Apple has announced that M2 MacBook Air orders can be placed from Friday, July 8 – with deliveries starting a week later. The machine was first revealed last month.
Online orders open at 5 a.m. PDT at apple.com/store, and in the Apple Store app. The first deliveries will be made on Friday, July 15. Pricing starts at $1,199 …
M2 MacBook Air orders
Beginning Friday, July 8, at 5 a.m. PDT, the completely redesigned MacBook Air with M2 will be available to order, and will start arriving to customers worldwide on Friday, July 15. Supercharged by the M2 chip, the all-new MacBook Air features even more performance and a new strikingly thin design, a larger 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, a four-speaker sound system, up to 18 hours of battery life, and MagSafe charging.
The news confirms an easter egg planted by MKBHD in an unrelated video yesterday.
New MacBook Air design
Apple emphasises the new design of the machine, made possible by the power efficiency of the M2 chip.
Completely reimagined around M2, MacBook Air has a new design that is remarkably thin from every angle. With a durable, all-aluminum unibody enclosure that feels incredibly solid and is built to last, it measures just 11.3 millimeters thin, is only 2.7 pounds, and delivers an astonishing 20 percent reduction in volume from the previous generation. And with the power efficiency of M2, all of the capabilities of MacBook Air are built into a silent, fanless design. In addition to silver and space gray, MacBook Air is now available in two stunning new finishes: midnight and starlight.
MagSafe gives users a dedicated charging port that is easy to connect to while protecting MacBook Air when it is plugged in. MacBook Air also features two Thunderbolt ports for connecting a variety of accessories, and a 3.5 mm audio jack with support for high-impedance headphones. Additionally, the Magic Keyboard features a full-height function row with Touch ID, and a spacious, industry-leading Force Touch trackpad.
The new machine also gets slimmer bezels, with the same notch approach for the front-facing camera.
The new MacBook Air features a beautiful 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, which has been expanded closer to the sides and up around the camera to make room for the menu bar. The result is a larger display with much thinner borders, giving users more screen real estate to view their content in vivid detail. At 500 nits of brightness, it is also 25 percent brighter than before. MacBook Air now supports 1 billion colors, so photos and movies look incredibly vibrant.
Camera, speakers, and mics
This model also finally gets a 1080p camera, and improved audio.
MacBook Air includes a new 1080p FaceTime HD camera with twice the resolution and low-light performance of the previous generation. Combined with the processing power of the advanced image signal processor on M2, users will look great on video calls.
MacBook Air also features a four-speaker sound system. To fit inside such a thin design, the speakers and mics are completely integrated between the keyboard and display — all while delivering an even better audio experience. A three-mic array captures clean audio using advanced beamforming algorithms, while the speakers produce improved stereo separation and vocal clarity. MacBook Air also supports immersive Spatial Audio for music and movies with Dolby Atmos.
2022 MacBook Air performance
Apple says that its traditionally entry-level machine is now capable of beefy tasks, like complex editing in Final Cut Pro.
The M2 chip starts the next generation of Apple silicon for the Mac, taking the breakthrough performance, power efficiency, and capabilities of M1 even further. From multitasking to creating captivating images, MacBook Air with M2 is everything users could want in the world’s best-selling notebook.
- MacBook Air with M2 features a more powerful 8-core CPU and up to 10-core GPU, so users can get more done faster.
- With 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth and support for up to 24GB of fast unified memory, it can handle even larger and more complex workloads.
- M2 also adds a next-generation media engine with a powerful ProRes video engine for hardware-accelerated encode and decode, so MacBook Air with M2 can play back more streams of 4K and 8K video than before.
- With M2, intensive workloads like editing complex timelines in Final Cut Pro are nearly 40 percent faster than the previous generation2 and up to 15x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to Apple silicon.
- Applying filters and effects in apps like Adobe Photoshop is up to 20 percent faster than before, and up to 5x faster for customers who haven’t yet upgraded to Apple silicon.
Battery life is stated at 18 hours for video playback, and while this is an ideal, it’s likely that the machine will still provide all-day battery life for most real-world usage. An optional 67W power brick supports 50% charging in just 30 minutes.
Optional power bricks
Apple is offering a somewhat confusing array of optional power bricks for the machine.
The 30W USB-C Power Adapter for $39 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter for $59 (US), 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter for $59 (US) compatible with the World Travel Adapter Kit for $29 (US), and the 67W USB-C Power Adapter for $59 (US) — are available at apple.com/mac. The 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter is available to customers in Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and the US.
M2 MacBook Air availability
The new machine is available in a choice of midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray, with US pricing starting at $1,199 ($1,099 for education).
Demand is likely to exceed supply for some time, so those wanting to get their hands on the machine quickly will need to set their alarm clocks!
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