Last Updated on June 7, 2022 by srinivas
At WWDC on June 6, 2022, Apple introduced a redesigned MacBook Air with an M2 chip.
The new look was expected, although Apple has not introduced the color palette that was rumored to be. The MacBook Air has been given a new, thinner design and is available in four shades: silver, starlight, space gray and midnight.
Publication date
Apple has confirmed that the new MacBook Air will ship in July.
Even with the promise of a shipping date in July, there may be delays and shortages due to various factors. For example, with China just emerging from lockdown, there may be some backlog in factories.
If you don’t want to wait to buy a new MacBook Air, you can find the best deals here: Best MacBook Air Deals.
Price
According to the January 2021 Bloomberg report mentioned above, this new laptop will be positioned as a more expensive version of the current MacBook Air, with the current models remaining on sale.
This is indeed the case with a starting price of $1,199 for the M2 MacBook Air in the US (in the UK, prices start at £1,249).
The current MacBook Air is priced as follows.
- M1 MacBook Air, 8-core CPU, 7-core GPU, 256GB SSD $999 / £999
- M1 MacBook Air, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 512GB SSD $1,249 / £1,249
Apple keeps the M1 MacBook Air on sale at its current entry-level price, so you can still pick up the 7-core GPU version for $999 / £999. We’d have liked Apple to ditch that model with the 8-core GPU version. , but unfortunately not.
New colors
It has been reported for months that Apple is working on a lighter and thinner redesign for the MacBook Air. In May 2021, Jon Prosser shared information from a source (the same source who revealed Apple would launch iMacs in several colors in 2021) indicating that Apple is working on a new MacBook Air with an all-new design in several of new colors. Read: A colorful MacBook is coming.
Unfortunately (at least if you’re looking for pastels) the new MacBook Air doesn’t come in the iMac-inspired colors Prosser expected.
The new MacBook Air is available in silver, starlight, space gray and midnight.
These new colors are much closer to what Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman indicated would be just days before WWDC.
New design
Prosser was right in predicting that the tapered look that the MacBook Air was so famous for will be gone. The new MacBook Air has a flat design and is only 0.44 inches (1.13 cm) thick, compared to 0.16-0.63 inches (0.41-1.61 cm). Sure, the tapered brim was narrower, but all in all, the design is thinner than it was.
Dimensions
The MacBook Air is slightly wider than the previous model, but benefits from a larger screen – 13.6 inches instead of 13.3 inches. More on the screen below.
Here’s how the 2022 MacBook Air’s dimensions compare to the 2020 model:
- 2020 MacBook Air: 11.97″ x 8.36″ x 0.16-0.63″ (or 30.41 cm x 21.24 cm x 0.41-1.61 cm).
- 2022 MacBook Air: 11.97 inches x 8.46 inches x 0.44 inches (or 30.41 cm x 21.5 cm x 1.13 cm).
We didn’t expect the MacBook Air to be narrower in width due to the optimal keyboard size. Apple’s Magic Keyboard is about 27.9cm wide, so it’s unlikely the new MacBook Air would be any smaller than that – shrinking it further would mean the keys were too close together for comfortable typing.
Display
As we mentioned above, the 2022 MacBook Air has a larger 13.6-inch display. The new display is Liquid Retina – the marketing name the company uses for the display on several of the products it sells (including iPhones and iPads). The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models go even better with Liquid Retina XDR displays.
The brightness of 500 nits is superior to the 400 nits of the MacBook Air from 2020. This puts it in line with the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but places it well below the 1,000 nits of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro model. It also lacks the ProMotion technology of those models.
Analyst Ming Chi Kuo predicted that the new display will use Mini-LED backlighting technology for better color reproduction, blacker blacks, higher contrast and greater dynamic range. It is not immediately clear whether this is the case.
Mini LED displays would bring the following improvements:
- Deeper and darker black
- Brighter, richer colors
- Better contrast
- No burn-in issues, as found with OLED
- More energy efficient
- Enables thinner and lighter products
Apple
Notch
After the MacBook Pro was announced with a screen notch, it seemed inevitable that the MacBook Air would follow the trend, and it does.
For those who don’t like the notch on the MacBook Pro, Apple’s Product Line Manager, Pro Mac Shruti Haldea has this to say: the notch is a “really smart way to give you more space for your content” because the menu bar changes to new ones. space on either side of the notch, while the rest of the screen has the same 16:10 aspect ratio as before. “What we’ve done is we’ve made the screen even bigger,” she emphasizes. More here: Apple exec defends MacBook Pro screen notch.
webcam
The notch at the top of the screen houses a much better webcam than the one on the 2020 MacBook Air. The current 720p FaceTime camera is terrible! The new HD (1080p) webcam seen in the iMac and 2021 MacBook Pro models is a great addition to the 2022 MacBook Air. To be fair, had Apple not done this, it would have been a travesty (although the company makes up for the shortcomings of its Mac cameras by allowing users to pair their iPhones to use as webcams).
Specifications:
If this new MacBook Air is supposed to be thinner and lighter than it is now, what does this mean for the components inside?
At the moment, the Air may be limited by the lack of space for cooling and heat dissipation – the current model doesn’t even have a fan. Without a means of cooling itself, Apple has to keep the MacBook Air from getting too hot — which generally means it slows down when the going gets tough.
With that in mind, we shouldn’t expect the upcoming MacBook Air to be much more powerful than it is now, and certainly not as powerful as the MacBook Pro, but we can expect some improvements.
Processor & Graphics
The new MacBook Air will use an M2 chip, providing two additional graphics cores compared to the M1’s limits. Apple also claims that the M2 doesn’t just offer faster performance, as it does so while consuming much less power, which should be a benefit to battery life.
The M2 offers the following:
For more information about the different processors, read about the M1 series and the M2 series. We also have this comparison of different Mac processors.
RAM
The memory support will improve instead of staying up to 16 GB with the standard 8 GB, the 2022 MacBook Air will support 24 GB of memory (RAM).
- Support for 24 GB unified memory
- 50 percent more memory bandwidth
Ports
One port that returns to the MacBook Air is the MagSafe port. Like the 2020 MacBook Air, the 2022 model will offer two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports. Unfortunately, turning away from the tapered ‘wedge shape’ in favor of a new uniform shape didn’t mean there was room for more ports, so you won’t see
One port that returns to the MacBook Air is the MagSafe port. Like the 2020 MacBook Air, the 2022 model will offer two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports. Unfortunately, rejecting the tapered ‘wedge’ shape in favor of a new unified shape didn’t mean there was room for more ports, so you won’t see HDMI card readers on this model – the addition of an HDMI port would allow users connected more screens than is currently possible with the MacBook Air. Read: Connecting Two or More External Displays to M1 Macs. There is also a 3.5mm jack for headphones.