The Evolution of the MacBook Air: A Comparative Analysis of the M1 and M2 Models

I remember the very first MacBook Air back in 2008, it was a revolutionary device that changed the game for portable laptops. One of the most notable features of the original MacBook Air was its minimalist design, which had only one USB-A port on the entire device. Fast forward to the modern era, and we've seen significant improvements in terms of connectivity options. The latest MacBook Air models have two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, which is a substantial upgrade over the single USB-A port of the original model.

In contrast to the old MacBook Air, the new M2 version has retained the same ports, with only minor tweaks. However, there's one notable return feature that's back on the latest models: the MagSafe power connection. This was absent from the M1 MacBook Air, and it's a welcome change for those who value convenience and ease of use. The two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports are still present, along with the headphone jack, which is a relief for users who prefer to listen to music or take video calls without having to deal with adapters.

One of the most significant upgrades on the M2 MacBook Air is the webcam. For years, the MacBook Air has had relatively low-resolution cameras that were considered dated and lacking in quality. However, with the introduction of the M2 chip, Apple has finally upgraded the camera to a full HD resolution (1080p). This change has made a significant difference in video conferencing and online meetings, where clear and high-quality images are crucial. The new webcam is not only more powerful but also features improved image processing, which makes it stand out from older models.

However, this upgrade comes at the cost of screen real estate. The camera notch, similar to the one found on iPhones, has been introduced on the M2 MacBook Air. This feature allows for a sleeker and thinner design, but some users may find it more noticeable than they'd like. In contrast, the older model had a thicker top bezel that housed the camera module, which doesn't intrude on the screen as much.

When it comes to audio quality, both models have limitations. The M1 MacBook Air has two speakers, while the M2 version boasts four speakers. However, neither of these configurations is exceptional, and users may still need external speakers or headphones for optimal sound quality.

Ultimately, the decision between the M1 and M2 MacBook Air depends on several factors, including budget, design preferences, and personal needs. The M1 model starts at $999, while the M2 version begins at $1,099. While both models share some similarities, the M2 chip provides a significant performance boost and improved overall experience.

If you're looking for a more budget-friendly option, the M1 MacBook Air remains an excellent choice. It's still widely available in Apple's stores and online, and it's easy to find one that suits your needs. However, if you want the latest and greatest technology, with improved performance, better webcam quality, and a sleeker design, the M2 model is the way to go.

For those who value portability and ease of use, the MacBook Air remains an excellent choice. It's still easy to take on the go, and its compact size makes it perfect for coffee shops or meetings. While some features may have been improved or upgraded, the MacBook Air continues to be a reliable and user-friendly laptop that gets the job done.

