Apple Updates MacBook Air With A Fresh Design And New M2 Chip

At its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple refreshed its MacBook Air with a new design and latest hardware. In terms of aesthetics, the Cupertino company has completely done away with the iconic tapered edges in favour of a more uniform look. What hasn’t changed, however, is the MacBook Air’s sleek aluminium enclosure. It is 11.3 mm thick and tips the scales at 1.2 kg. The new MacBook Air comes in Midnight, Starlight, Silver, and Space Grey finishes.

The new design accommodates a well-spaced chiclet keyboard with full-height function keys. The company has integrated a fingerprint scanner into the power button. It comes in handy for unlocking your MacBook, opening password-protected files, and validating purchases. Apple has also increased the size of the trackpad area.

Moving onto the display, the new MacBook Air sports a 13.6-inch IPS (In Pane Switching) LCD screen with LED backlights. With 2560 x 1664 pixels, it delivers a pixel density of 224 ppi. The screen has 500 nits of peak brightness, which is impressive for a laptop.

The screen has an unsightly notch to make space for a 1080p FaceTime HD camera. The notebook features four speakers. The new MacBook Air supports Spatial Audio on 3rd generation AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max. Coming to the subject of connectivity and ports, the laptop comes with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, two Thunderbolt (USB 4) ports, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and MagSafe 3 for charging. The notebook holds a 52.6-watt-hour lithium polymer battery, which according to Apple lasts for up to 18 hours of video playback on a single charge.

At the heart of the laptop is Apple’s new M2 chipset. It comprises four performance and four efficiency cores. The chip comes with a 16-core neural engine. Users will get to choose from 8-core and 10-core GPU options. This second-generation M-series chip offers performance enhancements over its predecessor. To put things in perspective, it delivers 1.4 times faster video editing performance compared to the MacBook Air M1.

On the software side of things, the new machines ships with Apple’s macOS Monterey. Hop onto this page, for more details.

The MacBook Air with M2 chip will land in India next month. As per Apple’s product listing, the MacBook Air M2 with 8-core GPU and 256GB SSD will cost ₹119,900. The 10-core GPU model with 512GB SSD storage will set you back for ₹149,900.