As a die-hard Windows user, even I was surprised by how quickly I folded for this early Black Friday deal on the 13-inch MacBook Air M2. Apple's M series MacBooks are some of the best laptops you can buy for their thin builds, impressive power and insane battery life.
In fact, the M2 version of the Air in particular lasted over 14 hours in our testing. I'd long coveted one for editing videos and working across dozens of tabs at a time. At $300 off I could finally justify sending my everyday MSI gaming laptop to the chopping block.
Right now, you can get an M2 MacBook Air for only $699 at Amazon. That's 30% off its normal price and easily the best early Black Friday laptop deal I've seen.
As you'll see in our MacBook Air M2 review, this is more than just a generational chip leap from the M1 Air. Its bigger, brighter screen and upgraded 1080p webcam brings it nearly on par with the MacBook Air M3 for some serious value. Essentially, you're paying entry-level pricing for a Mac a powerful and sexy machine with modern specs that should last you years to come. I don't know about you, but this was too good for me to miss out on.
I spent most of late last year debating whether to buy an M1 MacBook Air on sale for $699. That's a great price for a MacBook no less one equipped with an M-series chip. Ultimately, I wasn't impressed by the previous model's design due to its chunky screen bezels and 720p webcam. The redesigned M2 corrected these pain points for a more modern-looking machine that feels like a steal for the price.
My job provided me with a MacBook Air M2 and its crisp 2560 x 1664 pixels resolution screen is gorgeous and gets bright enough to fight off the natural sunlight that floods my apartment. Paired with the Retina display's rich colors, this Air is the ultimate content creation station for most people. The M2 chip is constantly speedy despite having over 50 Chrome tabs open at any given time while using an app like Photoshop. In fact, this handles my everyday multitasking on par with my MSI gaming laptop which has 16GB of RAM. I was worried about going backwards to just 8GB with the Mac; however, the efficient chip and power make for a comparable experience.
That said, this machine is not going to edit 4K video as fast as a MacBook Pro and it's GPU isn't going to run the latest games beyond medium settings. Still, the M2 Air punches far above its weight, able to render 27 frames per second on the latest Tomb Raider game.
The main complaint I've stumbled upon in my research is that the SSD is slightly slower in the 256GB MacBook Air M2 than the M1 or M3 versions. That's because Apple switched from two NAND chips to a single one for this model. This change was reverted in the subsequent M3. Otherwise, the MacBook Air M2 is in the sweet spot— almost 90% the same as the latest MacBook Air M3 ($1,099) while drastically upgraded from the M1. I'd argue there's never been a better time to buy or upgrade your Mac.
