the m2 macbook air is simultaneously one of the best laptops ever made
and one that i am the most sad about and no it's not only because of the ssd
issue i've been using both the base model and a higher spec one for about a
week now and in this review i want to give you guys my real world experience
with these machines and overall it is fantastic
now i have to tell you that we are giving away an m2 macbook air and i
don't care where you are in the world i will pay for the shipping any fees or
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off with the design i have to say i love this color but
after cleaning it multiple times a day i am just done so unless you don't care
about fingerprints all over the place i would maybe think twice now the silver
one it has been amazing it looks retro now i have to say when this came out i
wasn't sure if i was gonna like it better than the wedge shape i love that
iconic wedge but after spending a lot of time using this i like it better apple
softened up all the edges here which is nice because it's not going to ding as
easy this edge right here doesn't dig into your wrist especially because of
how thin this laptop is it might not seem like there's a big difference 13.6
inches compared to 14
but it is substantial the macbook air is way more portable it feels drastically
lighter even though technically it's not that big of a difference this thing is a
pleasure to take with you anywhere you go one thing that really stood out to me
using it at my house was the fast charging being able to get five to six
hours of mixed use in 30 minutes of charging is amazing because a lot of
times if you forget to charge your laptop you don't use it for a couple
days if you're a light user you pick it up and it's dead you need to go
somewhere well you're dealing with an issue now it is great and on top of that
you can fast charge it from a usb type-c power bank as well that you can buy
inexpensively which is awesome i'll leave a link down below and i've already
benefited from having those two thunderbolt ports available even when
you're charging thanks to the max 8 connection which now has stronger
magnets than before and it comes with beautiful color matched braided cables
and that just proves one of my big points that this is a luxury
item it is beautiful the design is great it looks modern and sleek with those
slim even bezels the cable the presentation everything just screams
luxury as does the price point now the webcam fantastic speakers definitely
better than any laptop this size the m1 macbook air the previous version we
actually do like those speakers better they are louder have a little bit more
highs this has a little bit more bass it wasn't that big of a jump but it still
sounds great and if you're watching music movies anything you're going to be
happy now as far as performance it is dang good as well
at least if you have the higher spec model and you're doing shorter bursty
loads now i spent time comparing both of these systems we have a full detailed
comparison available i use them at home for some video editing for some photo
editing and they do a good job especially compared to what the intel
macbook airs were capable of just a few years ago
you can now not only edit 4k video and final cut you can even edit 8k
hevc compressed video that almost nobody is shooting now sure if you're going to
be working with stuff like raw footage or heavier things that is where you
would want to upgrade to the 14-inch when we tested that in the pro it fell
apart and the 14-inch handle it great which is why we recommended that model
but if you're somebody that wants to do youtube you want to maybe edit even tik
tok videos with more effects on your computer you want to do photos this will
handle it very well the big issue and the first sad issue is the divide
between the base model and then what you get if you spend 400 more
never have we seen such a big performance gap between the
same machine with the same chip and even the same graphics as we have with these
apple silicon chips and the configurations that apple offers for
example with a 2020 macbook air you could upgrade to an i7 spend 300 bucks
more but the difference wouldn't be that big same thing with upgrading graphics
but when have we seen basically a doubling of speed by just
upgrading to a higher ssd and an extra eight gigs of ram and that is with
having no program opened other than lightroom and if you do some simple
multitasking like everybody does having email open google drive a youtube video
the difference is shocking a difference like this should
not exist and the same thing goes for video editing apple put in prores
decoders and encoders into the m2 chip which we did not expect but then if you
get the base model those ships are worthless because of how slow the system
gets with the base model now i don't want to keep hammering on about this
because most people that care know about it already and people are switching
they're buying configurations drastically which means that we did get
the word out there just know that if you buy the base model it is even slower
than the m1 macbook air in a lot of real world scenarios which is very sad now we
also covered the thermal capabilities and limitations with this system and the
sad part about that is it's not that apple didn't put in a fan or were
pushing it too hard is that the m1 had a way better cooler than the m2 they
actually had a thick heat sink that transfers heat and spreads it whereas
now it's a thin almost foil-like material that is sealed in with this
layer that keeps heat in now because of that when i was using it and doing some
of those tasks it did not get that hot on the bottom and the spot that it did
get the hottest was right at the center that is right between your two feet if
it's on your lap so that is nice for usability but the system does heat up to
108 degrees celsius in about 28 seconds which is way faster than the m1
model now the crazy thing is that there is an empty large block of space that
would be perfect for a solid metal heat spreader but instead it is just a gap of
air covered by the thin foil-like metal which means that yes this was a
conscious decision to keep the chip limited and with that the choice to have
a single nand for the ssd which makes it dramatically slower if you care about
productivity now apple perfectly placed this laptop in line to not make it too
good and too powerful like the m1 macbook air was and now we have a
perfect staircase of products that guides you up the ladder to upgrade and
eventually reach the pro models because of limitations that were placed there on
purpose which is what makes me sad this machine is still excellent for most
people especially if you use the thermal mod that costs 15 bucks doesn't void
your warranty it helps a ton and it's gonna do a great job but once
you spec it up to this configuration and especially if you upgrade the graphics
you are literally only a hundred dollars away from buying the 14 inch at a
discount which is a much more capable and nicer machine personally i've
greatly enjoyed using it it is so thin it is so light and it just hurts me to
know that if we would have had a better ssd at base and if we would have had a
heat spreader like on the m1 how much faster it would be
and for that price of the base model it would have been a killer and then it
definitely would have still in sales from that 14 inch now as far as the base
model this thing is great for those that just
do email watching youtube videos maybe editing one photo at a time and just
some very simple tasks and if that's what you do and you don't need the extra
storage it will do the job great when i started to do some productivity and
using it like i normally would i did notice the slowdowns without doing any
benchmarking or trying to look for it switching to the 16gb 512 model
it would just fly wouldn't slow down for bursty tasks and
it would do a killer job so if you have money if you can afford it and you want
the luxury in smaller size you will be happy we are going to do more testing
we're going to find out if that 10 core is worth that extra 100
uh we're gonna do some comparisons to a windows laptop so make sure you guys
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and for a chance to win comment down below this has been max and i'll see you
in the next video [Music]