There were a few bits of tech that I thought would be my go-to tool of the year, from the mighty Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra to the Steam Deck that comes on its own and the awesome little Geekom device. I didn’t expect it to be the MacBook Air M2.
Years ago, I inherited an old MacBook Air from a colleague, and while I wasn’t a macOS pro, I loved the nifty little laptop. So when Apple redesigned the Air and added an M2 chip, I paid close attention.
The MacBook Air M1 is well reviewed but its design is dated. But the 2022 MacBook Air looked new. And after seeing the critical acclaim pile on the new Air, I decided to buy one.
But as soon as I finished the purchase, I immediately felt the pain of buyer’s remorse.
Think of a MacBook
I had decided to pay for the MacBook Air M2 in interest-free installments, thus avoiding a lump sum payment and saving that money in a higher interest account instead. It also means I can afford to put 512GB with an extra GPU core.
But despite the move, as I would be paying around £60 a month, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had made a very indulgent purchase. After all, I have a perfect Windows laptop.
When the MacBook Air arrived, this feeling did not leave me. In fact, it struck me as how unfamiliar I was with macOS, which made me wonder if I’d made a bigger mistake.
And so began my journey of re-learning macOS and adapting to a slightly different keyboard layout. Over time I started to notice a lot of things I liked, which, despite its small size, was a good laptop experience.
The Force Touch trackpad is great, and offers plenty of tactile surface area that makes using the trackpad a joy rather than a poor replacement for a mouse. It really lives up to the hype.
This 13.5-inch screen is also great, offering plenty of brightness, color, and contrast. Sure, the notch feels goofy when you really look at it, but the slimmer bezels are a good compromise. And macOS does a good job of masking the often outage.
A breath of fresh air
As my knowledge of macOS has grown, so has this appreciation. The slim, smooth design is great, and while the Macbook Air can get warm, I never felt like the M2’s performance was compromised.
Of course, I’m not a video editor, so I rarely hit silicone. But even with a mix of apps open and a slew of tabs on the screen, the Air never felt slow.
This got me to try out a few games; Cyberpunk 2077 won’t be running in Air anytime soon, but it can run less demanding games like Divinity Original Sin 2 and Disco Elysium – both excellent games. Not to mention, it’s great for Apple Arcade games like Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows.
There was something really new about using a laptop that ran silently, lacked the quirks Windows can have, and just felt pretty nice as an all-in-one package to use day in and day out.
However, the MacBook Air M2 really came into its own and won me over when I went to IFA 2022 in September.
I made it through the tech conference in Berlin on just about one charge; I think I did that one quick time.
The sheer efficiency of the M2 chip was the real star of the show, and it seemed to sip on power when I was doing live blog posts or simply walking around with the laptop in sleep mode. Speaking of which, the Air wakes up instantly, which makes it extremely effective at covering busy conferences.
So when I got on the plane back to London, I was absolutely smitten with the MacBook Air M2.
Of course, it’s not perfect. Such a laptop does not exist yet. The keyboard doesn’t have the tactile responsiveness of the Dell XPS 13 or Surface Laptop 5. And I love the SD card reader. I used to complain about only having two USB-C ports, but using MagSafe to charge frees them up. And the lack of USB A tends to be par for the course for ultra-modern laptops.
So all things considered, I think the MacBook Air M2 is basically the best laptop for anyone who doesn’t demand the ability to view 4K videos on the go. Which is my device for the year 2022; I’m curious as to where Apple might take the MacBook Air next.
[ad_2]