In conclusion, the M2 MacBook Air represents a significant upgrade over its predecessor, with improved performance, better webcam quality, and a sleeker design. However, this comes at a cost, both in terms of budget and screen real estate. Ultimately, the decision between the M1 and M2 models depends on your individual needs and priorities.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enapple has got two different macbook airs on sale right now there's a classic m1 air there's a brand new m2 air frankly there's a lot that's the same about them but also a lot of differences so i'm gonna help you try to figure out which macbook air you need so i've started using apple's new macbook air with the new m2 chip in it that's only been out for a little while frankly i'd like it a lot a review of it was very positive but at the same time apple is still selling this guy this is the m1 macbook air which has the same look and feel and design as the intel macbook airs that came before it this is literally the 2020 version of the laptop apple still selling it and obviously here in 2022 we also have this guy which is the new updated refresh macbook air it's not just the chip inside that's different it's a bunch of other things in the design and the features so let's take a look and see what exactly the differences are and maybe why you want to spend a little bit more on this guy or you want to spend a little bit less on this guy because the m1 macbook air is still available for that classic thousand dollar macbook air price the new version they jumped it up to 1200 bucks i'm not happy about it you're not happy about it you can still get that thousand dollar macbook air but is it worth another two hundred dollars well we're going to take a look and find out all right the first difference that you're going to see obviously is in the design this macbook air the m1 looks a lot like previous macbook airs frankly going back many years this new version the m2 it's a completely new design also has new colors i frankly think it's the biggest change to the macbook air's design since the line was introduced back in 2008 the big difference here is that this air has adopted the kind of flat squared off design of the current 14 inch and 16 inch macbook pro so the top of the lid is completely flat it doesn't kind of curve around around the edges it doesn't have that taper anymore it's one thickness throughout i think it's a cooler more modern look but much more important than that you actually get some new color options before now you can get a macbook air and like you know gray and silver and gold now you can also get midnight this midnight color it's a deep black with kind of a bluish tinge it reminds me a lot of that classic black macbook from the mid-2000s before there even was an air that was just called the macbook and it was made of plastic now obviously aluminum i really like the matte black look although it does pick up a lot of fingerprints weight wise they're virtually the same i think they started 2.7 pounds versus 2.8 pounds uh this is a little bit thinner overall this obviously gets a little thinner at the front where it tapers but it's thicker at the back but frankly carrying it around every day wise you're not going to feel a big difference you're going to choose this new design because you want the newer design or you want the cool color and that's totally legit the next big difference between these two is screen size now this is still a 13 inch laptop whether you go with the m1 or the m2 but the m1 has got a regular 13.3 inch diagonally measured display that's a very common screen size for the new macbook air it's a 13.6 inch display so it's just a little bit larger and you can see the lids are just about the same size but the bezel is smaller here so they fit a little more screen into the same space with one little asterisk and that's this little notch guy up here but we're going to get back to that later another important thing to note about the screen is that on the new m2 error the screen actually gets brighter i think it's a 500 nits screen very similar to what you find in the macbook pros comparatively the m1 macbook air screen is fine it gets plenty bright but it's not as bright and that could be important if i know you're working outside at a cafe in the sunlight and you just need an extra bright screen the real big difference between these two the reason they really exist at least on paper is that they have different chips inside they're both apple silicon systems which is a big change from a few years ago when max all had intel chips inside apple has moved away from that to their own chips the m1 was the first apple silicon chip and that is in this macbook air and a few other products well now they've got the m2 and that goes in the new macbook air and the new 13 inch pro those are the first two devices to have the m2 chip so yes it's a little bit faster running benchmarks on the m1 air and the m2 air it was faster but it wasn't so much so that i would go and ditch my m1 just to get the m2 version in fact if you need a lot more speed a lot more power you're going to be trading up to something in the 14 inch or 16 inch macbook pro which is the m1 pro chip or the m1 max chip and then in the mac studio desktop you can get the m1 ultra chip and those are all much much faster than either the m1 or the m2 now macbook air laptops have always embraced a certain minimalism when it comes to ports and connections i remember the very first macbook air back in 2008 i think just had one usb-a port and that was it on the entire thing in the modern era macbook airs have had two usbc thunderbolt ports and that continues both on the old air and the new air no hdmi no sd card slot anything like that you have to go to the pros to get that there is however one new port i should say a returning port on the m2 macbook air and that is the magsafe power connection so you have two usbc's and the magsafe connector here here you just have the two usbc's both still have headphone jacks which is not something you can always count on in tech products these days but i'm glad they're still in both of these now personally i find it hard to carry an extra proprietary cable around so even though this has magsafe i 99 of the time charge is just using the same usbc cable i use for this or any other usbc device that i have but beyond all of that i really think the biggest point