Say you’re in the market for a new Mac, and you want to spend $1299. You’ve got two choices. Pick your poison – only one is actual poison.
Maybe not actual poison, but, well, we’ll get to that.
$1299 is the starting price for Apple’s first-ever 15-inch MacBook Air. At just $100 more than a spec-for-spec 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, it’s a heckin’ good value. That’s like fifty bucks per inch.
The 13-inch M2 MacBook Air is a great formula; bringing the thin and light design to a laptop with more screen real estate has long been a dream of mine.
Pro laptops are necessarily thicker and heavier. Larger displays are bigger, but that doesn’t have to mean thick and heavy. The 15-inch M2 MacBook Air is the first Mac to fully realize that.
Prior to the M2 Air, the last 15-inch laptop from Apple was the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. It weighed 4.04 pounds compared to the 15-inch MacBook Air at 3.3 pounds. Impressive!
Compare the 15-inch Air to the 16-inch Pro and the weight difference really kicks in: The Air is a full 1.5 pounds lighter than the M2 Max Pro at 4.8 pounds. The 15-inch Air is also 53 mm thinner than the 16-inch Pro.
Is the 15-inch MacBook Air worthy of its title? The numbers say so. It also happens to be a remarkable value, and you don’t have to compare it to the $2500 16-inch MacBook Pro to see that.
In addition to the new 15-inch MacBook Air, Apple sells another machine today for $1299. Ah, yes, the beloved (sarcasm) 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar!
The reason for its existence is widely believed to be because businesses feel better about buying a Pro than an Air, and this Pro-in-name-only MacBook is $700 cheaper than the 14-inch MacBook Pro with pro ports and pro power.
Can you tell we’re not proponents of the 13-inch MacBook Pro? At least the year-old 13-inch M2 MacBook Air got a price drop. The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro has to deal with a really tough comparison to the 15-inch MacBook Air for the same price.
Here are some key differences:
| 15-inch MacBook Air | 13-inch MacBook Pro |
| $1299 | $1299 |
| Four colors | Two colors |
| 15.3-inch display with modern bezels | 13.3-inch display with dated bezels |
| 18-hour battery life | 20-hour battery life |
| Function keys | Touch Bar |
| 2880 by 1864 pixels | 2560 by 1600 pixels |
| 3.3 pounds | 3.0 pounds |
| 1080p FaceTime HD camera | 720p FaceTime HD camera |
| Six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers | Stereo speakers with high dynamic range |
| Three-mic array with directional beamforming | Studio-quality three-mic array with high signal-to-noise ratio and directional beamforming |
| Bluetooth 5.3 | Bluetooth 5.0 |
| MagSafe charging + Two Thunderbolt 4 ports | Two Thunderbolt 4 ports (one free if charging) |
Seriously, take the Air over the Pro. More screen real estate, a better webcam, and access to both Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports while charging is way more professional for the same price.
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