The Truth About the 15-Inch M2 MacBook Air

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This is another one of those “I didn’t want to write this blog post” blog posts.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that I firmly believe the 15-inch MacBook Air is Apple’s best MacBook launch of 2023. The size, the build quality, and even the price (for a Mac) make it a tantalising prospect for a pretty big audience.

The second reason is that I hate being potentially proved wrong. See? I had to insert the word ‘potentially’ there, didn’t I?

However, there are problems with the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air, and I must close out my Mac content for 2023 by giving you some important buying guidance if you’re thinking about picking up this laptop.

The brilliance of the 15-inch MacBook Air

Let’s start with the good stuff. It’s Christmas, after all.

When Apple launched the 15-inch MacBook Air at WWDC earlier this year, they made a big thing about laptops of that size from other manufacturers being all about compromise. They’re big, heavy, and have awful battery life, Apple told us. Even the performance suffers, apparently.

I have little experience using Windows-based 15-inch laptops, so I can’t comment. But I can imagine. Boy can I imagine.

Apple wanted to fix this; before a large-screened MacBook Air could be considered ready for prime time, it needed to address all of those concerns and be the best 15-inch laptop on the market.

In my opinion, Apple nailed this strategy. The 15-inch MacBook Air was the world’s thinnest 15-inch laptop at the time of launch at just 11.5mm. Yet it still packed enough power to be a seriously capable computer for creators and developers. That is no mean feat.

The build quality, as you’d expect from Apple, is second to none. My initial fears of bending this super-sized MacBook Air in my backpack have, thankfully, proven to be unfounded. The display, while not ProMotion, is as gorgeous as it should be. The battery life is, as we’ve become accustomed to in the Apple silicon era, biblically good.

Then we have the fact that it runs macOS, which is, arguably, so much more enjoyable to use than Windows. Fight me in the comments.

Chuck in Apple’s brilliant-if-a-bit-too-sticky ecosystem, and you have quite a package in the 15-inch MacBook Air.

So, what’s the problem?

What’s wrong with the 15-inch MacBook Air?

If you know me, you know that I opt for base-model Macs when buying something to both use and review. The only exception to this rule is my MacBook Pro, which gets decked out a bit to account for its crucial role as the engine for my video production process.

The reason I buy base model iMacs, Mac minis, and MacBook Airs is because I want to get a feel for what Apple deems the default performance of these machines. What do you get if you only have the budget – or inclination – for the ‘cheapest’ one?

I get some stick for this occasionally, but I stand by it. Apple makes these devices with those base specs, after all, so it’s only fair I give them air time. Equally, if you can only afford or only want that base spec, you shouldn’t be overlooked by the review community.

The M1 MacBook Air and M1 Mac mini remain two of my favourite Macs for this reason. They demonstrated that you can buy the cheapest one available and be rewarded with performance and longevity to which you’d never had access during the Intel days.

The same cannot be said about the 15-inch MacBook Air.

If this feels like déjà vu, it isn’t. I reluctantly came to the same conclusion about the 13-inch MacBook Air a few months into using that machine. At the heart of both of these Macs is the M2 chip, and if you choose the base configuration, you might be in for a rough ride.

This has to do with Apple’s choice of NAND chip configuration for the SSD storage. Without getting into the weeds, it has resulted in slower performance than the M1 generation of the same spec, and it has made countless unsavoury headlines for Apple since the M2 chip launched.

For some reason, it feels like a bigger deal with the 15-inch MacBook Air. This laptop, due to the size of the display and the resulting footprint of the laptop, feels like a more capable machine than the smaller one. That’s daft; they’re both equally as capable, performance-wise.

But this has always been the case with bigger laptops – they just look ready for action. So, when you’re saddled with a chip that struggles against the weight of fairly menial tasks, you end up feeling short-changed.

I don’t undertake benchmarks (there are plenty out there already if you’re interested) but I can give you my real-world experience of the base model M2 MacBook Air, and the best way I can describe it is that it just feels a bit… sluggish at times.

I never experienced this with the M1 MacBook Air (which is still in service in our family). That thing whipped through every task thrown at it without ever complaining – even during last-minute 4K video edits.

The base model 15-inch MacBook Air seems to get bogged down when you’re running lots of apps. For instance, I’ll often have Safari, Slack, Spark email, Fantastical, Discord, Ulysses, Lightroom, Day One, and a couple more apps open at any one time. It doesn’t become unusable under that load, but there’s a definite hesitation occasionally and removal of the smoothness to which we macOS users are so accustomed.

It just feels a bit… underpowered.

There’s also the issue of ad-heavy websites running in Safari. They completely destroy this laptop. Literally – to the point of having to close everything and start again. This is an issue when you’re a staunch Safari user and visit a lot of ad-supported news outlet websites (including your own).

There are two reasons this bothers me. The first is because it gives me no desire whatsoever to use my big MacBook Air for anything beyond writing and administrative stuff. That wasn’t the case with the M1 MacBook Air. The second is because this situation seems to be doing everything in its power to disprove my theory about the base model MacBook Air being enough for a lot of people.

How to buy the right 15-inch MacBook Air

The problem I have right now is that there is no M3 version of the 15-inch MacBook Air for comparison purposes. I’m hoping against all hope that the base model version with that chip doesn’t suffer from the same performance issues.

Because it really shouldn’t.

Alas, at the time of writing, we only have the M2 15-inch MacBook Air – and that means I need to update my buying guidance.

If you’ve got your eye on a 15-inch MacBook Air right now, I think you have two options:

• wait for the M3 MacBook Air, if you can; or
• buy the M2 version with at least 16GB of unified memory and a 512GB SSD.

If you do the latter, you’ll end up with a very capable MacBook Air which will last you many years. However, if you can wait, I’d give it until WWDC next year before buying one, because I’m fairly sure we’re going to see an M3 MacBook Air during that time.

I can’t tell you which option is right for you, but I can recommend that you make the decision above with your head rather than your heart.

I know that’s tricky when it comes to the MacBook Air!

Conclusion

I still get the feeling that Apple would rather forget the M2 ever existed, and it’s why we can expect it to vanish entirely from the official shelves once the M3 MacBook Air arrives.

Are we moving beyond the base model MacBook Air being a sensible purchase? I genuinely hope not. That’s why I’m patiently waiting for that M3 edition; I want to see if it fixes the performance problems I’ve experienced.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to buy a 15-inch MacBook Air, please heed my advice above.

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