The M2 MacBook Air and Pro have been put through their paces by Linus Tech Tips, and the results are quite interesting.

First to follow was the XPS 13 with the M2 air. As expected, it didn't quite live up to its predecessor's battery life, falling short of the original by nearly double in terms of runtime. However, this isn't entirely due to the processor itself, but rather the larger and brighter display that comes with the new M2 air model. Other outlets have reported similar issues with battery life at lower brightness settings, so it seems that there's a bit of a trade-off when it comes to power consumption versus screen size.

The M2 MacBook Pro fared slightly better in terms of battery life, but still lagged behind its predecessor by over an hour and a half. This is somewhat surprising, given that the two models share the same display, which suggests that the processor itself isn't the primary cause of the difference. However, it's clear that the M2 SOC does draw more power than its predecessor, assuming adequate cooling and power budgets are in place.

Overall, both laptops still offer excellent battery life for their respective use cases, but users may need to be mindful of their usage patterns in order to maximize runtime. For example, if you plan on using your laptop for demanding tasks like video editing or gaming, you may find that the M2 SOC's increased power consumption takes its toll on battery life.

One of the most striking aspects of the M2 MacBook Pro is how close it comes to the 14-inch MacBook Pro in terms of performance. At a starting price of $1,200, it's clear that Apple is positioning this laptop as a direct competitor to the larger model, and for good reason. The M2 Max SOC provides a significant boost in CPU and GPU performance, making it well-suited for tasks like video editing and 3D modeling.

Of course, this increased performance comes at a cost - specifically, in terms of price. At $1,200, the M2 MacBook Air is now priced very close to the 14-inch MacBook Pro, which makes it an attractive option for those who want the extra power without breaking the bank. However, if you're willing to splurge and pay the premium, the M2 Max SOC provides a level of performance that's hard to match.

For most users, though, the differences between these two models may not be as stark. The M2 MacBook Air is still a fantastic option for those who want a lightweight and portable laptop with plenty of power, but at a price point that's more accessible than ever before. And if you're willing to wait a bit longer for the 14-inch model, it's clear that Apple has a winner on its hands.

But what about the cheaper M2 MacBook Air? Is it still worth considering at this point?

Ultimately, the answer depends on your priorities and budget. If you don't care too much about RAM or storage, the cheaper air is still a great option - it's slimmer, quieter, and just plain more affordable than the pricier M2 model.

However, if you're looking for real work done, either of these laptops should do the trick. But if you want to get real work done well, you may need to consider waiting for the 14-inch model or investing in a separate compressor air setup.

So, what's the verdict? If you can afford it, go for the M2 MacBook Pro - it's an incredible machine that will handle just about any task you throw at it. And if you're on a tighter budget, the cheaper M2 MacBook Air is still a great option - just be aware of its limitations and adjust your expectations accordingly.

But before we move on to the next section, let's take a quick detour to talk about an amazing resource that can help you better protect yourself online.

Privacy.com is a fantastic service that gives you complete control over who can charge you and how much they can charge. With virtual payment cards, you can directly manage your free trials, one-time purchases, or monthly subscriptions from the comfort of your browser. Plus, it helps keep track of what you're subscribed to and ensures that you aren't being charged anything extra.

But what really sets Privacy.com apart is its ability to protect you from fraudulent transactions. If you are the victim of a scam, their system automatically declines the transaction and notifies you. And with PCI DSS compliance, AES 256 encryption, and two-factor authentication, you can trust that your sensitive info is in good hands.

As a bonus, new customers get an automatic $5 credit to spend on their first purchase - so what are you waiting for? Sign up for Privacy.com today at privacy.com/forward slash Linus and start taking control of your online security.

But before we wrap things up, let's take a quick look back at the M1 air review. The platform may not be mature yet, but boy has it come a long way since its release. From improvements in performance to enhancements in features, it's clear that Apple is committed to delivering top-notch hardware and software experiences for its users.

