Adam Kos The opening Keynote for WWDC23 introduced new hardware right from the start, which was quite unusual for the format of this event. The expected MacBook Air 15" was introduced first, which, on the other hand, was not a complete surprise. But what surprises everyone is its price. Here you will find everything you need to know about this machine.
MacBook Air is Apple's best-selling laptop line, quite logically for its ideal price/performance ratio. The model with the M1 and M2 chip has now been supplemented by a larger sibling, which is actually only a little bigger and heavier than the 13" version, but will offer a significantly greater view for your eyes and, after all, the work itself.
Design and dimensions
Its height is 1,15 cm, while the 13" version is 1,13 cm. The width is 34,04 cm, the depth is 23,76 cm and the weight is 1,51 kg (it is 13 kg for the 2" M1,24 Air). In terms of design, of course, it is based on the M2 MacBook Air, only it is slightly inflated. It is also available in the same colors i.e. Silver, Star White, Space Gray and Dark Ink.
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Display
The exact size of the Liquid Retina display is 15,3", which is an LED backlight with IPS technology. The resolution is 2880 x 1864 at 224 pixels per inch. The 13" version has a resolution of 2560 x 1664 with the same pixel density. Both support 1 billion colors, both have 500 nits of brightness, both have a wide color gamut (P3), and both have True Tone technology. Of course, the novelty also has a cutout in the display for a 1080p FaceTIme HD camera with an advanced image signal processor with computational video.
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Chip and memory
In the case of the M2 chip, this is the use of a multi-core GPU version of the smaller model. So it is an 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 economy cores, a 10-core GPU, a 16-core Neural Engine and a memory bandwidth of 100 GB/s. There is also a Media engine with hardware acceleration of H.264, HEVC, ProRes and ProRes RAW codecs. The base offers 8 GB of unified memory, you can also order a 16 or 28 GB version. The storage is 256 GB SSD with the option of reaching 512 GB, 1 or 2 TB.
You can of course also run macOS Sonoma on the new Air
Charging, expansion, wireless interfaces
Here too, Apple used MagSafe 3rd generation, the 3,5mm headphone jack is still present, but there are only two Thunderbolt/USB4 ports with charging support, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40 Gb/s), USB 4 ( up to 40 Gb/s) and USB 3.1 (up to 10 Gb/s). It is therefore the exact same set available in a smaller model. It supports simultaneous display in full native resolution on the built-in display with a billion colors and at the same time on one external display with a resolution of up to 6K at 60 Hz. Battery life is rated at 18 hours when playing movies in the Apple TV app, 15 hours when browsing the web. The built-in battery is 66,5Wh lithium-polymer. The package includes a 35W two-port USB-C power adapter. Wireless interfaces are Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3.
macOS Sonoma Game Mode
Sound
Apple emphasizes the sound quality of the MacBook Air quite a lot. It contains a system of six speakers with woofers in an anti-resonance arrangement, wide stereo sound, support for surround sound when playing music or video in Dolby Atmos format from the built-in speakers or a system of three microphones with directional beam forming.
Price and availability
Both are quite pleasing. The version with 256GB SSD storage will cost CZK 37, which is the amount for which Apple sold the smaller 990" version of the M13 MacBook Air before the Keynote. It dropped to a price of CZK 2 in the basic configuration (a 31-core GPU and a 990GB SSD cost CZK 10). The 512" MacBook Air configuration with 40GB SSD costs CZK 990. You can already pre-order the new product, it goes on sale from June 15.
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How about a 256GB drive? Will it be the same problem as the M2 Air?