Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “FINALLY, a 15-inch Macbook Air: Hands On”.
I’Ve always thought having a 15-inch version of the MacBook Air is a good idea. I thought it was such a good idea that I actually wrote about it. Maybe about 10 or 11 years ago – and I said oh definitely going to have a 15 inch MacBook Air sometime soon, because it really just makes a lot of sense. There’S a lot of rumors about it. I was ahead of my time.
I would like to think by about 10 years – or maybe I was just you know way too early and way too optimistic, but finally, 15-inch MacBook Air is here and I’ll tell you it looks and feels I picked it up. I typed on it I played around with it a tiny bit, it’s a MacBook Air, but slightly bigger and that’s kind of what you want. It’S got the same. You know flat top chassis or the MacBook Pros, and the MacBook Air have now it’s very thin. It’S very light. I picked it up.
I couldn’t believe how light it was. I’M used to carrying around a 13 inch M2 MacBook Air and I know that’s pretty light, but for the bigger footprint of the 15 inch you know, I was really impressed that you know it’s not any thicker and it you know, barely seems heavier at all. The big thing that’s different about it that you get is the bigger 15-inch screen, okay other than that just about everything else is the same as the 13 inch into MacBook Air, which you can still buy. It’S still got a really good keyboard, really good touch pad. Very light: it’s still got the mag safe and the two Thunderbolt USBC ports on one side, audio jack.
On the other side, you know very easy to carry around in your bag. I carry a 13 inch around with me all the time the 15 inch. I could see carrying every day.
I think it would get a little bit bulky after a while, if I was doing it five days a week, commute with it. I would still go with the 13, but the 15 inch really does have a lot of advantages. Just by having a bigger screen now, for me, the main advantage of bigger screen is frankly. I can see better, I’m already at the point where, if I’m working in a Google doc or something I got it bumped up to 125, maybe 135 on my 13 inch screen on a 15 inch screen. I can probably just read it normal and I won’t feel like I’m going blind quite as quickly. You know just having access to that bigger screen.
If you’re going to use this as your all day, everyday laptop, it’s going to sit on your desk, it’s going to go to the coffee shop with you, it’s going to go to work with you occasionally. I think that bigger screen really pays off, because I love 13-inch laptop. I’Ve been promoting them for many many years as the best overall laptop size, but it’s not a nine to five or ten to six job 40 hour weeks. Sit in front of your computer kind of screen that smaller 13 size is going to wear on you after a while now Apple says that this is the thinnest 15 inch laptop ever uh.
Arguably, that’s probably true. I don’t know if it’s the lightest, I think, there’s some LG Grand models that 15 inches that are probably a little bit lighter, but it’s certainly you know in the running, for it so Apple calls it the 15-inch laptop that has it all. I’M inclined to agree with that, unless you need to get really Advanced with Graphics or anything like that, you need like a discrete GPU, but other than that. This seems like a really good, really portable, powerful MacBook Air. I find a 13 inch. M2 uh. You know version powerful enough for me to use for just about everything even photo editing, even video editing as long as you’re not doing super high res super pro stuff uh. The regular M2 Chip is fine. Now Apple also promises 18 hours of battery life, and I could say, I probably believe that most of the MacBooks for the last couple years have lived up to their battery life expectations. Because if you open up a Macbook, what you’re going to find inside is basically just a gigantic battery shoved in there with a little bit of computer stuff kind of around the sides.
But it’s really mostly battery. So if you have a bigger body, then you can fit in a bigger battery than that, even so, of course, you’re going to get better battery life and of course these are fanless, just like the 13-inch version is so you don’t need to. You know, spend energy running fans to cool things, so that can also improve your battery life and the bigger body is definitely going to be better for heat dissipation. So you know you get the best of all possible worlds there and that is going to take that battery life and get it up there, if not 18 hours, at least in the ballpark.
Now here’s the interesting thing about what this 15-inch MacBook Air is going to cost. When I wrote about it recently before it was announced, I said it’s really just upgrading the screen. It’S probably going to keep all the components the same, so you know 11.99 for the 13 inch. So maybe I’d go. You know. 12.99.
13.99. I don’t know if I’d go much more than that for a 15 inch version, because you’re really just getting a bigger screen. It’S 12.99. That seems like a pretty reasonable upgrade to me to get the bigger screen, but at the same time they took the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, which again I carry around almost all the time it was 11.99, which I frankly always thought was a little bit too expensive And they knocked it down.
100 bucks. That’S now, 10.99, not quite the 999 MacBook Air price. I always you know loved for years, but certainly a lot better, but you can still get that M1 MacBook Air. The first M series Apple silicon MacBook from a couple years ago: they’re still selling that that’s still 9.99, although again for 100 bucks more, I would definitely get the M2 version, and if you want the bigger screen, then 12.99 get you the 15 inch.
They have a pretty good. You know way of spacing out the pricing almost like movie theater popcorn, where you kind of go okay, maybe I can just get the bigger one, the better one, that’s not that much more and that’s the business model. .