15-Inch MacBook Air Review: Way Cheaper Than a Pro
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Speaker 1: Apple finally has a 15 inch MacBook Air, and for most people, that's gonna be the large screen MacBook that you should buy. So Apple has a really big lineup of MacBooks now like they've had for years. And to catch you up on it, there is a MacBook Pro line that's really expensive that starts at $2,000, which has a lot of nice display and port options and much faster processors, but you're gonna have to really pay up for that. But there are also IMAX Mac Minis, the Mac Studio and the MacBook Air right [00:00:30] in the middle. They all have these M one and M two processors, which are really fast. So processing for me is no longer that much of an issue. But Apple didn't have a large screen laptop that was in its affordable part of the lineup before you had to get that 13 inch MacBook.
Speaker 1: Now there is a 15 inch model, and I think as back to school shopping kicks in or anybody's looking for an affordable alternative that's not an iMac. I think this is it. So let's catch you up on what's new here. Not a whole lot. So the M two 13 inch MacBook Air, [00:01:00] which came out last year that I bought, I love it here. It's basically the same product, but with a 15.3 inch screen. They're also better speakers and that's about it. So there's not a lot to catch up on, which is a little bit surprising if you were hoping for a new processor or some other new exciting things here. For that, you'd wanna go to the MacBook Pro line, but here you are getting a lot of features at a pretty affordable for Apple price. This starts at 1299, which really is a little bit less than I was expecting [00:01:30] for a 15 inch laptop from Apple.
Speaker 1: Now again, a lot of the features on here are pretty similar to what you had on the 13 inch MacBook Air. The display 15.3 inches, and that's the biggest feature here. It feels a lot bigger next to the 13. That's what happens with screen sizes. And it's the sort of thing where if you sit it on a desk, you do feel like you can uh, use more apps. At the same time. I find when I'm working on the 13 inch air, I tend to be a one app user with a little bit on the side. This I feel like I can [00:02:00] do a little bit, that multi pain action stuff. It has the same liquid retina display that Apple had on the air before, which is really good quality. It's not mini l e d like on the pro line, which really does pop, but for all uses that I've had, it's a really good display.
Speaker 1: There still is a notch on the top. It doesn't bother me though because I don't know. The Apple uses that menu task bar on the top in that area. Anyhow, and for the most part, computing fills the screen below it. Would it be nice if it [00:02:30] filled even more and there was no notch? Yeah, but that's what's going on right now. It's a little bit weird because Apple doesn't have any face ID camera here. It's just there's a notch. But there is a 10 80 P webcam, which is perfectly good and a bit better than previous Gen Max for doing video chat. So the design, it's thin, it's as thin as the MacBook Air 13 inch. I didn't feel shocked by it, but it is very nice. Although it does make the laptop feel wide. I mean, this has big 15 inch laptop dimensions going on [00:03:00] here.
Speaker 1: There's extra space on the side of the keyboard, and so you're gonna need a slightly bigger laptop sleeve or a bigger bag to carry it in. Now let's talk about ports, which I consider part of the laptop design. Apple did not increase the number of ports on this laptop compared to the 13 inch model, which is a little weird considering this is a considerably bigger laptop. There are still just two USBC type thunderbolt ports and they're on one side along with a MagSafe charger. And on the other side, there's a headphone check. Two [00:03:30] is perfectly fine if you have a port extender, but you could have put more ports on this and you could have at least put a port on the other side of the laptop. That's super frustrating. The MacBook Pro, yes, there are port on both sides. Plus there are other types of ports like H D M I.
Speaker 1: You are saving money on this, I guess, because if they had put more ports and done other things, they probably would've increased the price. The feel of this laptop is great as far as the keyboard goes, but again, I don't really like when there's a lot of extra space on the side of the keyboard. [00:04:00] I like it a little more compact. The track pad is tremendous though. A lot of space there for the track pad. Apple promises 18 hours of battery life about for this laptop. There is a MagSafe charger port. There is a 35 watt uh, brick that comes with it. You can also pick a fast charging brick instead that doesn't have the two ports that the 35 watt does. And you know, for me, these MacBook errors in the past few years have had astounding battery life really, really good. I haven't put this one through, its complete paces yet, but [00:04:30] I've not worried about battery.
Speaker 1: There's no fan on this, so I don't have to worry about it getting hot in my lap. So far it's been performing really well. The price equation, that's where this model gets really good. 1299 at the entry level gets you eight gigabytes of RAM and 2 56 gigabytes of storage. 1499 gets you eight gigabytes of RAM as well, but five 12 of storage. I've found that eight gigs of RAM works perfectly well for my everyday use on these MacBooks that run the M series processors. But you'd probably want to upgrade to 16 gigs to ensure [00:05:00] speedier performance. So that's gonna bump it up a bit. But here's the thing, this is $200 more than the 13 inch air at the entry level model, but at the step up model, it's only a hundred dollars more than the equivalent 13 inch air. So it's really not a big price jump for the screen.
Speaker 1: Do you want to pay a hundred dollars more for a bigger screen? As my wife said, it's really nice if you're sitting it on a desk that you can get that extra screen space. But for me, taking a laptop on the go, I really like the 13 inch model. The 13 inch model, by the way, dropped a hundred dollars on its base price recently. And [00:05:30] also the heirs tend to be on sale quite a bit. I imagine that's gonna be the case here too. This does have a processor that came out last year. There's no M three here. Does that mean that you're safe? Well, apple doesn't have an M three processor yet. There are faster M two s on their pro line of max. I find the M two is tremendously powerful. Yes, it is a year old, but I feel like acclimated its processors so fast right now that they're gonna be fine for a while and the choice is up to you.
Speaker 1: But I'm really happy that I bought the 13 inch air just six months ago. I like [00:06:00] this price for a MacBook. I feel like this is the territory I'd want to go in. I would not wanna pay a thousand dollars plus more for a pro model that's thicker, even if it has a bigger and nicer display. So that's my thought on the 15 inch MacBook Air right now, which I feel rolls in as again, an option that represents the best laptop that Apple has right now. I wish it had more ports, but what can you do? That's a story for 2023. Thanks for watching.
