Whether you are weighing up the upgrade from the M1 MacBook Air to the M2 MacBook Air, or are in the market for a new MacBook Air and are mulling whether it's worth saving $200 by buying the M1 model, our buyer's guide helps you to work out which of the two MacBook Air models currently on sale is best for you. The M2 MacBook Air joins the Mac lineup at a $1,199 price point – with the previous M1 model remaining on sale for the same $999 price tag that it debuted with in November 2020. The MacBook Air is often chosen by those who require a portable, more affordable Apple laptop, with the device offering a lightweight design at a price well below the high-end MacBook Pro models. The new device features a complete redesign as well as several important under-the-hood improvements that could make it a major upgrade worth considering for many users, even though it may not be worthwhile for some. Spearheaded by the M2 chip, the device's series of minor improvements offer a good overall package for these buyers, ensuring that they get a slightly more modern and capable machine.Apple's MacBook Air with the M2 chip comes over a year and a half after its M1-based predecessor. The M2 MacBook Pro is better suited to buyers who are upgrading from an older machine, rather than 2020's M1 model. Most 13-inch MacBook Pro customers may wish to wait longer in between upgrades for more meaningful improvements. Given that it has only been 18 months since Apple launched the M1 MacBook Pro and the M1 chip continues to be offered in the iPad Air, iPad Pro, Mac mini, and iMac, the M2 MacBook Pro will likely not be worth it coming directly from the previous model and future-proofing is unlikely to be an important factor at this stage. Specific video and audio workflows stand to benefit from the 13-inch MacBook Pro's improvements, as will anyone who needs more than 16GB of memory or broader memory bandwidth, but everyday users are unlikely to notice substantial differences. The M2 MacBook Pro offers modest upgrades over the previous-generation model, with most aspects of the device remaining the same. The previous 13-inch MacBook Pro was free of numerous harmful substances, met Apple's energy efficiency standards, and used wood fiber in the packaging from recycled sources or responsibly managed forests, but the M2 MacBook Pro further reduces the device's environmental impact by using 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in the enclosure magnets and 100 percent recycled tin in the solder of the main logic board. ![]() The M2 MacBook Pro comes with a 67W power adapter for slightly faster charging compared to the previous model's 61W power adapter. The 13-inch MacBook Pro continues to offer better speakers and microphones than the MacBook Air, featuring high dynamic range and "studio-quality." The M2 MacBook Pro ups the device's audio credentials further with support for high-impedance headphones like the high-end 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, which could be a meaningful upgrade for some audio professionals. In addition, the M2 has a 100GB/s memory bandwidth, compared to 68.25GB/s with the M1, meaning that the latest MacBook Pro can access more memory faster. Multitasking and memory-hungry workflows, such as working with large assets, benefit from the M2 chip as a result. Unified Memoryīoth the M1 and M2 are configurable with 8GB or 16GB of unified memory, but the M2 offers an additional 24GB top-tier memory option. Users can convert their video projects to ProRes nearly three times faster than before. The M1 chip does not contain a dedicated media engine.Īpple says that this dramatically speeds up video workflows on the latest MacBook Pro, allowing users to play back up to 11 streams of 4K and up to two streams of 8K ProRes video. Like the M1 Pro, the M2 features a media engine for hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW video encode and decode. M2 Chip Buyer's Guide: How Much Better Really Is M2? ![]() The M2 also adds two additional GPU cores.Īccording to Apple, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is nearly 40 percent faster than the previous generation when working with RAW images in apps like Affinity Photo or playing graphics-intense games like "Baldur's Gate 3." While both chips feature an eight-core CPU with four performance cores and four efficiency cores, the M2's cores offer moderate performance and efficiency improvements. On the other hand, the M2 is seemingly based on the A15 Bionic chip. The M1 chip, introduced in November 2020, is based on Apple's A14 Bionic chip. The main difference between the current and previous-generation 13-inch MacBook Pros is their Apple silicon chip.
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