And that's where we'll leave off for now - thanks for joining us on this journey into the world of M2 Macs, and we'll catch you all next time!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enApple never learns they released yet another laptop with no freaking cooler in it touch it  and you'll burn yourself do any real work on it you'll probably burn your whole house down at  least that's how the internet reacted when Apple's redesigned M2 MacBook Air hit the scene but here's  a question for you any situations will you find yourself in where the heat is a real problem and  for that matter would a similarly priced PC in the same form factor even perform any better  did Apple get away with this seemingly obvious design faux pas and if they did do we need to  change the way that we think about laptop cooling we set out to answer all of those questions and we  set out to tell you about our sponsor simplemdm simple MDM is a ridiculously simple Apple device  management for it enrolling your company's Apple devices and keeping them up to date doesn't have  to be frustrating try it free for 30 days on unlimited devices at simplemdm.com Linusthere's been a lot made of Apple's cooling solution for the M2 MacBook Air or more  accurately their lack of one instead of something anything more substantial Apple decided to  basically attach a thin metal heat spreader like you'd find on a stick of ram to the SOC in an  attempt to soak up some heat temporarily before transferring it to the chassis which takes on  the role of a heatsink they could have gone with a finned radiator a fan even a thicker piece of  metal orb some combination of the three but no they settled on some bits of paper thin stamped  sheet aluminum none of which would actually be a problem if the soc stayed nice and cool except  it doesn't and like for all electronic devices this is absolutely a bad thing and while the M1  airs performance did suffer due to poor thermals it wasn't quite to the same degree pun intended  and this is why your typical uses for an entry-level MacBook things like content  consumption web browsing photo editing or maybe even light video editing they all have one big  thing in common they are bursty in nature and they're unlikely to put the soc under any kind of  sustained load what that means is as long as you have enough thermal Mass to absorb your momentary  heat spikes you can count on Long idle periods to dissipate it at your leisure well the M1 MacBook  Air managed to strike this balance pretty well performing at or near its full capability without  overheating the chassis unless you were to fire up something like cinebench blender or a 3D game  unfortunately that is not the case this time around at least on the surface  Apple has tuned the m2's thermal controls to maintain that same 50 degree surface temperature  Target as last time which is required by law but almost immediately after being hit by any sort of  load the M2 SOC itself hits a whopping 99 degrees Celsius because even the pathetic cooler in the  M1 MacBook Air has substantially more thermal mass than this time around I'm frankly pretty  disappointed now Apple's response to this would be pretty obvious well these are silent machines  they're not four Pros get a MacBook Pro if you want to actually put a load on your computer  but frankly that's not a perfect solution either because until they refresh the M2 MacBook Pro you  are going to be stuck with either a super toasty chip or the old touch bar design with worse IO  on the bright side the M2 air gets magsafe to go with your Thunderbolt 4 ports and an overall  design that's reminiscent of the 14-inch MacBook Pro it is thicker than the thinnest point of the  previous gen airs wedge but the new flattened design is thinner overall and from our point of  view feels a lot nicer to hold in the lap and that Meg safe charging port is capable of fast  charging up to 65 Watts if you pick up either the full GPU model or you pay an extra 20 bucks  over base you also have the option by the way of choosing a 35 watt dual type-c charger instead  if that better fits your needs and from using it we can legit see how it could be super handy to  have for travel compared to the single port fast charger the only major difference between the air  configurations that directly impacts performance is the storage previous gen M1 MacBook airs 256  gig variation used twin 128 gig chips to achieve that capacity that divides the workload between  those two chips and makes it much less likely that a read or a write will stall while waiting for  another to finish the M2 airs 256 gig variation meanwhile makes use of a single 256 gigabyte chip  that means that the nand flash will be in a weight State more often and you can think of this kind of  like running single versus dual Channel memory in practice this means that the lowest capacity model  gets roughly half the performance of the other storage tiers that make use of multiple chips  although you guys might not expect this I kind of feel like I have to cut Apple some slack here  most people are not going to notice the difference between 1.5 and 3 gigabytes per second and outside  of synthetic storage benchmarks the CPU is often going to end up being the bottleneck at either of  those speeds there are situations where that might not be the case though like video editing prores  raw footage but they also aren't as likely to come up on the air compared to a MacBook Pro the part  of that is the way that the Air's performance Gets kneecapped By Its lack of cooling which is another  problem that Apple created I'll show you what I mean though starting with gaming because it's  always kind of funny to me when people complain about gaming performance on a machine that was  clearly engineered for browsing Facebook in order to make this a fair test given the cooling  solution we're running each of these twice to warm up and then finally taking our results from  a third run and well yeah the cooling Solution on the M2 MacBook Pro is good for a whopping  35 increase in fps in every test except for Total War Warhammer 3's battle Benchmark where the lead  shrinks to just 30 percent In fairness to the M2 MacBook Air however even with its awful cooling  the competing Dell XPS 13 doesn't Beat It by a significant margin in any of those tests oh but if  you want something that does beat the competition you can check out our screwdriver on lttstore.com  it's