Apple M2 MacBook Air – Long Term Review: THE Everyday Laptop

Hey friends, Andrew here – hope you’re well! So, I’ve used the M2 Air literally every single day since launch as my primary laptop and after spending a few months with the M2 Air…this laptop, I think, may be the everyday laptop for the vast majority of people! A few months on from launch the M2 Air is still in hot demand and so much so that some configurations still command a few weeks wait so whether you’re waiting for your new M2 Air to arrive or you’re considering a brand new laptop here is my long term review and

in this video i’ll share my new findings and hopefully answer the question of whether or not this truly is the everyday laptop if you watch my reviews you’ll know i like to start with the negatives so let’s go over the long term flaws i discovered over the months i’ve recently moved to a new dedicated office space and so i’ve spent a lot of time building up my new desk setup and here’s where i ran into one of the surprising flaws with the m2 air which initially went over my head and i haven’t really seen covered

in most reviews and that’s a fact the two usbc ports here are on the same left hand side it sounds trivial and for the most part it is

until the dock you use prioritizes the right hand side or the accessory you plug in blocks the only other empty usbc port for example from a design perspective evenly splitting the usbc ports to sit on both sides would have been far more practical for basically everybody but yeah i haven’t really seen this called out much so maybe it’s just me that finds this a flaw this isn’t a

deal breaker though moving on to the more controversial quote-unquote flaw the notorious midnight color you either love or you love to hate to me i still find it absolutely beautiful it’s a beautiful color an ethereal refracting deep blue hue that changes by time of day and lighting conditions but yes it definitely still is a massive fingerprint magnet nothing’s changed there over the last three months actually it’s gotten worse so if i were to buy this again i wouldn’t change my color choice actually i still love it all i’ve done is pull back on the consistency

of wiping it down where i wiped it down daily i now wipe it down weekly i just sort of you know accepted the smudges and dare i say it it feels like it gives it more character like a good leather patina people who can’t stand a single smudge and are kicking up a big fuss about it i don’t know it kind of gives me patrick bateman vibes hopefully you got that reference if you’re worried about fingerprints and it’s detracting you from the midnight color don’t be unless you’re a criminal i feel like most of you

will get over it in a couple weeks and come to enjoy the midnight color for what it is sophisticated especially with this wallpaper which brings together the midnight color pretty well if you ask me link to it below as usual it’s been awesome seeing you guys rock the wallpaper in your setup what i would actually change in retrospect is upgrading the ssd and memory as savvy subscribers pointed out in my previous review the slower read write ssd speeds are specific only to the 256 gigabyte drive though even then performance throttling continues to happen due to

heat dissipation issues it was evident over the last few months the laptop would stutter and it would be hot to the touch more frequently than ever and for the rare few who plan to throw a heavy workload at the m2 air as unconventional as that would be this is something i think you should be wary of if you’re an everyday consumer and you use this laptop as an everyday laptop as it’s intended to be you should take the throttling and heat issues with a grain of salt because it’ll likely not be an issue for you

in the first place you’re not going to hit the throttling threshold so you’re in the clear breathe easy and don’t take the other dire review saying the base M2 Air is the worst thing ever it’s definitely not and i’ve been using it daily for months it’s also worth pointing out i updated the M2 Air to the mac os ventura beta and that made the throttling issues even worse the initial beta was quite unstable to be fair you know the notes app wasn’t working things would freeze and stage manage still kind of sucks especially on a

13 inch screen it seems to exaggerate the m2 air throttling and heat issues with this beta but as you can see here i was randomly browsing websites and had to take out my phone to film this it was just stuttering all over the place it was laggy when i checked the temperature of i cleaned my mac x it was well over the operating temperature range it’s speaking of clean my mac x they’re today’s video sponsor and so here is a bit more about the genuinely useful app i use on a daily basis it’s an app

i’ve been immediately installing onto all my new macs because it keeps my mac squeaky clean and secondly it saves me time consider it a bit of a personal cleaning butler for your mac through its smart scan feature here it automatically cleans unused system junk and app files on my system and that’s pretty important because junk files malware unused apps it all adds up over time and prevents your mac from working at its peak the other feature i’ve been using a lot over the last few weeks is the large and old files feature here it automatically