of differentiation and the biggest reason i would choose the new m2 version of the macbook air over the m1 version is the webcam we finally have an updated modern version of the webcam here in the m2 macbook air because here in the m1 air and the last several generations of macbook air before that these have had 720 resolution cameras basically low res cameras that were kind of dated and nobody ever thought they looked very good especially because we spent the last two two and a half years doing a lot of zoom meetings a lot of face time meetings a lot of video chatting the camera really is much more important than it used to be and these were just not keeping up so here in the m2 macbook air you got a 1080 camera a full hd camera you can also now get that on the 14 inch macbook pro the 16 inch macbook pro and the 24 inch imac so 1080 cameras are slowly taking over the mac line they're not everywhere yet uh but it's it's the standard now for new max except for that new 13-inch m2 macbook pro that's a whole nother topic and i'm happy to see it because frankly side by side it looks a lot better it's not just the increased resolution in the camera although that helps the image processing is also a lot better and if you look at some clips side by side you can definitely tell the difference now you do have to give something up to get this new camera of course you do uh that is the screen notch up here which is similar to the one on the iphone that either really bothers you a lot or you just get used to and you don't notice anymore so cut into the screen camera notch versus over here the top bezel is thicker so the camera module just fits into it and it doesn't cut into the screen at all your tolerance for this will vary based on you know how much you're going to be able to mentally ignore it and how much you're just going to obsess over it along with the camera i should also note that the m1 macbook air's got two speakers in it the m2 version has four speakers uh none of these are fantastic for audio uh frankly the microphones are pretty good for you know webcam chatting and things like that but that's not going to make the decision for you one way or the other if you want to find out more about all the little details of the m1 versus the m2 uh we've got a full review of the m2 we've got a lot of comparison stories about them you can find all those links in the description below i think at the end of the day the big decision points for you are going to be priced 9.99 to start versus uh 1200 to start it's going to be the design obviously the new colors and shape versus the old and it's going to be the webcam and other new features do you need the higher res webcam do you need the m2 chip do you really love mac safe and want to have in your macbook air if so even at 1200 the new macbook air is reasonably priced and i still think of the air as one of the most universally useful laptops you can buy that said if you just want the thousand hour plane version even though this model is a couple years old at this point i was using it regularly up until a couple weeks ago when i started using and testing this this one still works fine still great for students still great for taking out to the coffee shop with you easy to put in your bag and take anywhere so i'm glad apple still offers a thousand dollar version of the macbook air even if you can't get the cool new midnight color youapple has got two different macbook airs on sale right now there's a classic m1 air there's a brand new m2 air frankly there's a lot that's the same about them but also a lot of differences so i'm gonna help you try to figure out which macbook air you need so i've started using apple's new macbook air with the new m2 chip in it that's only been out for a little while frankly i'd like it a lot a review of it was very positive but at the same time apple is still selling this guy this is the m1 macbook air which has the same look and feel and design as the intel macbook airs that came before it this is literally the 2020 version of the laptop apple still selling it and obviously here in 2022 we also have this guy which is the new updated refresh macbook air it's not just the chip inside that's different it's a bunch of other things in the design and the features so let's take a look and see what exactly the differences are and maybe why you want to spend a little bit more on this guy or you want to spend a little bit less on this guy because the m1 macbook air is still available for that classic thousand dollar macbook air price the new version they jumped it up to 1200 bucks i'm not happy about it you're not happy about it you can still get that thousand dollar macbook air but is it worth another two hundred dollars well we're going to take a look and find out all right the first difference that you're going to see obviously is in the design this macbook air the m1 looks a lot like previous macbook airs frankly going back many years this new version the m2 it's a completely new design also has new colors i frankly think it's the biggest change to the macbook air's design since the line was introduced back in 2008 the big difference here is that this air has adopted the kind of flat squared off design of the current 14 inch and 16 inch macbook pro so the top of the lid is completely flat it doesn't kind of curve around around the edges it doesn't have that taper anymore it's one thickness throughout i think it's a cooler more modern look but much more important than that you actually get some new color options before now you can get a macbook air and like you know gray and silver and gold now you can also get midnight this midnight color it's a deep black with kind of a bluish tinge it reminds me a lot of that classic black macbook from the mid-2000s before there even was an air that was just called the macbook and it was made of plastic now obviously aluminum i really like the matte black look although it does pick up a lot of fingerprints weight wise they're virtually the same i think they started 2.7 pounds versus 2.8 pounds uh this is a little bit thinner overall this obviously gets a little thinner at the front where it tapers but it's thicker at the back but frankly carrying it around every day wise you're not going to feel a big difference you're going to choose this new design because you want the newer design or you want the cool color and that's totally legit the next big