Apple announced its biggest addition to the MacBook Air with a lot of fanfare. The larger display on such an ultraportable machine from Apple will be a warm welcome for customers who prefer a large display without spending hundreds of dollars to step up to the MacBook Pro. Here are five things you need to know about the 15-inch MacBook Air.
- The 15-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,299 with the fully-fledged M2 chip. Yep, you heard that right. The 15-inch Air comes with an M2 chip with an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU whereas the base configuration of the 13-inch Air comes with a binned M2 chip with an 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU. Apple also lowered the starting price of the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air from $1,199 to $1,099. Therefore, if you were to just upgrade to the non-binned chip for an apples-to-apples comparison, you’re back at $1,199. So for just $100 more with the same specs, you’re getting a more spacious display.
- The 15-inch MacBook Air has a six-speaker sound system with force-canceling woofers compared to the four-speaker sound system found on the 13-inch (M2) MacBook Air. Additionally, you won’t find any speaker grills that flank the keyboard like you would on the MacBook Pro. The speakers are located behind the keyboard. This allows the sound coming from the speaker to bounce off the display, giving you an immersive audio experience. The 15-inch Air has the same three-mic array with directional beamforming like that of its smaller brother. However, they’re not studio-quality like the MacBook Pro.
- Both the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Airs have the upgraded Bluetooth 5.3, which has become a standard across many new Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Apple Watches introduced within the past year.
- The 15-inch MacBook Air has a Liquid Retina Display with a resolution of 2880 by 1864 at the same pixel density of 224 pixels per inch. This native resolution is similar to the ones found on the previous 15-inch MacBook models introduced from 2012 to 2019 which had a resolution of 2880 by 1800 (16:10 aspect ratio). Note that the extra 64 pixels in the 15-inch Air’s vertical count of pixels account for the notch/menu bar area.
- Finally, although the 15-inch MacBook Air has a larger 66.5-watt-hour battery compared to the 52.6-watt-hour battery found on the 13-inch model, you will still get the same battery life of up to 18 hours, and that’s for the Apple TV app movie playback. You also need to remember that battery life varies by use and configuration. Still, you’ll get phenomenal battery life thanks to the efficiency of Apple Silicon. The 15-inch model comes with a 35W Dual Port Compact Power Adapter by default, but you can configure it with a 70W USB-C Power Adapter for fast charging at no extra charge.
So these are the top five things you need to know about the larger 15-inch MacBook Air. Aside from the larger display and better speakers, you’re getting the same hardware specs that you’ll find on the small 13-inch model; however, I think this 15-inch MacBook Air will be a hot seller, and it will help boost Mac sales by a significant margin, especially after the recession.
Are you planning to buy the 15-inch MacBook Air? Let us know in the comments below.Â
