Apple MacBook Air (2022, M2)

Let’s start with the physical design, since that’s where Apple has made some pretty drastic changes. The exterior of the MacBook Air is at once what you expect from the Air—ultrathin, incredibly lightweight—but it’s nothing like the MacBook Air models of the past. The long-familiar wedge design is gone, replaced with an even thinner body that’s the same thickness front and back. Measuring a mere 0.44 inch thick, the Air is still an astonishingly slim laptop, and the 2.7-pound weight makes many other ultraportables feel a bit chunky.

Much of this thinner profile is made possible by a new logic board design. In addition to hosting the new Apple M2 chip, the logic board is now designed with all of the components on one side. A dual-sided logic board has long been popular as a way to fit more components onto a smaller board, but with Apple’s latest System on a Chip (SoC) doing most of the heavy lifting, it looks like the board design is plenty compact. The goal now is thinness, not overall size, and the result is a significant achievement: The Air is the thinnest it’s ever been.

Solid Connectivity, Now With MagSafe for Charging

The main update from the previous MacBook Air is the move to MagSafe charging. It's a huge win for convenience, saving you from disaster when you accidentally trip over a stray power cable, since the magnetic plug detaches more easily when yanked. Even better, your MagSafe plug will match the color of your MacBook Air, and charging the Air won't occupy one of the USB-C ports.

Another big change to the Air's design is the move to a 13.6-inch display. The Liquid Retina display is brighter and bolder than anything we’ve seen on the Air before. In addition to being larger, it boasts a 500-nit maximum brightness (it actually hit 514 nits in our testing) and support for 99% of the P3 color gamut. It's an impressive display for the MacBook Air, a system that has long felt like it was a modern laptop with a display that lagged several years behind. It does face extreme competition, though. Comparable ultraportables like the Dell XPS 13 OLED (9310) and the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon offer truly premium OLED displays, and they offer touch-display capability on top of that, something the MacBook Air and Pro have always lacked.

As for camera quality, it's a big upgrade from the 720p cameras that were being used just a couple of years ago. You’ll look better in Zoom meetings on this Air than on the M1 model, and it’s not just the resolution. The handling of color and overall lighting is better, too, thanks to improved image processing powered by Apple’s Neural Engine.

The MacBook Air Input: A Familiar Keyboard, and a Better Trackpad

2022 MacBook Air Configuration Options

The base model M2 Air comes with the standard M2 chip with eight GPU cores, 8GB of memory, and a 256GB SSD for storage. This base model sells for the relatively affordable price of $1,199. Our test unit is the stepped-up model, which boasts 10 GPU cores and starts at $1,499. That model also comes with Apple’s new 35-watt charger, which is a tiny little brick that has two USB-C ports for powering laptops, phones, iPads, and whatever else you need. Our review unit also has 16GB of memory (a $200 extra), and a 1TB drive (also $200). That puts the total at $1,899, well into premium laptop pricing.