now independently tested and verified moving on to cinebench the M2 air loses about a thousand  points in its score over a 10 minute run compared to a single run giving you some idea of how  your performance might degrade under heavy load meanwhile the M2 Pro retains basically the same  score geekbench being a shorter Benchmark shows basically no difference between the M2 MacBooks  so thanks for that but that doesn't mean it's an entirely useless Benchmark because interestingly  we can see the difference in GPU performance between the M1 and the M2 base models and it's  roughly in line with the additional memory bandwidth provided by the M2 SOC of course  unless you work at our Testing Lab you probably don't spend all day running benchmarks so let's  take a look at real world workloads starting with an Adobe Lightroom export and wow not only is the  M2 air faster than the M1 air it's actually rough roughly in line with the pro class machines with  active cooling the M2 also picks up a significant winning compressor thanks to the addition of pro  resin coating engines on the base model SOC that's over 475 percent faster than the M1 CPU fallback  h.264 isn't significantly different however indicating that that encoder is more or less  identical between the socs and Final Cut Pro can use up to three of these prores streams on the M2  air MacBooks which is more than the M1 air could handle and one less than the pro pretty impressive  if you're a da Vinci resolve user well you're going to want to get a ram upgrade regardless  of the rest of the performance numbers if you're using an air or a pro because 8 gigs isn't nearly  enough with 24 gigs the air managed a respectable 40 minute export with the pro running about eight  and a half minutes faster than that so overall the base model M2 air is roughly 35 percent  faster than its M1 counterpart and the higher end M2 air is roughly 21 slower than the M2 Pro though  the biggest outliers are mostly in gaming which I think for many Mac users is not terribly important  if we look purely at productivity then it's within nine percent which is frankly extremely  impressive considering the Monstrous difference in cooling capacity the main difference for this as  we pointed out before is that most of these real world use cases just aren't going to be continuous  loads that will throttle the heck out of the chip I mean even DaVinci Resolve ends up being more of  a stop and go affair in terms of CPU usage it's not stop and go float plane though check out our  recent exclusive where we try out some Norwegian hockey Pulver while we run our battery life tests  for our battery tests we calibrated each laptop to roughly the same output as 50 brightness on the M2  air and we let them rip on a YouTube video the first to follow was the XPS 13 with the M2 air  falling second though at nearly double the battery life difference in battery life between the M1 and  the M2 MacBook airs seems to be primarily due to the larger brighter display as we've seen  other outlets report worse battery life at lower brightness as well but that's not to say that the  soc makes no difference the M2 MacBook Pro ended up with a result over an hour and a half worse  than the M1 pro model and those share the same display which seems to suggest the M2 SOC can  draw more power than its predecessor assuming that adequate Cooling and power budgets are allotted to  it overall still excellent battery life for both but you are giving up a bit of run time for the  extra performance of the M2 SOC all of which is to say that it very much depends on what you do  with your laptop to determine whether the cooling design flaw is a fundamental one that kills your  experience or is merely a minor annoyance and you wish they just put a little fan in it it  seems like in most real world workloads it's just not going to suffer that much and at a  starting price of twelve hundred dollars for the air it's likely that a lot of folks are in fact  going to use it as a glorified Chromebook as for the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro I am having a hard time  seeing the benefit considering how close the air comes most of the time yes when specked in a way I  would consider appropriate it's the same price as the air for better performance but at that point  you're only 300 out from a similarly spec 14-inch MacBook Pro making that the more attractive  Prospect for now in my humble opinion for your extra money you're getting a much faster CPU and  GPU a larger 120 hertz liquid Retina xdr Display an additional Thunderbolt 4 port and dedicated  HDMI and SD card readers I'm not about to pass judgment if you don't care about any of those  things but for my money that is more than worth it regardless of your priorities I certainly wouldn't  suggest going with the cheapest M2 13-inch MacBook Pro if you care that little about RAM and storage  you would do just as well with the cheaper air and it would be Slimmer and Silent we're going to have  all of those linked down below that gives the M2 MacBook Air my vote between the M2 Max currently  on the market and if you want to get real work done well you can either Spritz compressed air  on whenever you fire up something intensive or save up a little more and wait for the 14-inch M2  Pro you won't have to wait for our sponsor though privacy privacy is a free service that gives you  control over who can charge you and how much they can charge by using virtual payment cards you can  directly manage your free trials your one-time purchases or your monthly subscriptions all  from your browser privacy helps you keep track of what you're subscribed to and helps ensure  that you aren't being charged anything extra you can set spending limits pause your cards and even  close them out right anytime you want to and if you're the victim of a fraudulent transaction  privacy.com automatically declines the transaction and notifies you privacy.com is PCI DSS compliant  uses AES 256 encryption and offers two-factor authentication plus since they make their money  from merchants and business accounts there's no cost to you to use it personally so check it out  today at privacy.com forward slash Linus and sign up for an account new customers automatically get  five dollars to spend on their first purchase thanks for watching guys go check out our  initial review of the M1 air the platform's not mature yet but boy has it ever come a long way\n"