difference between these two is screen size now this is still a 13 inch laptop whether you go with the m1 or the m2 but the m1 has got a regular 13.3 inch diagonally measured display that's a very common screen size for the new macbook air it's a 13.6 inch display so it's just a little bit larger and you can see the lids are just about the same size but the bezel is smaller here so they fit a little more screen into the same space with one little asterisk and that's this little notch guy up here but we're going to get back to that later another important thing to note about the screen is that on the new m2 error the screen actually gets brighter i think it's a 500 nits screen very similar to what you find in the macbook pros comparatively the m1 macbook air screen is fine it gets plenty bright but it's not as bright and that could be important if i know you're working outside at a cafe in the sunlight and you just need an extra bright screen the real big difference between these two the reason they really exist at least on paper is that they have different chips inside they're both apple silicon systems which is a big change from a few years ago when max all had intel chips inside apple has moved away from that to their own chips the m1 was the first apple silicon chip and that is in this macbook air and a few other products well now they've got the m2 and that goes in the new macbook air and the new 13 inch pro those are the first two devices to have the m2 chip so yes it's a little bit faster running benchmarks on the m1 air and the m2 air it was faster but it wasn't so much so that i would go and ditch my m1 just to get the m2 version in fact if you need a lot more speed a lot more power you're going to be trading up to something in the 14 inch or 16 inch macbook pro which is the m1 pro chip or the m1 max chip and then in the mac studio desktop you can get the m1 ultra chip and those are all much much faster than either the m1 or the m2 now macbook air laptops have always embraced a certain minimalism when it comes to ports and connections i remember the very first macbook air back in 2008 i think just had one usb-a port and that was it on the entire thing in the modern era macbook airs have had two usbc thunderbolt ports and that continues both on the old air and the new air no hdmi no sd card slot anything like that you have to go to the pros to get that there is however one new port i should say a returning port on the m2 macbook air and that is the magsafe power connection so you have two usbc's and the magsafe connector here here you just have the two usbc's both still have headphone jacks which is not something you can always count on in tech products these days but i'm glad they're still in both of these now personally i find it hard to carry an extra proprietary cable around so even though this has magsafe i 99 of the time charge is just using the same usbc cable i use for this or any other usbc device that i have but beyond all of that i really think the biggest point of differentiation and the biggest reason i would choose the new m2 version of the macbook air over the m1 version is the webcam we finally have an updated modern version of the webcam here in the m2 macbook air because here in the m1 air and the last several generations of macbook air before that these have had 720 resolution cameras basically low res cameras that were kind of dated and nobody ever thought they looked very good especially because we spent the last two two and a half years doing a lot of zoom meetings a lot of face time meetings a lot of video chatting the camera really is much more important than it used to be and these were just not keeping up so here in the m2 macbook air you got a 1080 camera a full hd camera you can also now get that on the 14 inch macbook pro the 16 inch macbook pro and the 24 inch imac so 1080 cameras are slowly taking over the mac line they're not everywhere yet uh but it's it's the standard now for new max except for that new 13-inch m2 macbook pro that's a whole nother topic and i'm happy to see it because frankly side by side it looks a lot better it's not just the increased resolution in the camera although that helps the image processing is also a lot better and if you look at some clips side by side you can definitely tell the difference now you do have to give something up to get this new camera of course you do uh that is the screen notch up here which is similar to the one on the iphone that either really bothers you a lot or you just get used to and you don't notice anymore so cut into the screen camera notch versus over here the top bezel is thicker so the camera module just fits into it and it doesn't cut into the screen at all your tolerance for this will vary based on you know how much you're going to be able to mentally ignore it and how much you're just going to obsess over it along with the camera i should also note that the m1 macbook air's got two speakers in it the m2 version has four speakers uh none of these are fantastic for audio uh frankly the microphones are pretty good for you know webcam chatting and things like that but that's not going to make the decision for you one way or the other if you want to find out more about all the little details of the m1 versus the m2 uh we've got a full review of the m2 we've got a lot of comparison stories about them you can find all those links in the description below i think at the end of the day the big decision points for you are going to be priced 9.99 to start versus uh 1200 to start it's going to be the design obviously the new colors and shape versus the old and it's going to be the webcam and other new features do you need the higher res webcam do you need the m2 chip do you really love mac safe and want to have in your macbook air if so even at 1200 the new macbook air is reasonably priced and i still think of the air as one of the most universally useful laptops you can buy that said if you just want the thousand hour plane version even though this model is a couple years old at this point i was using it regularly up until a couple weeks ago when i started using and testing this this one still works fine still great for students still great for taking out to the coffee shop with you easy to put in your bag and take anywhere so i'm glad apple still offers a thousand dollar version of the macbook air even if you can't get the cool new midnight color you\n"