Review: Apple's New MacBook Air With M2 Processor

CR's testers give top marks to the new MacBook Air, but savvy shoppers should also consider the older M1 Air

The latest MacBook Air has a new Apple-designed M2 processor.

By Nicholas De Leon

About two years ago, Apple released an updated version of the MacBook Air.

While it largely resembled the models that came before it, it marked the debut of the M1 processor, the company’s first homegrown chip for laptops and desktops. Just like that, the days of relying on Intel to supply the beating heart of Apple’s computers were done.

The M1 Air (eventually followed by M1 variants of the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro) truly impressed Consumer Reports’ testers, offering a compelling combination of performance and battery life. It was easy to recommend to anyone who had $1,000 and needed a new laptop.

Heck, I bought one myself, even though I already had more computers than I know what to do with.

This past July, we got the sequel, with Apple releasing an M2-based MacBook Air for a starting price of $1,199. That’s $200 more than the M1-based Air, which raises some interesting questions. Is it really time for another leap in processing power? How much better can the M2 be? And, more to the point, are you better off buying the M1 Air and pocketing the difference?

Well, after a round of testing, we can now say that the M2 MacBook Air is among the highest-rated models in our laptop ratings, combining fast performance with great battery life and a great display. In fact, it matches or exceeds the M1 Air in every metric we measure.

So if you’re shopping for the very best 12- to 13-inch laptop money can buy, you should seriously consider it. But if you simply want a high-performing Apple laptop, the M1 Air might be the wiser choice, especially given how similarly the two models perform and how frequently the M1 goes on sale at Amazon and Best Buy.

Here’s a closer look at our findings.

Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (2022, M2, 8 Core)

Apple MacBook Air 13-Inch (2020, M1)

All-New Design

This latest MacBook Air looks distinctly different, and not just because of the wider color selection, which includes silver, starlight (sort of a champagne gold), space gray (dark gray), and midnight (a cross between navy blue and dark gray).

Instead of the familiar wedge shape the product line has sported since Steve Jobs took the original incarnation out of a brown envelope during its 2008 debut presentation, the Air is now one uniform, rectangular slab. If you’ve seen the latest MacBook Pro, you’ll know what to expect.

While I’m going to miss the old reliable wedge, it’s fair to say the design was beginning to feel a little dated, especially when placed next to that new MacBook Pro.

This side view of the new M2 MacBook Air shows the nonwedge design.

Photo: Apple

With the new design comes a full-sized function key row (F1, F2, etc.). That’s an improvement over the half-sized keys on the M1 Air; our testers find the M2 keyboard overall to be comfortably sized, with high-contrast, easy-to-read letters and numbers.

True, they had similarly nice things to say about the M1 Air’s keyboard, but the move to full-sized keys in the function row is helpful when you want to quickly adjust the volume or the screen brightness on a video chat, especially if you have large hands.

The M2 model also has a small notch in the display, where Apple has placed an improved 1080p webcam. Is the cutout intrusive? In my opinion, you get used to it. In fact, if you have a dark desktop background or use Dark Mode in macOS, you might not even notice it’s there.

And our testers have confirmed that the 1080p webcam housed in the notch is better than the 720p webcam found in the M1 Air. It produces clearer images in more lighting conditions than the M1’s webcam, which means you’ll look better in apps like FaceTime or Zoom. It’s not quite a “night and day” difference, at least in my opinion, but if you frequently use videoconferencing software, it’s a welcome improvement.

As for the M2 Air’s display, there are a few things worth nothing. One, it’s slightly larger than the M1’s, measuring 13.6 inches diagonally (just like on a smartphone or TV) vs. 13.3 inches. That works out to maybe an extra line or two of text that’s visible in a document.

Two, the display itself is so good that our testers give it very high marks, noting that it gets bright enough to use outdoors and produces accurate colors, which is nice for those who enjoy streaming video or working with photos.

The M1 Air performed similarly well in our display tests, though. And if you’re a budding photographer or YouTube content creator, it’s worth pointing out that Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops are able to display more colors than those in the company’s consumer-focused Air line.

Lastly, we should note that Apple has improved the port selection with the M2 Air.

The M1 Air has one headphone jack and two USB-C ports, but one of those ports is occupied any time the laptop is plugged into an outlet. Not so with the M2 Air, which has one headphone jack, two USB-C ports, and one MagSafe port specifically for charging the device. That means you’re less likely to need a dongle once you start reaching for an external mouse, an SD card adapter (unlike with the MacBook Pro, there’s no built-in SD card slot here), or some other accessory.

