MacBook Air 15-inch M2 review: Battery life and heatĪpple boasted that the 15-inch MacBook Air has up to 18 hours of battery life. However, keep in mind this configuration is valued at $2,499. How does that compare to a 15-inch Windows laptop? The XPS 15 OLED isn't a dedicated gaming laptop but the 13th gen Intel Core i7-13700H CPU, Nvidia RTX 4070 laptop GPU and 32GB of RAM our review unit packed gave it more than enough power to run Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Civilization VI at high frame rates. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI fared better, clocking in at 43 and 29 fps at those respective resolutions. Shadow of the Tomb Raider reached 26 fps at 1,920 x 1,200 resolution and an even worse 12 fps at 2,880 x 1,864 fps. Our in-house testing showed subpar results for games that don’t make use MetalFX. That said, games optimized for Apple silicon run great on this machine, as was the case when I fired up Resident Evil Village. However, it currently comes up short in the gaming department due to the lack of support from many third-party developers. The MacBook Air 15-inch is ideal for everyday computing and some light photo and video editing. MacBook Air 15-inch M2 review: Graphics and gaming By contrast, the drives in the more expensive 15-inch Air configurations benefit from two NAND chips. What's causing the discrepancy you can see in the numbers above? The 256GB Air performs worse than the 512GB, 1TB and TB versions because its SSD only has a single NAND chipset. Since we first published our review, testing data from MaxTech has shown the base 256GB version of the 15-inch MacBook Air has considerably slower drive performance than the 512GB model. It achieved a 2,793 MBps read speed and 3,145 MBps write speed. Lastly, we ran the Blackmagic disk speed test to measure the 15-inch MacBook Air’s SSD performance. The laptop not only kept on chugging without missing a beat, but it remained cool to the touch the entire time.īlackMagic SSD test (in MBps) Row 0 - Cell 0 During my testing, I had upwards of 20 open tabs open while running a YouTube video. Thanks to its powerful Apple M2 processor, the MacBook Air 15-inch can handle almost anything you throw at it. MacBook Air 15-inch M2 review: Performance Still, the overall sound quality is improved from the 13-inch Air. Bass sounded punchy but not as powerful as on the MacBook Pro 16-inch 2021. All of those disparate elements came through perfectly. I played Dream Theater’s “Alien” at full volume and was impressed by the overall clarity of the song - which has numerous time signature changes and a flurry of guitar and keyboard solos. Sound-wise, this laptop is almost on par with the latest MacBook Pros - which also feature a 6-speaker sound system. The latter’s 4-speaker sound system was pretty good, but the new laptop’s speakers blow it away. One of the most notable upgrades this laptop has over its 13-inch counterpart is its 6-speaker sound system. With regard to non-HDR brightness, the panel averaged 473 nits of brightness - making it brighter than the XPS 15 OLED (371 nits). These values are a smidge lower than the 13-inch model, which was just one point shy of reaching 500 nits of HDR brightness. When viewing HDR content, the laptop got as high as 479 nits of brightness when displaying HDR content on 10% of the display and 480 nits for 100% of the screen. The MacBook Air’s panel can get fairly bright. Both laptops did better in the Delta-E test compared to the XPS 15 OLED (0.24). Instead, pay close attention to the devices you use (or are hoping to use,) and let us help you make the best choice you can with our selection of the best docking stations in 2023.Regarding color accuracy, the 15-inch MacBook Air turned in a Delta-E score of 0.17 (where 0 is best), compared to the 0.22 its 13-inch counterpart delivered. If all you need is a few more ports for your mouse or external hard drive - and maybe an SD card reader so you can back up your family photos from time to time - then picking up a specialized docking station with 18 ports and a built-in battery pack is only going to cost you extra for features you’ll likely never make use of. That’s why it’s important to choose the right docking station to suit your needs. Of course, not every setup is going to need multiple 4K external displays and a bucketload of Thunderbolt 4 ports. Possibilities that can result in your laptop sitting at the heart of a multi-display, productivity-focused workstation or as the backbone to a fully-realized, gaming battle station. Don’t let the limited number of ports on your device restrict its potential, investing in a docking station opens up a world of possibilities. The best docking stations can transform your laptop, or tablet, into something so much more.
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