Every now and then I come across a deal that makes me do a double take. This last-minute deal at Best Buy is the perfect example.
For a limited time, you can get the 15-inch MacBook Air M2 on sale for $999 at Best Buy. That's $300 off and one of the best MacBook deals I've seen. In fact, it might be the best Apple deal I've seen all year. While it's true that Best Buy offered this price during Black Friday, that deal required you to be a My Best Buy member. This deal doesn't require membership. That said, if you are a My Best Buy member (or want to be), you can get the rarely discounted 16GB RAM model for $1,399 at Best Buy. This 16GB model wasn't on sale when I purchased my MacBook Air, but I heartily recommend it because it'll help future-proof your laptop (and you can never go wrong with more RAM). For more great sales, check out my roundup of the top deals in the Best Buy last-minute sales event.
I purchased the 8GB model for $1,049 during Black Friday. I absolutely love it. The 15-inch MacBook Air with M2 blows my old Intel-based 5K iMac out of the water in terms of performance. This is the first machine I own with Apple silicon and the first thing I noticed was how fast it boots up. I never complained about my iMac being slow, but the M2 takes things to another level.
I can have over 20 Firefox and Google Chrome tabs open, stream a 4K YouTube video, and edit a picture with not so much as a hiccup from my MacBook Air. It's no surprise it ranks as one of the best 15-inch laptops on the market right now.
In our MacBook Air M2 review, we called the Editor's Choice laptop the best 15-inch laptop you can buy. It even earned a spot on our best MacBooks lists for offering a near-perfect mix of performance, display quality, portability, and battery life. On Geekbench 5, which measures overall CPU performance, the MacBook Air 15-inch notched a single-core score of 1,908 and 8,932 on the multi-core test. Outpacing the bulk of Windows laptops, the MacBook Air M2 effortlessly handles everyday tasks like browsing the web and streaming video. While it may not match the raw speed and power of the MacBook Pro M2, we're confident that, for most people, the MacBook Air M2 is more than capable of serving your needs.
Its stellar battery life is also not to be overlooked. We got nearly 15 hours of battery life out of our unit on a single charge. It suffers from the same shortcomings as the 13-inch MacBook Air — namely a minimal number of ports and support for just one external monitor.
But even with those few drawbacks, the MacBook Air M2 is still a top-tier laptop, and it's a steal at this price. My one regret, I do wish I would've gotten the model with 16GB of RAM. That would have helped future-proof my laptop a little more. While it wasn't on sale when I bought my MacBook Air, it is on sale now and I totally recommend it if you can afford to spend the extra money.
