well as the menu bar is now significantly taller too it also includes apple's new m2 chip notable for clocking a little bit faster including a couple more gpu cores and offering 8k and pros acceleration with the media engine it is by all means the perfect distillation of a laptop no gimmicky touch sensitive function keys no noisy fan and no stupid screen size options 13.6 inches is the perfect size and don't at me about that so is this the mac i would buy well i'll answer that but first a word from this video's sponsor war thunder despite what you may think there are in fact games that do run on mac os like war thunder it's a free-to-play online military vehicle combat game that features 2 000 plus historically accurate war machines available to battle it out on over 100 major battlefields through the 20th century till now and if you want to play with your windows using friends don't worry because it supports crossplay too so head to the link below and start playing war thunder for free and get a free bonus premium vehicle just for signing up okay so i like this laptop and i want it in my life so obviously the first question is what color do i pick i must confess that i'm very disappointed that this isn't available in the imax bold colors with white bezels the options are really rather serious space gray and silver plus the new starlight or this midnight because it has a tint of blue i thought i'd like midnight it is sleek and reminds me of the old black macbook the problem is i have grimy hands and you can tell you'll want to keep a cloth with you also our resident gen ziers thought this doesn't even look like a mac so i might have to go with silver now that's a macbook unlike that black macbook i'm pleased to report that all the colors are available even on the base model which this is the base model is notable because at twelve hundred dollars it's a full two hundred dollars more than the m1 macbook air that apple still sells but while it has many day-to-day improvements over its predecessor there are still a few crucial regressions apple's base 250 gigabyte ssd is stingy it's the same amount of storage included in the macbook 13 years ago sure ssds these days are much faster except this one in the last macbook air the base ssd was actually two stitched together gigabyte modules working in parallel now there's just one bigger 256 gigabyte module this makes things slower the slower transfer speeds are not something i've noticed too egregiously in day to day use but this could shorten the usable lifespan of the laptop long term [Music] next is the cpu the m2 is more powerful than the m1 blasting through quick benchmarks and lightroom exports a garageband project that would make an intel macbook airs fan blast doesn't even make the m2 sweat however when the going gets tough long and hot well that's when things unwind i've been hearing that premiere is having troubles generally these days so if you're using that app maybe just wait a bit to buy because editing some mxf's did push the system something that wasn't as big of a problem when editing in davinci and speaking of davinci to compare the apple silicons socs i have a very intense four minute resolve project containing 8k raw footage with noise reduction luts and some green screen with an m2 powered macbook pro it takes under an hour with an m1 powered macbook air it takes under an hour and a half so on this m2 macbook air it takes an hour and 40 minutes what how well the reason for this is simple while the m1 macbook air has a chunk of metal to absorb and dissipate heat the m2 has virtually nothing a little pad and an air gap and so that means that this thing is fast right up until it's hot and then it's slow very slow if you have any intensive workload that takes 10 plus minutes of computing prepare for it to be stretched though to be fair i did start this export on an intel powered fan cooled macbook air and when it estimated that it would take five plus hours i said nope well if you do want to do this workload quickly a two thousand dollar macbook pro will do it in 18 minutes i'm not sure many poly size students will be pushing things that hard so what about them the m1 macbook air arrival made things easy there were no trade-offs it was so much better than any intel macbook that at a thousand dollars it was a great deal if you bought one back then you made a great decision now though they're still the same price this is apple doing inflation by the way usually the older technology gets less expensive as it matures but this is a thousand dollars and this is twelve hundred dollars so therefore the best value for a student getting a macbook is a refurbished m1 macbook air sure we had a bit of hassle buying ours but at 850 dollars it's great value for a mac i even prefer this keyboard despite the compromises i'm still willing to recommend even the base m2 macbook air but only to those who won't notice the shortcomings of one ssd module but it's not an excellent value like the m1 laptop has been until now because to get the equivalent ssd performance you're bringing up the price to at least 1400. the 512 models get two 256 gigabyte modules so it gets expensive fast if you are humming and hawing over what to upgrade i'm going to lean towards the ssd upgrade unless you're one of those people who cannot close browser tabs then get the ram and if you're thinking about upgrading both and might need more power consider a refurbished or on sale macbook pro those go for around eighteen hundred dollars only 100 more than the most equivalently specked air see it's so complicated now there's no easy answer like there was a year ago and that's really annoying so um what about me in the weeks leading up to the launch of this m2 macbook air i used an older intel model and wow is the different stark if i was coming from an intel macbook this air even with its compromises would feel great it really did give me a sense of how revolutionary this apple silicon transition is for this form factor i actually do have a choice between any macbook to use at work and so i think the one i'd go for is the m2 macbook air in silver maybe but if it was my own money i think i'd go with the m1 model refurbished in gold thanks for slowing down this mac address if you're just as confused about the m2 macbook air as i am well give this video a like and if you want to see what color i actually do end up with well you might as well subscribe now i'm curious in the comments below how many of you would actually have a workload that would push the m2 into its really hot state

Channel: Mac Address

Views: 655,477

Keywords: Mac, Macintosh, Apple, Tech, Review, M1, M2, Processor, Apple Silicon, ARM, New, Laptop, Notebook, Students, Back to School, Recommendation, Consumer, Advice, Refurbished, MacBook Air

Id: 9f8D6Q2E9XE

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2022