M2 MacBook Air Review _ Apple's Best Laptop

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is sponsored by owc this macbook air might be the best laptop i have ever used in fact i think it's pretty much perfect except for one fatal flaw the m2 macbook air was released about a month and a half ago and i've been using it ever since as kind of my main laptop whenever i'm literally not at my desk here at the studio you know traveling around at home etc and even then i find myself kind of reaching for the m2 macbook air when i have a mac studio right in front of me that i should be using because i just kind of really enjoy using this laptop now that teaser intro where i mentioned that there's one fatal flaw i was being a little dramatic i think my main issue with this laptop is honestly this midnight color it looks so good until you start to notice all of these gross fingerprints that you get all over it and uh yeah i would probably recommend something like a starlight i think that's the safer option and it looks really good but if smudgy fingerprints is my only issue then i think apple knocked it out of the park with this laptop it's quite honestly the perfect machine in my opinion as kind of a whole when you look at everything that you get it's not perfect for every single little detail but it's the major things that really count obviously if i wanted to make it perfect for me i would change a couple of tiny things but i really could not be more happy with it overall now over the last month or so i've actually used two variations of the m2 macbook air so my opinions really evolved after picking up the second model now the first model that i used was the base eight gigabyte of ram 256 gigs of internal storage model with the m2 chip that gives users an 8 core cpu and an 8 core gpu that model was really great for everyday tasks like writing up scripts emails browsing the web watching videos all that stuff battery life has been incredible on both machines and the typing experience in my opinion is very good i know some people have been complaining about the keyboard but i really don't understand their issues because i guess it's just kind of a me thing i haven't had any issues with this so i am fortunate enough to know that this keyboard works for me hopefully it works for you too it feels like the other recent laptops that apple has put out over the last year or so in terms of the keyboard so there's kind of been no you know difference for me there the m2 chip cuts through these tasks that i've mentioned before with perfect thermal efficiency and great performance but i do recommend that you do not pick up the base model unless you plan to only do what i highlighted and really don't want to expand into anything else the more you start to do the more apps you add the more photos you add the media that you download the less and less space you will have and that's not great with something that's only 256 gigs of internal storage um and when you start to just look at that 256 most of it well not most of it but some of it's already taken up via the operating system and system files that already pre-installed so you're really working with a little bit of room here adding the fact that this ssd is in fact slower than the other models because of the single nand chip that comes with this 256 gig version and things can get messy for you quickly i found this to be mostly true when starting to edit final cut libraries get really large adding in 4k video files it's a lot of space that's being taken up and then it starts to eat into performance and that's not something that you want if that's what you plan to use this laptop for which is not what i thought i was going to be using this laptop for but then over the last few weeks i started to use the custom m2 macbook air that we ordered uh right at launch that has the 24 gigabytes of ram one terabyte of internal storage and an 8 core cpu and a 10 core gpu so the big difference here obviously is the added ram the added storage and that extra 2 core of gpu performance and these things actually make a huge difference i edited a bunch of videos on the road with this machine using heavy effects custom luts 6k footage 120 frames per second slow motion 4k footage and even some 8k content and i'm not kidding you i felt like i was using my 16 inch m1 max macbook pro i noticed no performance discrepancies uh it was able to keep up with literally everything i was so incredibly impressed that i just kind of left my macbook pro at home for the first time and that was weird to me now i do think 24 gigs of ram is probably a bit overkill i think 16 is the sweet spot so you can save yourself a couple hundred bucks there maybe take that extra savings and throw it into more storage if you think you're going to be using more than a terabyte of storage i think two terabytes is probably the sweet spot there it's definitely great if you plan to work with larger files in libraries and you want to keep things still local to your laptop's ssd over something like an external drive so adding in this performance to a fantastic portable form factor like this is something that i got really into over the last month being on a plane and i can't tell you enough when you have that tray table down and you have a 16 inch laptop on there albeit i really do love how massive and great that display is this form factor is so much better in that specific scenario even when you're at a coffee shop and you're at a small tab just having the ability to have that extra space but still have a nice 13.3 inch screen to look at with that reduction of bezels which makes it look so much nicer yeah it even comes with a notch at the top but that's those things don't matter um it's a really great experience i do love the fact that this has mac safe on the machine so that it frees up both thunderbolt ports for other accessories obviously as a creator one of the things i'd like to fix is add an sd card slot but that's just not going to happen on a machine this thin and i totally understand it um i won't knock apple for it i don't think they intended people like us or creators to be using this machine that you know in that way obviously you could just get a dongle if you want to but yeah this is easily something that can replace my on the go travel workflow no doubt about it oh and before i forget there are a couple of other use cases for this laptop obviously it's got a nice updated 1080p webcam i think the video and audio quality sound great there's a new microphone array here that really does make you sound really good um it's going to be perfect for on the go video calls or zoom calls at home or whatever you're doing where you would need to use your camera even facetime obviously