Apple’s big day of WWDC announcements continues, revealing a 15-inch MacBook Air to round out its laptop range.
Apple labels it the “world’s best 15-inch laptop” alongside the claim that it’s also the thinnest. On the latter point, it’s hard to argue considering the new MacBook Air is 11.5mm in thickness and is 1.51kg, which is supremely light for the 15-inch form factor.
On the inside is the same M2 chip that powers the existing 13-inch Air, while it also sports a Liquid Retina display. Meanwhile, the existing 13-inch model gets a nice little price drop.
15-inch MacBook Air: a supremely portable laptop
Based on data from Apple, the company claims that its 15-inch laptop is nearly 40% thinner and over 200 grams lighter than competing PC laptops. Apple would never name a specific device for comparison, although the footnotes of its claim say it’s based on the “best-selling 15-inch Intel Core i7 PC laptop” using sales data from the past 12 months.
Despite its petite stature, the 15-inch MacBook Air still has a reasonable amount of connectivity options. There are two Thunderbolt ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and MagSafe charging. For wireless, it includes Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3. So, not quite the super-fast Wi-Fi 6e adopted by the newly announced Mac Studio and Mac Pro, but it’s still plenty quick enough for most users.
On the inside, the M2 chip includes an eight-core CPU, a 10-core GPU, and up to 24GB of unified memory. You can order the laptop with up to 2TB of SSD storage as well. Apple also claims up to 18 hours of battery life for the 15-inch MacBook Air, so you should easily get through a day without needing to charge.
Its 15.3-inch Retina Display features a 2880 x 1864 resolution, up to 500 nits of brightness, and support for a billion colours. To complement the visuals, the laptop also has a six-speaker sound system that supports Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos for a fuller listening experience.
Release date and price
Available to pre-order now, the 15-inch MacBook Air with an M2 chip starts at $2,199 and hits stores on 13 June. Meanwhile, the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air is now $100 cheaper, starting at $1,799. Both sizes come in midnight, starlight, silver, and space grey colours.
15-inch laptops are handy for their extra screen size, but can sometimes be unwieldy when travelling due to weight and space constraints. This new Air seems to address that, throwing the gauntlet down to other PC laptop manufacturers.
