Apple Goes Big With New 15-Inch MacBook Air
Apple’s new MacBook Air sports the laptop’s biggest screen yet while staying admirably thin and light.
Apple’s product line grew a little bit during this week’s WWDC. No, I’m not talking about the Vision Pro headset that garnered so much attention, but the addition of the big-screened 15” MacBook Air laptop. A larger iteration of the 13” Air, both computers now represent the small and large versions of the MacBook Air, a line known for being more portable and affordable than Apple’s MacBook Pro offerings.
The 15” MacBook Air certainly gets portability right. This is a form factor that weighs in at just over three pounds, sports a body that’s impossibly thin but reveals a huge screen when flipped open. It’s a wonderfully constructed machine that feels solid and easy to toss around with massive 18 hour battery life.
Despite its thinness, the 15” MBA performs well thanks to the M2 chip on board. Apple’s been touting their home grown silicon for a while now and each chipset is a testament to what happens when chips are made specifically for a computer’s needs and not the one-size-fits-all solutions you find in Apple’s competitors.
The result is streamlining at its finest and a computer that feels perpetually peppy and capable. Typical tasks like browsing the web and writing this article were obviously no challenge but transcoding a 1080p video was no chore at all either. For the average person’s home use or even a college kid about to embark on some academic pursuits, the 15” MBA will more than handle the workload for the foreseeable future.
It’s not all work and no play here either. There’s a terrific versatility out of this laptop that can switch from photo editing to gaming in a blink. Every game I tried from the Apple Arcade library played perfectly with no stuttering. And it was easy to hook in a bluetooth controller for a more core gaming experience too.
It’s clear that Apple is aiming this category at a broad set of users who will rely on this machine as the only computer they need. Students will love how light and easy it is to tote around all day, from lecture hall to dorm room. Anyone else in need of a laptop upgrade will find it easy to set up, especially the way it automatically plays nice with other Apple devices like iPhones, iPads, HomePods and AppleTVs.
Saying nothing of its technical prowess, the proof of this 15” MBA’s general supremacy comes from the huge screen and the MacOS ecosystem that’s simple to learn and also incredibly powerful. With free upgrades coming annually and the newly unveiled Sonoma version coming later this year, this machine will only get better with Apple’s continued support.
The 15″ MacBook Air specs can be configured and bumped and there are four color options, including a new Midnight black/blue metallic that looks incredibly sharp.
The 15” MacBook Air starts at $1,299 and hits stores beginning Tuesday, June 13th.