The model with a 10-core GPU, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage costs £1,549 ($1,499/A$2,349) and comes with a two-port 35W USB-C charger or 67W power adaptor.įor comparison, the M1 MacBook Air costs £999, M2 MacBook Pro starts at £1,349, 14in MacBook Pro starts at £1,899, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 starts at £999, and the Dell XPS starts at £949. Doubling the storage or RAM costs £200 ($200/A$300) respectively. The Apple MacBook Air costs £1,249 ( $1,199/ A$1,899) with an 8-core GPU, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Since last year, Apple has added the Universal Control feature, allowing the keyboard and trackpad on a Mac to control other Apple devices, which is particularly handy when used with an iPad but it can be unreliable in patchy wifi conditions. It is generally an excellent platform with high reliability and low maintenance.

The MacBook Air runs the same version of macOS Monterey as the MacBook Pro from last year. The webcam is significantly improved but does not support Apple’s Centre Stage automatic panning and scanning technology or Face ID, features still reserved for Apple’s iPads. It took two hours 15 minutes to fully charge the Air with the included 35W charger and MagSafe cable, hitting 50% in about an hour, but it can fast-charge to 50% with a 67W or higher-power adaptor if you have one. You won’t need to carry the charger to lectures or work. The battery life is still class-leading, too, regularly exceeding 16 hours of work between charges, including several hours of photo editing in Affinity Photo, having 20 or tabs open in Chrome most of the time, and using Apple Mail, Typora, Evernote and a variety of chat apps and smaller tools. Unless you know your work is very computationally demanding, I would expect the Air to be more than capable for most, despite the lack of a fan for cooling. The laptop stayed cool for three hours of fairly demanding photo manipulation work with large image files while attached to a separate 4K display. It is a fanless machine, making it completely silent in operation.

The M2 makes the MacBook Air a rapid, highly capable machine that will easily handle any general computing requirement and bursts of more demanding things. It is an incremental upgrade from the once-in-a-generation leap made by the M1 in 2020 but is still up to 18% faster, with 35% more powerful graphics. The 2022 MacBook Air is one of the first machines to have Apple’s next-generation M2 chip. The sleek MacBook Air is easy to slip into a bag and light enough to not be burden.

Affinity photo reviews 2020