Apple’s first-ever 15-inch MacBook Air has new charger options compared to the 13-inch version. We already took a look inside Apple’s new 70W GaN USB-C today.
The new fast and compact USB-C charger isn’t just speedier than the 67W power adapter, it’s also smaller by a fairly significant amount. GaN, short for gallium nitride, is just so good for making fast chargers a reasonable size.
Apple’s 70W USB-C power adapter is sold separately for $59, which somehow feels like a bargain in Apple Charger Land, or it’s a free upgrade if you’re configuring a 15-inch MacBook Air order on Apple.com.
What I didn’t realize until today is that every 15-inch MacBook Air comes with Apple’s 35W dual USB-C compact charger by default – and I unboxed mine two days ago. The dual port version also retails for $59 on its own. Half the watts, twice the ports. (However, Amazon has it for 25% off today.)
I primarily charge my MacBook Air at home from my Studio Display. Believe it or not, the display provides faster charging than the standard power adapter that comes in the box.
I also have a couple 30W USB-C power adapters for other devices, so I didn’t rush to take the MacBook Air power adapter out the box. Then I saw Mr. Macintosh tweet about the optional upgrade to the 70W power adapter with the 15-inch MacBook Air from the dual USB-C compact charger.
Lo and behold, the 35W dual USB-C charger is what was in my base model 15-inch MacBook Air box. Cool! This is just another thing that makes the 15-inch MacBook Air such a value.
The 13-inch MacBook Air base model comes with a 30W USB-C power adapter. The 35W dual port version is a $20 upgrade. Not bad, but that means retailers like Best Buy don’t really give customers the option to choose the charger.
While I didn’t notice or expect it, the base model 15-inch MacBook Air including the dual UBS-C charger standard makes some sense. Apple includes it with the 10-core GPU 13-inch version if you choose 512GB SSD storage or higher. The base model 15-inch MacBook Air comes 10-core GPU, although it’s still 256GB.
If you frequently charge away from home, however, the 70W charger option is a smart choice – as long as you’re buying directly from Apple.
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