When Apple unveiled the MacBook Air 15 this summer, it had managed to tame what seemed nearly impossible. That is, blend seamlessly two things that otherwise sit uneasily in the world of laptops – an ultraportable form factor, without compromising on performance, so much so that the MacBook Air 15’s heart – the M2 chip – delivers the sort of processing power that genuinely brings it close to the machines that are considered the benchmark for performance, the Apple MacBook Pro troika.
Here’s how the wider MacBook line-up is structured. The MacBook Air 15 with the M2 chip is priced at ₹1,34,900 onwards, alongside the MacBook Air 13 that is priced ₹1,14,900 onwards. The MacBook Pro 14 and MacBook Pro 16 are priced ₹1,99,900 onwards.
In Apple’s scheme of things, this is a larger screen size laptop, for a wider demographic of potential buyers.
“The portability intention, with that great battery life, is something that the team spends lots of time on trying to make sure that we’re making the right choices,” Kate Bergeron, Apple’s Vice President for Hardware Engineering, tells HT.
In our experience, the immediate relative lightness of the MacBook Air 15 is unmissable. This tips the scales at 1.51kg, with the 13-inch sibling weighing 1.24kg in comparison. The design language is consistent; you will know an Air apart from a Pro immediately. For the bigger screen machine, the well-balanced nature of the build matters even more.
While Silver and Space Grey are familiar colours, your attention might inevitably turn to Midnight and Starlight, two colours that stand out nicely.
A wider weight comparison illustrates the point further. Dell’s latest generation XPS 15, which is considerably more expensive too ( ₹2,66,490 onwards) weighs as much as 1.92kg. HP’s 16-inch (for the lack of a 15-inch option) Spectre x360 weighs 2.15kg and costs much more too (around ₹1,49,999 for the f2002TU variant).
The MacBook Air 15, with its 15.3-inch Liquid Retina Display, adds another screen size dimension to Apple’s Mac line-up. There is the MacBook Air 13 (that’s a 13.6-inch size), MacBook Pro 13 (13.3-inch) MacBook Pro 14 (14.2-inch), and MacBook Pro 16 (16.2-inch), which details evolving options.
“With the MacBook Air, we’re focused on learning that perfect combination of performance and battery life and in light design,” Evan Buyze, the Product Marketing Manager for Mac at Apple, tells us. Undoubtedly, Apple had the MacBook Pro to look at for inspiration, which maximises performance while retaining the sort of battery stamina that most laptops in the Windows 11 ecosystem can only dream of.
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To drive the point further, the MacBook Air 15 claims to deliver up to 18 hours of battery life, the same as its smaller screen size sibling, the MacBook Air 13. With a larger display and more pixels to illuminate, while using the same M2 chip. Apple confirms that it is purely the result of a larger battery that the MacBook Air 15 gets; it is 25% larger than the 13-inch one (Apple refrains from sharing exact capacity specs).
We have often successfully navigated entire workdays with the MacBook Air 13 (the M2, and indeed the M1 too) whilst having left the charger at home – and in most cases, still end the day with more than 30% battery available. With the MacBook Air 15, we are able to replicate similar convenience in our tests, which takes greater credence considering a larger screen size available for use.
Just a note of caution, and its pure chemistry at play – there is a need to be careful with brightness levels – a larger display at higher brightness levels, is more susceptible to using more battery.
Speaking of which, the Liquid Retina display packs in 2880 x 1864 pixels, which is more than the MacBook Pro 13, but understandably lesser than differing variations of the Liquid Retina XDR display on the larger MacBook Pro 14 and MacBook Pro 16. No complaints about colour accuracy (Mac displays are among the best in business) and viewing angles. It can go very bright too.
“How do we make sure that we take those requirements and then when we come to the larger product, not just bloat it and make it heavy,” Bergeron talks about a conundrum the product team faced, alongside the questions they regularly asked themselves.
“We’re fortunate because of the larger screen size, we’re able to take advantage of some of that real estate in what we call the base side or the CPU side of the product and expand those battery cells,” she adds, while pointing to other improvements such as a redesigned speaker system and larger trackpad.
The speaker system which Bergeron is referring to, is genuinely impressive.
It is a more capable six-speaker system instead of a quad system from the smaller MacBook Air. The composition is two tweeters, which have been tuned for audibly better detailing, and four force-cancelling sub-woofers that deliver the sort of lower frequencies, which was difficult to imagine with laptops, just a few years ago. Binge-watch Hijack on Apple TV+ without needing headphones, and the experience isn’t incomplete.
