Apple’s new MacBook Air 15 is a fanless notebook that weighs 3.3 pounds, measures 11.5mm thick, and features a 15.3 inch Liquid Retina display and an Apple M2 processor. It’s the first MacBook Air with a screen larger than 13 inches, but it’s still a thin, light, and feature-packed notebook.
The MacBook Air 15 is up for pre-order now for $1299 and up and it will be available starting June 13, 2023.
Apple says the notebook also has slim 5mm bezels around the 2880 x 1864 pixel IPS LCD display (with up to 500 nits brightness). But despite its compact design, the MacBook Air 15 packs 6 speakers.
There’s also a 1080p webcam and an array of 3 microphones.
Like other MacBook Air laptops, the new model is still pretty light on ports: it has two Thunderbolt ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a MagSafe charging connector. That’s it. But the good news is that those Thunderbolt ports are versatile – you can use them for displays, data, or hubs. Apple says you can connect up to a 6K display.
Apple says the notebook has an energy-efficient M2 chip enables up to 15 hours of battery life while delivering 12X the performance of “the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air” using an 8-core CPU with 10-core graphics, a 16-core neural engine, and up to 24GB of unified memory.
The laptop features a 66.5 Wh battery and comes with a 35W power adapter. It also supports up to 70 W charging with a USB-C charger.
Prices start at $1299 for a model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but the MacBook Air 15 can be configured with 16GB or 24GB of memory and up to 2TB of storage. All models feature the same M2 chip with 8 CPU cores and 10-core graphics.
The company is also lowering the starting price of its 13.3 inch MacBook Air with M2 by $100, bringing the new entry-level price to $1099.
60Hz screen is not ok anymore, most people are used to higher refresh on their phones
This is great to see, and the price drop on the 13 is welcome too. Unfortunately I suspect it will still have the same vital flaw (at least for me) it can only support 1 external monitor. 6k is neat, but I would rather have 2 2k displays.
This has a serious value proposition if you don’t care about repair, and it still has more ports than an XPS 13.
Seems like a good product. Previously, folks looking for a bigger screen needed to get a macbook pro for more money, even though they didn’t need the processing and didn’t quite want the wait. Nice to see the old M2 Macbook Air move down in price. Just wish that Apple would make 16GB RAM standard — might not be necessary, but don’t think the additional cost would be very much and since RAM is not upgradeable would increase the lifespan of these devices further.
That also needs either an asterisk or to be prefaced with an “up to” as well because that is not going to be the case in most cases.