M2 MacBook Air now Available in SA

The redesigned MacBook Air with the brand new M2 chip is now available in South Africa.

Redesign

The most noticeable aspect of the 2022 MacBook Air is the similarity to the new MacBook Pro, released in 2021. From the feet to the rounded sides up to the notch at the top in the middle of the screen.

The much-loved MagSafe charging method was resurrected from previous Apple laptop versions. This frees up one of the two USB-C ports which now gives you full use of both USB-C ports while charging. Both ports are Thunderbolt 3 with support for USB 4/USB 3.1 Gen 2. The M2, as does the M1, only support one external display. And if you accidentally trip over the cable, well your laptop and bank account will be safe!

On the other side is one 3.5mm headphone jack.

The new design also incorporates a stunning 13.6-inch LED-backlit Liquid Retina display. It has a native resolution of 2560×1664 and a pixel density of 224 pixels per inch. True Tone technology and a P3 wide colour gamut are also present in this new model.

Facetime and other video calls will now look crisper with the upgraded webcam. It now features a 1080p resolution camera and with the computation done by the M1 chips, lighting and noise also improved.

M2 Chip

Ladies and gentlemen, the star of the show, the 2022 M2 chip! The M2 moderately improves performance and power efficiency from its predecessor – the November 2020 released M1.

CPU

Both chips have an 8-core CPU with four performance and four efficiency cores. The M2 has slightly faster single-core speeds, which will improve general performance.

GPU

TLDR: video editing is smoother on the M2.

Two extra GPU cores can now be configured, increasing the maximum number of GPU cores to 10, up from the maximum of 8 in the M1.

The biggest improvement is a media engine capable of not only H.264 and HEVC (H.265) hardware acceleration but also ProRes and ProRes RAW. It also supports a ProRes encode and decode engine.

Unified Memory

Memory also received a boost with a maximum configurable option of 24GB, up from 16GB in the M1. The memory bandwidth on the M2 also increased to 100GB/S, improving memory speed by 32%.

For everyday tasks such as web browsing, using apps like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, the Microsoft Office suite etc. and listening to music, 24GB of unified memory will definitely future-proof your MacBook Air for at least 6-8 years.

Pricing and Available Models

There are two variants available in South Africa.

A special order can be arranged with some resellers to order machines with 16GB or 24GB unified memory and 1TB or 2TB SSD storage.

* – Pricing on 27 July 2022 from DigiCape and iStore.

Conclusion

The 2022 MacBook Air with the M2 processor is weirdly too powerful for everyday use but not powerful enough for a professional creator working with complex audio, video, special effects and animation. The price is more in line with the average computer user and will benefit such a user for years to come, especially when you arrange a special order for the 24GB unified memory version.

Image Credits: Apple

Will the redesigned 2022 MacBook Air M2 be a good buy for you? It’s a rather curious product in Apple’s lineup.