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00:00The MacBook Air is ridiculously popular and for good reason. It's basically the world's default laptop
00:06And now here I am at Apple Park having a play with a brand new
00:112022 MacBook Air and it is a huge upgrade
00:15We get Apple's new M2 chip, a bigger and brighter screen, a 1080p webcam. It's thinner. It's lighter
00:22We have MagSafe now plus faster charging, better speakers, more and faster RAM and
00:28Obviously most importantly it comes in four colors including a very snazzy new starlight and midnight
00:34Which is kind of like a matte black with an ever so slight blue tint to it
00:39I must admit I'm kind of torn between them. I'm not sure which I prefer. Which one would you go for?
00:45Now one downside of the new Air is it is
00:48$200 or 250 pounds more expensive than the current M1 Air which you can still buy and of course
00:54That's also before you upgrade your RAM or storage
00:57However on the flip side if you were thinking about buying a MacBook Pro 14
01:02While this won't be quite as powerful and we'll have to wait until I can get this back in the studio to properly compare
01:07It and also we don't get that 120 Hertz ProMotion. Considering the Air is
01:12$800 cheaper it's gonna be a much better option for most of us. Now the first thing I noticed is that we've lost that familiar
01:19MacBook Air tapered design
01:21It looks very much like the new Pro 14 and 16 and actually one slight issue is it can make it a little bit tricky
01:26to pick up sometimes
01:29But overall Apple says it's actually 20% smaller in volume than the current Air and it's also 50 grams lighter and a little bit thinner
01:36Overall, and that's particularly impressive considering. We also have a bigger screen
01:41It's now 13.6 inches up from 13.3
01:44Although that's mainly down to the much thinner bezels. And so yes like the pros we have that notch
01:49It is a compromise of the design
01:51But the trade-off is we get an incredible webcam
01:54The resolutions been bumped up to 1080p and with the M2's improved ISP or image signal processor
02:01We get even better video quality and especially in low-light
02:05Now I'm here at the WWDC conference and actually brought my current M1 Air and also my Pro 16 to the event and initially
02:12I started making my notes on the Air
02:13But because we were outside it was a little bit tricky to see the screen
02:17So I switched to my Pro 16 which is brighter
02:20So I'm really happy to see that they've actually bumped the brightness of the new Air from 400 to 500 nits
02:25Which makes it a lot easier to use outdoors
02:28It is still the same resolution though, which is roughly halfway between full HD and 4k
02:33Which I think is a good balance and it is also still 60 Hertz. There is no promotion here
02:38But it is a touch bigger. It's brighter and actually more color accurate
02:42So it's still a pretty big upgrade
02:44MagSafe also comes to the Air now which frees up the other two USB Thunderbolt 4 ports
02:49As you don't have to use that for charging anymore
02:51Now I did ask Apple and sadly the new Air still can only output to one external display
02:56That is something that you'll need to go to a Pro model for but MagSafe does also bring with it a faster charging option
03:02Now by default you get a 30 watt charger
03:04But for $20 more or it's free if you go for a higher spec, you can get the new dual USB 35 watt charger
03:11It charges the Air in the same time
03:13But you can plug in your phone or your AirPods or whatever else to top up just from the one plug
03:17Now personally, I think I would go for the new 67 watt option
03:21But it doesn't have the two extra USBs unfortunately
03:24Basically because this is the same charger already available for the pros
03:27Now the keyboard and touchpad haven't really changed much
03:30Although the function row is now full-size whereas on the older Air the keys were a little bit smaller
03:35We do also now get quad speakers
03:38That's two tweeters and two woofers and while I haven't yet been able to test the sound side-by-side
03:42If the new Air is anything like the pros, it's gonna sound incredible
03:47So far so good then but what I'm most excited about is this new M2 chip
03:52The MacBook Air along with the also refreshed MacBook Pro 13 are the first two devices to come equipped with the M2
03:58Now speaking of the Pro 13 here, they are side-by-side the new Air and the new Pro 13
04:03It's virtually identical to the outgoing model on the outside
04:07It even still has a touch bar and along with the chunkier bezels
04:10It is starting to look a bit dated and it has an active cooling fan
04:15The MacBook Air is still a fanless design
04:17So under sustained longer loads like gaming or if you're rendering the Pro 13 will be a bit more powerful
04:24But I'm keen to test that in practice and see if there's really that much difference
04:28But that does also mean the Air is completely silent no matter what you're doing
04:32So what does the M2 bring to the table?
04:35Well battery life remains the same Apple say you can get up to 18 hours of video playback and you know what that's fine
04:41It's already very good. Instead. We are getting a nice boost in performance
04:44the M2 has an 18% faster CPU a
04:4835% faster GPU at full power and also a 40% faster neural engine compared to the M1
04:54So it's not quite the radical difference we saw in the transition from Intel to the M1
04:59But it is still a welcome upgrade and together with up to 24 gigabytes of unified memory
05:04Which also now has higher bandwidth and also together with a new faster media engine that makes it a much more capable video editing laptop
05:11I'm really keen to see if anyone actually needs to shell out for a MacBook Pro
05:15This might be all you need
05:17Of course all MacBooks will be getting the new Mac OS Ventura
05:20Update when it comes out later in the year and I will be making a separate video on the new OS upgrades as well
05:25So make sure you stay tuned for that, but it wasn't running yet on these particular laptops
05:30So for twelve hundred dollars or slightly annoyingly twelve hundred fifty pounds
05:34It is about 20% more expensive
05:37Student and teachers get a hundred off that but it's still a lot of money and also when you go for a higher spec
05:42Which I would recommend I think 16 gigs of RAM and 512 storage is the sweet spot. It is quite pricey
05:48I say that because I have found on my old air with 8 gigs of RAM
05:52It often runs out of memory and I have to close applications
05:55So it does depend how you use your laptop, but I would suggest going for 16
05:59However, one thing I can say about Apple products is that they are very well supported in terms of software
06:04They last a long time and also they retain their value quite well for trade-ins or selling it down the road
06:09So considering you can't upgrade any of the components yourself if you can I would pay the extra up front to get the better spec
06:16But also maybe hold off until as tech reviewers can properly test it and compare it to the old air the pro 13 and also
06:23The pro 14 and also the Windows competition like the Zenbook 13 s OLED and the Dell XPS 13 plus
06:30But first impressions are very positive. It is a big overhaul inside and out
06:35But what do you think? Are you tempted to buy one when it comes out in July or not convinced?
06:39Let me know in the comments below and also if you have any questions
06:42So that was fun. I am genuinely very excited for the new MacBook Air. The colors are great
06:47It's much faster much much nicer screen with that thinner bezel
06:51Which it didn't need and as Tim Cook is being swamped over there
06:54I think people are gonna be swamping into Apple stores to buy the new MacBook Air as well
06:58But stay tuned for review coming very soon
07:00And if you've got any questions at all, let me know in the comments below now
07:04I'm gonna try and get a selfie with him without being too annoying