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Skip the base model 15 MacBook Air

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Apple announced the long-rumored 15-inch MacBook Air at WWDC: an M2 with a big screen that isn’t Pro and doesn’t cost $2,500. Here are the specs, which configuration you should probably get, which I’m getting, and whether it will flop.

What’s different from the 13-inch

  • A six-speaker array: two force-canceling woofers on each side along with two tweeters, versus four speakers on the 13-inch.
  • A 15.3-inch display versus 13.6 inches, for more real estate for multiple documents, video editing or Apple Arcade games. It has the same brightness, P3 wide color and True Tone as the 13-inch.
  • About an inch and a half wider, about an inch deeper, and about half a pound heavier.
  • The same 1080p camera, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.3. Two Thunderbolt ports and MagSafe on the left, a headphone jack on the right.
  • The same 15 hours of wireless web battery life, even though the battery is much bigger, so I don’t know if the screen is using it all.

Configuration and price

The base is an 8-core M2 with a 10-core GPU, 8 GB and 256 GB, at $1,299. With the 13-inch M2 now $1,099, for $200 you get the larger display and, I guess, speakers.

  • Memory: 16 GB or 32 GB, $200 per upgrade.
  • Storage: 256 GB up to 2 TB. As with the 13-inch M2 Air, the 256 GB tier uses one NAND chip, so it can’t write in parallel, making it slower than the M1 version. 512 GB is faster, and 1 or 2 TB are much faster.
  • Power adapter: the 35 W dual USB-C compact adapter (I have one, and it’s a great travel charger) or a new 70 W adapter, which may charge the larger battery faster.

Fully specced, with 24 GB, 2 TB and the 70 W charger, it’s $2,499, the same as a 16-inch MacBook Pro, which is worth considering if you need a large laptop and are choosing between them.

Which one should you get?

After about 11 months with the base M2 Air, I know how it performs. For web surfing, email, some light professional work, light photo editing, Apple Arcade, school papers and documents, the 8 GB / 256 GB works fine. I’ve used it for my day job, with many apps, remote access and video calls, and for video editing, and have hit its limits.

Two scenarios to upgrade:

  1. Professional work: graphics, video editing, or lots of stuff open all the time. Choose 16 GB of memory first, then storage. Apps always want more memory.
  2. A long-term laptop: if it’ll be your five-, six- or seven-year laptop, still consider upgrading memory and/or SSD to handle whatever Apple and third-party apps throw at you, or you might have to sell it at a loss and buy something beefier in a year or two.

I’m getting 16 GB and 512 GB, $1,699, for a mostly couch computer I share with my family; my wife is learning video editing to help me. And one more time: memory can’t be upgraded later. You can add external storage, but there’s nothing you can do about memory.

Will it flop?

I only ask because we’ve seen this story. After rumor after rumor of a larger non-Pro iPhone, we got the iPhone 14 Plus, which everyone thought would be the big seller of the year, a cheaper, larger iPhone, but it wasn’t. The same clamor is on the internet for a larger non-Pro MacBook. Will people buy it? I think so, for one reason: price. The 14 Plus is $899 and the 14 Pro Max $1,099, so for $200 you get real upgrades: better and more cameras, ProMotion, better hardware, the Dynamic Island. Buying on a carrier plan, a few dollars more a month won’t matter.

The 15-inch Air versus the 16-inch Pro is a $1,200 difference, not a couple of dollars a month. Most people walking into an Apple Store won’t see the benefits of the better display, speakers, M2 Pro, 16 GB and 512 GB standard, just a $1,200 difference. So I think the 15-inch MacBook Air will be a really big seller, not a flop.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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