How the M2 Compares With the M1 in Daily Use

I purchased an M1 MacBook Air the day it was released in November 2020, so I’m pretty familiar with the model’s strengths and limitations. And the M2 Air behaves so similarly it can be hard to tell them apart.

Whether that’s disappointing or not depends largely on your perspective.

If you’re shopping for a brand-new laptop for the first time in three years, it will be hard not to be wowed by the M2 Air. But if you’re thinking of upgrading from the M1 Air, you’re likely to be far less impressed with the performance gains.

Consider the stuff you typically do on a laptop: Maybe you spend a few minutes every morning reading your email before shifting to Facebook or Twitter to see what people are saying about the day’s news. Then maybe you throw on a podcast or playlist while wrapping up a couple of documents for work: You have a PowerPoint deck due at noon and a Word document to edit by the end of the day. Add in some video calls, yet more email, and a last-minute request to edit a podcast and you’ve more than earned your nightly YouTube session.

Okay, maybe I’m describing more or less what my day looks like, but I’d wager it’s relatively close to the average person’s in terms of software use and tasking.

So how does the M2 Air handle all that? Great, actually! Is it any better than it is with the M1? Hope you have a stopwatch handy.

Let’s start with browsing the web. Even taking into account the crazy state of the web, with performance-sapping auto-playing video and ad trackers embedded in every other page, the M2 handles that chore with ease. No slowdowns, stutters, sitting around waiting and wondering if your laptop has crashed while trying to load last night’s baseball scores.

Apple can’t fix what the web has become, but the M2 Air makes browsing about as pleasant as can be.

Now let’s try something a little more challenging: spreadsheets.

For a big project here at CR, I recently found myself buried inside some truly gargantuan spreadsheets. We’re talking thousands upon thousands of rows of data that had to be analyzed and cross-referenced with other sets of data. It’s sorta fun, in a way, but also pretty taxing on your CPU. Even my gaming desktop struggled to load these spreadsheets smoothly.

Not so on the M2, which was able to fly through them with ease, rendering each cell quickly and without error.

I then did a little multimedia work.

Specifically, I wanted to see how long the M2 would take to edit a couple of audio tracks for a personal podcast project and then how long it would take iMovie to spit out a 1080p version of a 4K test video shot on my iPhone.

For podcasts, I typically use Audacity to edit the audio, mainly because a) it’s free; and b) I’m used to it. So how long did it take the M2 to take two separate, 30-minute audio tracks and turn them into a single 192-kilobits-per-second stereo MP3? A grand total of 10 seconds. That same project with my M1 Air? Try 11 seconds.

So, yeah, faster, but not something to write home about.

The video experiment was a little more interesting.

Using the latest version of iMovie downloaded from the Mac App Store, the M2 Air was able to take a 1-minute-long, 4K 60-frames-per-second video and turn it into a 1-minute-long 1080p, 30-frames-per-second video in 22 seconds. That same file on my M1 Air? 26 seconds.

Hmm!

Four seconds might not seem like a lot, but if your life revolves around editing video—perhaps you’re a budding YouTuber or about to enter film school—that may well represent a significant improvement once you start spending hours a day working on video and audio tracks.

As our testers point out, however, you may still experience slowdowns when tackling demanding fare like high-res video editing or high-level gaming. That’s to be expected with a consumer-class notebook. If you need to regularly slice through high-res video, it makes more sense to go with Apple’s MacBook Pro.

As it turns out, the M2 Air fared slightly better than the M1 Air in our battery life testing, too, lasting some 13.5 hours on a single charge while performing light tasks such as web browsing. The M1 Air clocked in at 12.75 hours. I can’t imagine too many people complaining about 12-plus hours of battery life, though. Still, it’s nice to see the small but measurable improvement.

Should You Buy the M2 MacBook Air?

It bears repeating that the M2 MacBook Air is the highest-rated 12- to 13-inch laptop in our ratings. If your work demands the best laptop possible, then there you go.

The M2 Air is fast, it delivers very impressive battery life, and it has a display that can be bettered only by stepping up to the 14- or 16-inch MacBook Pro. It is, here in late 2022, the ultimate 12- to 13-inch laptop for Apple fans.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Apple still sells the M1 Air, which, as mentioned earlier, is great in its own right.

Maybe it’s marginally slower, maybe it comes in less fun colors, and maybe the webcam isn’t quite as stellar, but if you’re more budget-oriented, it’s a smart purchase, especially if you find it on sale or refurbished.

I can’t imagine that many people who own an M1 Air are already thinking about upgrading—and with good reason. With that model in hand, you’re set for a few more years.

For everyone else? It all depends on how much you’re willing to spend simply to say you own the latest and greatest.

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