scouts out all big files that might be unnecessarily taking up precious hard drive space so you can clean out your file graveyard there’s a whole other host of features to take care of your system optimization privacy management i find myself saying this a lot can we appreciate just how beautiful this app is definitely recommend cleanmymacx as a must-have app to prevent your mac from being cluttered in the first place or to delete years of junk if you have an older mac you can try out the app for free in the link below and test it

out to see if it works for you too now moving on to the positives with the m2 air and g’s have i loved using this laptop as a deadly driver over the last few months here’s why i didn’t cover the m2 air keyboard in my first review in detail but the more i type on it the more i love it it sounds great it feels great and it works great what more can you ask for the magic keyboard is lifted from the 14 inch macbook pro it’s identical on paper with the traditional scissor switch mechanism

but there’s something more tactile and responsive to the typing experience on the macbook air m2 it could be the m2 processor or it could be placebo i can’t put my finger on it but if you have the m2 air let me know down below if you feel the same but either way the keyboard has been amazing and i found myself taken to the cafes all the time which leads me to its portability weight and design a big big positive over the last few months i’ve had others pick up the laptop and their initial reaction is

almost always wow this is so much lighter than my insert just about any laptop here i’ve missed owning an air for this exact reason it’s just so easy to roam around with or go traveling to go work remotely with i’d go as far as to say if you’re a student you don’t need to look any further than this laptop here the power packed portability is all you need to excel with your studies for me it’s now really hard to want to even pick up and take the macbook pro around it feels gigantic after using the

m2 air every day in and out in fact i just have the pro docked at home at all times now for the more power intensive work and i take my M2 Air over to the new office instead and so this begs the question how far can you really push your m2 air well here’s a couple real world examples i edited a couple of small video files with ease even 4k content but when it comes to large 10 bit 4224k files and multiple hard drives like the setup makeover series i’m working on at the moment it

just wasn’t able to keep up to the rendering and file processing with daily use it only slows down when i actively use figma spotify notion slack and a number of pdfs and tabs up on safari and chrome simultaneously that’s when i start to see the n2 processor push and depending on how many tabs i continue opening performance was throttled i want to stress that this isn’t going to be an issue for most people for everything else especially if you’re editing documents in the cloud it doesn’t skip a beat as long as you have a reliable

and fast internet connection the laptop doesn’t need to be more powerful than it already is given the intended market segment it’s appealing to the perfect everyday laptop for the everyday user with the m2 pro and m2 max chips potentially just around the corner even well into the development and testing phase is the m2 Air still worth buying i’ll make it easy after using it for months yes it is for probably 80 of the general population or more if you’re either not required to be using intensive apps or as a hobby the m2 macbook air is

where it’s at this includes students small business owners and the everyday mom and dad for example i think the m1 Air still represents the best value if you’re strapped on cash but if you’re someone with deeper pockets and you’re looking for a new daily laptop i can almost guarantee you won’t be disappointed with the m2 air and even if you’re a so-called pro user and yes guys i totally realize that pro is a very vague term this could still be an amazing purchase for those pro users as a secondary laptop to assist with your main

workhorse for me the M2 Air is one of the best apple purchases i’ve made in a while i’ve been using it more than my macbook pro which is now reserved only for content creation work i mean heck i run my shopify business and get all my life admin work done on this macbook air alone and let’s not forget this is the base m2 Air if you’re looking for the best of the best possibly even an upcoming oled screen well i’ll see you in the review of the m2 pro when it drops everything else continues to

stand from my initial review the screen is amazing even though it lacks promotion the ssd read write speeds is backwards for the 256 gigabyte version yes but it’s fine for the intended biodemographic the upgraded webcam is welcome and the notch isn’t nearly as bad as you may think it is the everyday laptop to get if you made it to the end of the video drop the codeword comment every day and i’ll give it a like and while you’re here i’ll drop a video right here where i go over the 14 must change settings when you

get that macbook m2 Air or update to mac os ventura in general there’s a lot of settings that you want to change including privacy and general speed optimization settings so go check out that video if you’re interested and as always thank you for watching and i’ll see you in the next video

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