That said, the speaker placement between the keyboard and display does result in more directional audio, and not the sort of wider (I’d still not call it surround sound, but there is a wider envelope) sound a MacBook Pro 16’s speakers (placed either side of the keyboard) can replicate.
Is there’s a risk of customers underestimating the capabilities of the MacBook Air 15, since it doesn’t carry the “Pro” moniker which is usually associated with top-notch performance?
Buyze doesn’t believe that is a worry for Apple. He points to the M2 chip, which makes the larger MacBook Air as much as 15 times faster than the most powerful specs combo of an Intel processor powered MacBook Air.
“And for lots of folks that are coming over to a Mac for the first time, from a PC, it’s also going to be a huge upgrade to that tremendous battery life up to 18 hours. The Apple Silicon does amazing things, and this is a design that is only possible with it,” Buyze points out.
“Now customers have more choices, especially, for a larger display that don’t necessarily need that ‘pro’ performance of the 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro but now have a great option in the 15-inch Air,” he adds.
Bergeron adds a fine distinction between the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro product lines. “There’s a very distinct split in the product lines between the MacBook Air in being passively cooled, meaning they don’t have fans, and the Pros having fans which gives them just a significant amount of headroom from a performance perspective,” she says.
Could a MacBook Air 15, with crucial focus being on keeping the weight in check, have been possible without the Apple Silicon and investments Apple has made on its chips?
It was in the summer of 2020 when Apple shocked everyone (Intel, more than anyone else) by announcing a two-year transition period that’d see all existing Macs and new Mac products, switch to their own chips instead of using Intel’s processors. Apple needed to build unique products and drive closer integration between hardware and software, something that’s worked very well for the iPhone and iPad product lines.
“Absolutely, it is truly enabled now by Apple Silicon,” says Bergeron. “Over the past many, many years, we’ve tried to dip our toe in the water and look at a bigger Air form factor. And we’ve always come back to some pretty critical limitations,” she points out that Apple had dabbled with the idea before too but weren’t happy with the results.
In terms of performance, the MacBook Air saw a significant step forward with Apple’s M1 chip a couple of years ago, ushering in the transition from Apple’s Core series chips. Last year’s machine, with the M2, another significant leap forward for performance. The MacBook Air 15 retains that parity – an 8-core CPU and 10-core graphics.
We’ve been equally careless with Google Chrome tabs, and at no point does the M2 stutter or invoke the dreaded ‘beachball’. Neither did the M1, but the M2 is decidedly snappier even when Chrome (our default browser is Safari; this activity is for use-case illustration) was loaded with 45 tabs. That, alongside a bunch of documents open in Word, two spreadsheets in Excel, Apple Music streaming the tunes, Messages, Notes and Calendar.
Bob Borchers, who is the V-P of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple, had illustrated to us earlier, the reason why investments in their own silicon was important for the company, at least in the long run. First and foremost, Apple was just one tech company Intel was supplying chips to.
Borchers pointed out that chip makers in such situations focus on several products, and not specifics. “You can turbocharge experiences when you have amazing purpose-built technologies that you can bring together,” he said. “They need to think about kind of the lowest common denominator.”
“There’s a reason why this is the world’s thinnest 15-inch laptop. It’s because that’s something only Apple can do with Apple Silicon. A fanless design that’s incredibly efficient and also feels solid,” says Buyze.
There is a sense that Apple is holding back a few cards, with the choice of ports on the MacBook Air 15 at parity with the 13-inch sibling. Simply put, there’s no HDMI port, two USB-C ports (that’s one less than the MacBook Pro 16) and limited to one external display in use at a time.
Bergeron believes the differentiation is to leave the choice to the consumer. There is also the small matter of physics at play. “We’re really happy that pros and consumers have the choices of the ports that they want, but also remembering that in an 11.5 millimetres thick product, some things that just don’t fit.”
In a way, Apple has added the convenience aspect by bundling a 35-watt dual-port USB-C charger, which can also double up as a phone or tablet charger. “Mac is a family, and we want customers to be able to choose the display size then a couple of other subtle differences,” adds Buyze.
The MacBook Air 15 is 0.45-inches thick. In comparison, a MacBook Pro 16 is 0.66-inches thick. Those 0.21-inches difference, is a lot of space, in the world of computing devices.
