MacBook Air 15 M2: What Reddit Really Thinks After Years of Use

Having an 8gb ram configuration on a laptop in 2023 should be considered as a crime.

Notice that when Apple says 'Up to 18 hrs battery life' there is a footnote. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing Apple TV app content — that's not real-world usage for most people.

Bought my daughter one of these for college, $1099 with the edu discount + she got a $150 gift card with it. For her use case it's the perfect laptop.

Exact model and specs wife and I each have. Wife writer, uses Word, researches web. Myself video streaming, Excel. Battery is amazing!

No, why would you? It's marginally worse in some key ways. It's de facto not an upgrade.

I've got an 8/256 m1 Air from work and push it really hard. Almost every key development app (GitHub, Jira, GDocs, etc.) is web browser based, so I typically have 80-90 tabs open all the time, along with VSCode and Slack which are both binaries. Heavy VPN and security infrastructure. But the little thing just keeps grinding, day after day. I'm convinced that most people will typically be fine with an 8/256 m2 air.

Its mindblowing that apple still ships 256gb ssd as base storage in 2023. 256gb was the base storage in 2012

I picked up a MacBook Air last month on clearance at Costco, couldn't pass up the price. It does everything I need it to do so far, I haven't felt it heat up or lag.

18 hours is watching a video medium brightness and a bunch of other battery saving measures. It's not the promised battery life, it's the theoretical maximum battery life.

18 hours is typical (light) usage. Mine is getting around 16-20 hours each charge.

Your M2 Air is better in multiple ways and a Neo would be like having a nice car and getting the economy model because it's newer. Sure, it's newer, but it isn't nicer.

The 15 inch air is the thinnest, and best 15 inch laptop for that $1,299 price point you can get.

I have the MBA M2 base model for 18 months. Since day 1, I've never shut it down. When I'm done with it, I close it. When I wanna use it, I open it. That's it, no issues at all.

My M2 Air gets about 8-10 with moderate to constant use, which is light years ahead of my two Windows laptops (4h or so for the work one with AMD ryzen2, 3 or less for the acer gaming laptop with rtx 2060 and Intel cpu). That being said, I don't play games or do video editing or such on the Mac, mostly just writing software (Scrivener) and Firefox for web.

So I've had mine (MBA 15" 24GB/500GB) for all of 1 day and so far I'm loving it. I've only ever had MacBook Pro's and plenty of them dating back to 2007/2008 when I got my first Mac. Everything it does is so snappy.

I got my 15" M2 Air in June with 16 GB and 1 TB. Cost a crapton of money but using it, I feel compensated. So far. No 'entry level' vibes except for the ports. No SD slot. Really? A costly 15" laptop in the year 2023 comes without SD slot? This is just petty and bad.

I own both. The Neo is an upgrade to the M2 Air in exactly 0 ways.

For most use-cases — people should save their money and buy this M2 model. If those people used an M4 Air, and a week later we cloned their data onto an M2 Air and didn't tell them we switched it, they would never know.

I'm doing development work on an air M2. You don't need a pro.

If you go to anywhere hot do not buy the air.

It's a hardware issue (I have the MBA M2). It will not be fixed unless it's sent for repair (under warranty). Apple is not doing a recall which is absolutely wild.

You're just getting caught in the hype and the marketing and the cool factor from it being the 'hip' thing right now. You have a better computer than the Neo.

For $700 usd, yes. I got mine in Feb this year and it screams.

Buy the 512gb variant only if you can, 256gb has a slow read and write speed due to single nand chip, but I don't think you will ever notice this in day to day usage but still...

My m2 8gb/512 is going strong AF and I see no reason to upgrade for a long time.

I just bought 2 days ago and I just love it. I have never owned a Mac before so I don't know what it's capable of but I am very excited for what I'm getting. It is very good for me. And midnight blue is gorgeous. I don't think you'll regret buying it.

I also got the 16GB/1TB and this thing is a beast. I'm in cybersecurity so I can run 4 VMs for testing no issues, I'm not a gamer so don't have that issue. Coming from Windows I don't think I'll go back. Love having a real shell environment that's native.

I have this one, exactly the same and it's perfect today. If you're a gamer, buy a PC, if you're a movie maker or graphic designer, buy a M4, if you're all other kind of user, this model is the best for its actual price.

I had a battery issue on my M2 Air about a month ago, very similar situation. It would go from 100% to 15% overnight with no use. I brought it to Apple because it was still under warranty and they fixed it.

First of all despite being fanless that doesn't mean it's an incompetent piece of hardware. I have a M1 Mini 8/512GB and sometimes my graphics work runs that thing to a crawl. Despite me needing something more powerful, the system that I have at hand usually will process the work I throw at it, I just have to manage the work better.

That's marketing for you, every company do it. Their 18h claim is unrealistic for most people. But it's the longest battery life I ever had and that's good enough for me. Nothing from Windows comes close.

I have been getting crazy battery life from the Macbook Air M2. I just transitioned from a windows laptop Ryzen 5 5500U, max I got was just 5-6hrs. This machine is crazy. I'm just doing light coding, classes, checking emails, Spotify, Notion. Apple really struck gold with their Silicon.

I owned a MBP with touchbar for 5+, it was a terrible idea, I'm so happy to have actual physical keys back. I'd go for the Air, slimmer design and portability is a big plus, considering your workflow, you're going to be OK with the AIR.

Yes for light work (web browsing, video watching, reading). I bought this model for my dad when Costco was clearing them out for $699. It's replaced my 2016 13in MBP base model I gave to him when I got a 15in version. He's happy with the upgrade.

I bought that one 2 weeks ago (upgraded from my 2017 air). It's amazing and was only $1000 cad.

I have an M2 15" 16/512GB, and it works really well. No slowdowns or anything (except Chrome launches VERY slowly compared to any other app). 90% of my time is spent on a browser, but light image editing, managing multiple files, document writing and everything, it performs like a champ.

I have Air 15 and IMO it's the best DN laptop. 15' screen is great, it's light and battery lasts forever. I do programming work and I haven't faced any performance issues either.

Still using an Air M1 8gb to do much more intensive tasks and it never gave me issues. Doesn't even get warm most of the time, and I travel to warm places. Go with the Air 15 if you need light + big screen.

I get about 10-12 doing normal work tasks with 8GB/512. 5-8 tabs open in Edge, Pages, Spotify, Canva open usually.

I've been consistently getting 16-20 hours on my 15, and Notebookcheck got 16.5 hours on both their video and WLAN tests. It'll depend on the software you use though.

Unless you absolutely need a fan for slightly more headroom, go with the MBA.

I really hope their next generation of MacBook Airs all start at 16GB. 8GB is ridiculous in 2023 and makes it feel like it's not very future-proof.

I would not buy that one with 8GB memory and 256GB even if it comes for 700$. Those base Macbooks should not exist.