it works really really well in case you missed it from the last video i'll show you the clip that compares it between the m1 macbook air and so you can kind of see what the differences are in terms of audio and video quality so this is the m2 macbook air this is the webcam quality it's supposed to be 1080p um it looks good we've got some good lighting so it's going to be a little bit uh of a better image quality but it's definitely better in my opinion than the m1 macbook air overall just in general um and so of course this is also the new microphone array that they have set up is here in here as well so let me know in the comments down below what you think of this m2 and next you'll see the m1 macbook air from 2020. and here we have the m1 macbook air so obviously if you're someone who's going to be using either one of these laptops for uh you know a lot of zoom calls facetime call skype etc all those video platforms this is the image quality that you're going to get it's not a full 1080p camera it's not as good in my opinion as the m2 the microphones should still be pretty good apple's always kind of had good microphone quality um so this should still sound relatively inline even though apple did put a new microphone array in the m2 it should still sound pretty good on this m1 but let me know in the comments your thoughts on both the image and audio quality from the m2 and the m1 macbook air the one thing that i would say is not great but i mean for me personally i don't really listen to a lot of music um on the internal speakers i'll either i'll just put headphones on or hook it up here at the desk to some other pair of speakers but if that's important to you i do think it's good for watching youtube videos but i wouldn't say that the speakers are a strong point compared to everything else that i talked about with this laptop and how it's so good the speakers are probably the most average thing at best about this laptop and so that's just something to keep in mind if that's really important to you the m2 macbook air in my mind is honestly the best laptop in this form factor it's whisper quiet perfect thermal management it does not get too hot and honestly the performance was so good over the last month especially with this slightly beefier version i've had no issues but i'd love to hear your thoughts especially if you are planning to get one or you have one at home let me know in the comments down below now before we end today's video i do want to give you more information about today's sponsor owc owc just released a new drive earlier this year called the envoy pro fx and it's the company's fastest most compatible waterproof ultra rugged drive to date it's basically plug and play on all devices mac windows chromebook or surface devices and even works with your ipad pro you'll get blazing fast speeds via thunderbolt and did i mention that it's incredibly durable i mean not only is it waterproof but its aluminum housing makes it very resistant to any potential damage to the drive but more importantly it's incredibly portable and really just the perfect all-around option for audio video photography whatever the case may be the envoy pro fx will have you covered now for more information about this product or anything else that owc has to offer click the link in the description down below this has been dan with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next videothis video is sponsored by owc this macbook air might be the best laptop i have ever used in fact i think it's pretty much perfect except for one fatal flaw the m2 macbook air was released about a month and a half ago and i've been using it ever since as kind of my main laptop whenever i'm literally not at my desk here at the studio you know traveling around at home etc and even then i find myself kind of reaching for the m2 macbook air when i have a mac studio right in front of me that i should be using because i just kind of really enjoy using this laptop now that teaser intro where i mentioned that there's one fatal flaw i was being a little dramatic i think my main issue with this laptop is honestly this midnight color it looks so good until you start to notice all of these gross fingerprints that you get all over it and uh yeah i would probably recommend something like a starlight i think that's the safer option and it looks really good but if smudgy fingerprints is my only issue then i think apple knocked it out of the park with this laptop it's quite honestly the perfect machine in my opinion as kind of a whole when you look at everything that you get it's not perfect for every single little detail but it's the major things that really count obviously if i wanted to make it perfect for me i would change a couple of tiny things but i really could not be more happy with it overall now over the last month or so i've actually used two variations of the m2 macbook air so my opinions really evolved after picking up the second model now the first model that i used was the base eight gigabyte of ram 256 gigs of internal storage model with the m2 chip that gives users an 8 core cpu and an 8 core gpu that model was really great for everyday tasks like writing up scripts emails browsing the web watching videos all that stuff battery life has been incredible on both machines and the typing experience in my opinion is very good i know some people have been complaining about the keyboard but i really don't understand their issues because i guess it's just kind of a me thing i haven't had any issues with this so i am fortunate enough to know that this keyboard works for me hopefully it works for you too it feels like the other recent laptops that apple has put out over the last year or so in terms of the keyboard so there's kind of been no you know difference for me there the m2 chip cuts through these tasks that i've mentioned before with perfect thermal efficiency and great performance but i do recommend that you do not pick up the base model unless you plan to only do what i highlighted and really don't want to expand into anything else the more you start to do the more apps you add the more photos you add the media that you download the less and less space you will have and that's not great with something that's only 256 gigs of internal storage um and when you start to just look at that 256 most of it well not most of it but some of it's already taken up via the operating system and system files that already pre-installed so you're really working with a little bit of room here adding the fact that this ssd is in fact slower than the other models because of the single nand chip that comes with this 256 gig version and things can get messy for you quickly i found this to be mostly true when starting