M2 MacBook Air Review Roundup Praises Lightweight Design, Battery Life, but Weak Points Include Overheating, Slow SSD Speeds

M2 MacBook Air Review Roundup Praises Design, Battery Life, but Weak Points Include Overheating, Slow SSD Speeds

The first M2 MacBook Air reviews are here, with some media outlets and technology enthusiasts praising some areas of the portable Mac. Unfortunately, Apple’s redesigned MacBook Air does not tick all the boxes, as some issues such as overheating and slow SSD speeds have been reported.

Regardless, the M2 MacBook Air impresses with excellent battery life, when it was reviewed by TechCrunch.

“The redesigned body, coupled with a thinner logic board, allows for more room for battery. The Air gets an upgrade from 49.9-watt-hours to 52.6. Overall, however, the stated battery life remains the same. I was able to get a bit over 17 hours of video playback, streaming video on Apple TV, with the brightness at 50 and the sound on. That should be enough to get you through just about any flight (maybe budget in a 90-minute nap if you’re flying from New York to Singapore). Interestingly, in addition to the new MagSafe colors, Apple’s trying something different with the power brick. Get the standard model with the 8-core GPU and you get the standard 30w USB-C charger.”

Despite its unibody aluminum construction, Engadget reports that the machine is lightweight, and given that it delivers incredible battery life and performance thanks to the M2, it will be an ideal product for the majority of customers.

“When I picked up the MacBook Air for the first time, it felt more like an iPad with a built-in keyboard than a laptop. What’s funny is that it’s actually more portable than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which weighs about 3 pounds when combined with its Smart Keyboard. The iPad Pro has always been positioned as a futuristic ideal for truly portable computing, but it turns out it weighs the same as the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Once again, the humble Air wins out.”

While there are advantages of owning the M2 MacBook Air, The Verge reports that the latest product suffers from the same flaws as the M2 MacBook Pro, which includes getting hot under intense workloads and then throttling afterwards. In case you did not know, the latest MacBook Air does not feature a single cooling fan but relies on a large heatsink with a graphite tape for dissipation purposes. The second issue is slow SSD speeds, with Apple spokesperson Michelle Del Rio attempting to provide the following clarification.

“Thanks to the performance increases of M2, the new MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro are incredibly fast, even compared to Mac laptops with the powerful M1 chip. These new systems use a new higher density NAND that delivers 256GB storage using a single chip. While benchmarks of the 256GB SSD may show a difference compared to the previous generation, the performance of these M2 based systems for real world activities are even faster.”

You can also check out the unboxing and review videos below if you need to get a more personal impression of the M2 MacBook Air.