If you find yourself cresting the $1,499 mark for your configuration then you may want to consider the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, which I cover later in this list and can now be regularly found for $1,799. As I mentioned the Air M1 stuck around at $999, so you are paying a premium for the M2 model. The biggest consideration with the Air M2 is the price if you need to upgrade much from the $1,199 base model. That first will be particularly welcome to those that are using the Air M2 on the go and may be faced with less than optimal lighting conditions. The list of upgrades also includes a brighter display, a quad-speaker array and the new 1080p webcam. The fact that it does all this while staying whisper quiet and cool without fans remains astounding. You also get a nice performance bump and it still delivered 14 hours and 6 minutes in our battery life test, placing it easily ahead of the Windows competition and ridiculously so when factoring in performance.

The notch in the display isn't my favorite design choice, but the rest of the changes are great with the addition of MagSafe charging freeing up those two Thunderbolt 4 ports for other purposes. While most will be happy with the MacBook Air M1, there's no denying the appeal of the new design and of course chip inside the MacBook Air M2.

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