to edit final cut libraries get really large adding in 4k video files it's a lot of space that's being taken up and then it starts to eat into performance and that's not something that you want if that's what you plan to use this laptop for which is not what i thought i was going to be using this laptop for but then over the last few weeks i started to use the custom m2 macbook air that we ordered uh right at launch that has the 24 gigabytes of ram one terabyte of internal storage and an 8 core cpu and a 10 core gpu so the big difference here obviously is the added ram the added storage and that extra 2 core of gpu performance and these things actually make a huge difference i edited a bunch of videos on the road with this machine using heavy effects custom luts 6k footage 120 frames per second slow motion 4k footage and even some 8k content and i'm not kidding you i felt like i was using my 16 inch m1 max macbook pro i noticed no performance discrepancies uh it was able to keep up with literally everything i was so incredibly impressed that i just kind of left my macbook pro at home for the first time and that was weird to me now i do think 24 gigs of ram is probably a bit overkill i think 16 is the sweet spot so you can save yourself a couple hundred bucks there maybe take that extra savings and throw it into more storage if you think you're going to be using more than a terabyte of storage i think two terabytes is probably the sweet spot there it's definitely great if you plan to work with larger files in libraries and you want to keep things still local to your laptop's ssd over something like an external drive so adding in this performance to a fantastic portable form factor like this is something that i got really into over the last month being on a plane and i can't tell you enough when you have that tray table down and you have a 16 inch laptop on there albeit i really do love how massive and great that display is this form factor is so much better in that specific scenario even when you're at a coffee shop and you're at a small tab just having the ability to have that extra space but still have a nice 13.3 inch screen to look at with that reduction of bezels which makes it look so much nicer yeah it even comes with a notch at the top but that's those things don't matter um it's a really great experience i do love the fact that this has mac safe on the machine so that it frees up both thunderbolt ports for other accessories obviously as a creator one of the things i'd like to fix is add an sd card slot but that's just not going to happen on a machine this thin and i totally understand it um i won't knock apple for it i don't think they intended people like us or creators to be using this machine that you know in that way obviously you could just get a dongle if you want to but yeah this is easily something that can replace my on the go travel workflow no doubt about it oh and before i forget there are a couple of other use cases for this laptop obviously it's got a nice updated 1080p webcam i think the video and audio quality sound great there's a new microphone array here that really does make you sound really good um it's going to be perfect for on the go video calls or zoom calls at home or whatever you're doing where you would need to use your camera even facetime obviously it works really really well in case you missed it from the last video i'll show you the clip that compares it between the m1 macbook air and so you can kind of see what the differences are in terms of audio and video quality so this is the m2 macbook air this is the webcam quality it's supposed to be 1080p um it looks good we've got some good lighting so it's going to be a little bit uh of a better image quality but it's definitely better in my opinion than the m1 macbook air overall just in general um and so of course this is also the new microphone array that they have set up is here in here as well so let me know in the comments down below what you think of this m2 and next you'll see the m1 macbook air from 2020. and here we have the m1 macbook air so obviously if you're someone who's going to be using either one of these laptops for uh you know a lot of zoom calls facetime call skype etc all those video platforms this is the image quality that you're going to get it's not a full 1080p camera it's not as good in my opinion as the m2 the microphones should still be pretty good apple's always kind of had good microphone quality um so this should still sound relatively inline even though apple did put a new microphone array in the m2 it should still sound pretty good on this m1 but let me know in the comments your thoughts on both the image and audio quality from the m2 and the m1 macbook air the one thing that i would say is not great but i mean for me personally i don't really listen to a lot of music um on the internal speakers i'll either i'll just put headphones on or hook it up here at the desk to some other pair of speakers but if that's important to you i do think it's good for watching youtube videos but i wouldn't say that the speakers are a strong point compared to everything else that i talked about with this laptop and how it's so good the speakers are probably the most average thing at best about this laptop and so that's just something to keep in mind if that's really important to you the m2 macbook air in my mind is honestly the best laptop in this form factor it's whisper quiet perfect thermal management it does not get too hot and honestly the performance was so good over the last month especially with this slightly beefier version i've had no issues but i'd love to hear your thoughts especially if you are planning to get one or you have one at home let me know in the comments down below now before we end today's video i do want to give you more information about today's sponsor owc owc just released a new drive earlier this year called the envoy pro fx and it's the company's fastest most compatible waterproof ultra rugged drive to date it's basically plug and play on all devices mac windows chromebook or surface devices and even works with your ipad pro you'll get blazing fast speeds via thunderbolt and did i mention that it's incredibly durable i mean not only is it waterproof but its aluminum housing makes it very resistant to any potential damage to the drive but more importantly it's incredibly portable and really just the perfect all-around option for audio video photography whatever the case may be the envoy pro fx will have you covered now for more information about this product or anything else that owc has to offer click the link in the description down below this has been dan with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next video\n"