if you were a student looking for a macbook in 2019 things were complicated
first off all macbooks had the horrible butterfly keyboard
as for models you could get an inexpensive air that was slow and hot or
you could pay up for an even hotter pro
you know i don't know a single person who bought a macbook from the usb-c
generation and i don't blame them
it's why the m1 macbook air was such a revolution when it came out it turned
what was a slow hot and horrible laptop into a great one it made buying a mac
easy it isn't anymore and this here is why the all-new m2
macbook air a laptop so good i want to call it perfect
but yet underneath its surface lie weird flaws that you a beautiful student might
never find but hate knowing exists
even if you do find the flaws which i will tell you about in a minute you'll
still want this laptop i want this laptop gone is the iconic macbook air
wedge shape and instead we have the macbook pros aesthetic thinned down to
its most essential
i really like it it's so sturdy yet light
sometimes i wish i was sitting opposite somebody using this so i could admire
this squared off black screen
hi excuse me do you mind just using this laptop for a little bit uh
sure thank you
it is the new air solves a lot of the minor
day-to-day criticisms we still had left for the m1 model
instead of always having one Thunderbolt port tied up for charging the addition
of mag save freeze up both instead of big bezels the screen is bigger and
taller thanks to the inclusion of the notch and the webcam is now 1080p
instead of looking like
poo the taller screen is great i feel like i can fit so much more in even in
default display scaling the extra tallness is afforded by the notch but
some of it is robbed by it as well as the menu bar is now significantly taller
too it also includes apple's new m2 chip
notable for clocking a little bit faster including a couple more GPU cores and
offering 8k and pros acceleration with the media engine
it is by all means the perfect distillation of a laptop no gimmicky
touch sensitive function keys no noisy fan and no stupid screen size options
13.6 inches is the perfect size and don't at me about that so is this the
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signing up okay so i like this laptop and i want it in my life so obviously
the first question is what color do i pick
i must confess that i'm very disappointed that this isn't available
in the imax bold colors with white bezels the options are really rather
serious space gray and silver plus the new starlight or
this midnight because it has a tint of blue i thought i'd like midnight it is
sleek and reminds me of the old black macbook the problem is i have grimy
hands and you can tell you'll want to keep a cloth with you
also our resident gen ziers thought this doesn't even look like a mac so i might
have to go with silver now that's a macbook
unlike that black macbook i'm pleased to report that all the colors are available
even on the base model which this is the base model is notable because
at twelve hundred dollars it's a full two hundred dollars more than the m1
macbook air that apple still sells but while it has many day-to-day
improvements over its predecessor there are still a few crucial regressions
apple's base 250 Gigabyte SSD is stingy
it's the same amount of storage included in the macbook 13 years ago sure ssds
these days are much faster except this one in the last macbook air
the base SSD was actually two stitched together
Gigabyte modules working in parallel now there's just one bigger 256 Gigabyte
module this makes things slower the
slower transfer speeds are not something i've noticed too egregiously in day to
day use but this could shorten the usable lifespan of the laptop long term
next is the CPU the m2 is more powerful
than the m1 blasting through quick benchmarks and lightroom exports a
garageband project that would make an Intel macbook airs fan blast doesn't
even make the m2 sweat however when the going gets tough long
and hot well that's when things unwind
i've been hearing that premiere is having troubles
generally these days so if you're using that app maybe just wait a bit to buy
because editing some mxf's did push the system something that wasn't as big of a
problem when editing in davinci and speaking of davinci to compare the
apple silicons socs i have a very intense four minute resolve project
containing 8k raw footage with noise reduction luts and some green screen
with an m2 powered macbook pro it takes under an hour
with an m1 powered macbook air it takes under an hour and a half so on this m2
macbook air it takes an hour and 40 minutes what
how well the reason for this is simple while the m1 macbook air has a chunk of
metal to absorb and dissipate heat the m2 has virtually nothing a little pad
and an air gap and so that means that this thing is fast right up until it's
hot and then it's slow very slow if you have any intensive workload that takes
10 plus minutes of computing prepare for it to be stretched
though to be fair i did start this export on an Intel powered fan cooled
macbook air and when it estimated that it would take five plus hours i said
nope well if you do want to do this workload
quickly a two thousand dollar macbook pro will do it in 18 minutes
i'm not sure many poly size students will be pushing things that hard so what
about them the m1 macbook air arrival made things easy there were no
trade-offs it was so much better than any Intel macbook that at a thousand
dollars it was a great deal if you bought one back then you made a great
decision now though they're still the same price
this is apple doing inflation by the way usually the older technology gets less
expensive as it matures but this is a thousand dollars and this is
twelve hundred dollars so therefore the best value for a student
getting a macbook is a refurbished m1 macbook air
sure we had a bit of hassle buying ours but at 850 dollars it's great value for
a mac i even prefer this keyboard despite the compromises i'm still
willing to recommend even the base m2 macbook air but only to those who won't
notice the shortcomings of one SSD module but it's not an excellent value
like the m1 laptop has been until now because to get the equivalent SSD
performance you're bringing up the price to at least 1400. the 512 models get two
256 Gigabyte modules so it gets expensive fast
if you are humming and hawing over what to upgrade i'm going to lean towards the
SSD upgrade unless you're one of those people who cannot close browser tabs
then get the RAM
and if you're thinking about upgrading both and might need more power consider
a refurbished or on sale macbook pro those go for around eighteen hundred
dollars only 100 more than the most equivalently
specked air see
it's so complicated now there's no easy answer like there was a year ago and
that's really annoying so um
what about me
in the weeks leading up to the launch of this m2 macbook air i used an older
Intel model and wow is the different stark if i was coming
from an Intel macbook this air even with its compromises would feel great it
really did give me a sense of how revolutionary this apple silicon
transition is for this form factor
i actually do have a choice between any macbook to use at work and so i think
the one i'd go for is the m2 macbook air
in silver maybe but if it was my own money
i think i'd go with the m1 model refurbished in gold
thanks for slowing down this Mac Address if you're just as confused about the m2
macbook air as i am well give this video a like and if you want to see what color
i actually do end up with well you might as well subscribe now i'm curious in the
comments below how many of you would actually have a workload that would push
the m2 into its really hot state