15" MacBook Air Review: The BEST Laptop of 2023!
Apple has an all new 15 inch MacBook Air that’ll be dropping this week. And I’ve been using this Midnight color version for about a week straight as my main laptop. The 15 inch model was the first piece of hardware announced in the WWDC 2023 keynote. That is of course also where Apple debuted its new Vision Pro headset. I did get to use it and I did put a video out. If you haven’t seen it, I will leave a link down below. It is incredible. There’s a lot to talk about here. So let’s jump right in
starting with the unboxing. On the inside of the box, you’ll find the MacBook Air right on top and setting that aside, you also have the 35 watt dual USB-C charger. So you can use this to charge up the MacBook Air and it also has an extra port you can use to charge another device at the same time without having to use one of the ports on the Air itself to do so. Now there is also an optional 70 watt USB-C power adapter that enables fast charging, giving you up to 50% charge in 35 minutes. And
that’s honestly the one I’d personally choose over the 35 watt dual port charger myself. Now inside the sleeve, we have some info on the MacBook Air along with a
M2 MacBook Air gave us the first major redesign since 2010. Yes, for 12 years, Apple had been using the now iconic tapered design that we had all become accustomed to on the MacBook Air. Well, the 15-inch model gives us a larger display on the Air for the first time in the entire history of the product. It’s similar to the 13 inch model with an enclosure that sees even thickness all around. Kind of resembles a miniaturized version of the 16 inch MacBook Pro, which is a very good thing in my opinion. The new Air is 11.5
millimeters thick and weighs just 3.3 pounds. And that’s just about half a pound more than the 13 inch model. And like the 13 inch model, when you first pick it up, it feels kind of odd. It almost feels like an empty shell of a laptop or like a toy, just due to how light it is. You get a headphone jack with support for high impedance headphones on the right and two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left alongside a MagSafe connector for charging. On the previous model, you have to use one of the two Thunderbolt ports
for charging. So this is a very welcome change as is the full size function key row and touch ID button on the keyboard. Of course, one of the most important parts of the MacBook Air is on the inside, which brings me to the Apple M2 chip. While the base M2 chip sports an eight core CPU and eight core GPU on the 13 inch air, the 15 inch model ships with the 10 core GPU variant of the M2 only. That’s with 256 gigabytes of storage and eight gigabytes of RAM. You can upgrade the RAM to 16
or 24 gigabytes and the storage can go all the way up to two terabytes if you need the space. The new M2 chip offers about one and a half times the performance of the M1 model depending on the task. The model I’ve been testing here from Apple has one terabyte of storage and 16 gigabytes of RAM. Up next, let’s talk about the display. This is the biggest change to the MacBook Air. The previous 13.6 inch display has been significantly enlarged, bringing the diagonal screen size to 15.3 inches. This gives you a lot more room to
work with, especially with the menu bar brought up and out of the way. and you’ll also find a 1080p camera inside of the display cutout at the top, similar to the MacBook Pro. The display is also 20% brighter, hitting 500 nits of brightness, and it can actually go down to two nits of brightness if you wanna dim it. And it also supports P3 wide color, giving it the ability to display a billion colors. Oh, and when watching videos, you’ll experience the new six speaker array, which are compatible with spatial audio and Dolby Atmos. Now it’s
not as good as what you’d find in a dedicated Atmos setup, or even on Apple’s more expensive computers. But the sound here is very good and it’s a marked improvement over both the M1 and Intel-based Airs. The 15-inch model here gets two sets of force-canceling woofers, resulting in twice the base depth of even the M2 13-inch Air, resulting in fuller sound. It’s basically the best sounding MacBook Air Apple’s ever made. Now, in my opinion, no matter how cool a laptop is supposed to be, I need the display, keyboard, and trackpad to be absolutely on point.
And for the MacBook Air, I’m happy to say that it meets those basic requirements. The full height function row with touch ID here makes the typing experience feel premium. Okay, so what about actually using the M2 MacBook Air? The M2 chip provides 38% faster video editing performance and 20% faster image filters and effects performance when compared to M1, which just sounds nuts for a machine so thin, but that’s the same thought I had about the 13-inch model as well. Now, I know this isn’t what everyone does on their machines, and it’s certainly not what most
people buy a MacBook Air to do, but video editing is taxing and is something I’m very comfortable doing, so it would give me a good sense of any hiccups in performance. Opening projects and editing on the Air felt easy, and content played back like butter. Super smooth when both playing and when scrubbing through the timeline. I was impressed. Now impressed enough to replace my 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Air? No, but still I am impressed that Apple’s entry-level M2 is this freaking good. Up next, let’s talk about the colors. There’s silver, which is the
most classic of the MacBook Air colors. Space gray is still here for those wanting something subtly darker, but not too dark. Apple Starlight color that we’ve seen on some other devices. And lastly, Midnight, giving you a much more bold, dark color for those who like that look. I am obviously a huge fan of the Midnight color as that’s what I have here in both sizes of the MacBook Air. Many will point out that it shows fingerprints a lot more than the other colors, which is true, but it’s also easy to wipe down and get rid
of them. But I think it’s the most unique color for any Apple computer, and I’m a fan of it. Now let’s talk battery life. According to Apple, the 15-inch MacBook Air gets up to 18 hours of battery life, which is actually similar to the 13-inch model despite having a larger size. I assume that means a larger battery, but you also have a larger display. It should also be said that 18 hours is based on watching videos with all radios turned off, and I personally don’t know anyone who actively shuts down Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when watching
videos, especially since most people are streaming them. Now in my tests, just using the MacBook Air for typical tasks, my day-to-day stuff, email, web browsing, messaging, Discord, Slack, RSS reader, calendar, those types of things, I saw just over 14 hours of battery life give or take. That is still great and definitely feels like all day battery life to me. Basically, if I had to go into an office, I could take my fully charged MacBook Air with me and I won’t even need to plug in during the typical eight hour work day. And seriously for a
computer this thin to have that much battery life, once again, it’s just a testament to Apple Silicon and what they’ve been able to do here. The 15 inch MacBook Air will start at 1299 while the 13 inch version just got a price cut, bringing it down to 1099 while the M1 model is still available for the same 999. This allows someone who wants a Mac laptop in the 15 inch range to spend $1,300, rather than having to pony up $2,500 for a base model 16 inch MacBook Pro, just for the screen size. My opinion, Apple
is gonna sell a whole lot of these 15 inch MacBook Airs. Let me know your thoughts or questions on the new Air in the comments below. Thanks for watching as always guys, I appreciate your support. I’m Andru Edwards and I will catch you in the next video.
