Apple MacBook Air 13 (2022)  Laptop Review

The Apple MacBook Air has a sleek, premium-feeling design similar to the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2021) and Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2021). It has a flatter chassis and thinner bezels than its M1 predecessor, and like the MacBook Pros, it now has a notch to house the camera at the top of the display. It doesn't have any vents, and it's fanless, so you don't need to worry about dust getting into the device over time. It's available in four colors: Midnight, Starlight, Space Gray, and Silver. It comes with a color-matched MagSafe power cord.

The Apple MacBook Air's build quality is outstanding. It has a full aluminum chassis that feels sturdy and premium, with no flex in the display or keyboard deck. The finish is fairly scratch-resistant; however, it picks up fingerprints very quickly, at least for the Midnight color variant. The other color variants don't smudge as easily. The feet feel solid and adhere firmly to the bottom of the laptop.

The Apple MacBook Air has an outstanding hinge. It feels very smooth when opening and closing the laptop, and it's stable, with just enough resistance to keep the screen in place without feeling overly stiff. The screen wobbles a little when typing aggressively, but it's barely noticeable.

The Apple MacBook Air is very portable, thanks to its thin and light design. The power adapter is compact and fits easily into most bags.

The Apple MacBook Air's serviceability is bad. Accessing the internals is easy; you only need to remove four P5 screws and unclip the bottom panel. Once inside, the only replaceable part is the battery since everything else is soldered onto the motherboard. Putting the bottom panel back is a little more challenging due to the way the panel hooks onto the body. If you want a laptop with better serviceability, check out the Framework Laptop 13 (2022).

• Apple MacBook Air 13 (2020) laptop
• 30W power adapter
• USB-C to MagSafe charging cord
• Documentation
• 2x Apple stickers

Note: Models with a 10-core GPU come with a 35W dual USB-C power adapter. If you get an 8-core GPU model, you can get the 35W dual USB-C or a 67W power adapter at an additional cost. Apple doesn't charge extra for the 67W power adapter if you get the 10-core GPU model.

The Apple MacBook Air has a single display option. It's essentially a QHD display with more vertical pixels because it has a 16:10 aspect ratio and extra screen space on each side of the notch. It looks very sharp and provides just enough room for light multitasking. You can hide the notch if it bothers you. Check out the Apple MacBook Air 15 (2023) if you want a larger screen for better multitasking.

The Apple MacBook Air is only available with a 60Hz display. It has a slow response time causing noticeable ghosting, so it isn't ideal for gaming or viewing fast-moving content.

The Apple MacBook Air has a good contrast ratio. It's better than its predecessor, the Apple MacBook Air 13 (M1, 2020), but ultimately, it's still an IPS panel and worse than other display technologies like VA and OLED. It isn't an issue when viewing content in a well-lit room, but in darker environments, blacks look grayish. If you want a MacBook with a higher contrast display, check out the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M2, 2023).

The Apple MacBook Air's display gets bright enough for use in most settings, even outdoors in broad daylight. It also gets very dim to provide a more comfortable viewing experience in dark environments.

The Apple MacBook Air 2022 has excellent reflection handling. Its glossy finish is very effective at reducing the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections and indirect reflections from bright ambient lighting. Although you can still see some reflections when viewing bright-color content with the screen at max brightness, it isn't distracting. When viewing dark-color content, direct reflections like a lamp or open window during the day are visible, but unlike matte coatings, they don't cause a hazy effect in other areas of the screen.

The Apple MacBook Air's black uniformity is great. There's only a tiny amount of backlight bleed at the top corners and along the bottom edge of the display. Otherwise, the rest of the screen looks very uniform.

The Apple MacBook Air 2022 has okay horizontal viewing angles. The image washes out fairly quickly when moving to the side. The picture quality is still good enough to share text documents and other casual content, but it isn't ideal for work that requires perfect accuracy.

The Apple MacBook Air 2022 has okay vertical viewing angles. Again, the image looks washed out when viewed from above or below. You need to look at the screen more or less straight on to see an accurate image.

The Apple MacBook Air's out-of-the-box color accuracy is outstanding. Most color and white balance inaccuracies are minor and hard to spot with the naked eye. The color temperature is only slightly cooler than the standard 6500K target, not enough to make a noticeable difference. The gamma is too high in most scenes, especially at higher brightness levels, making the image appear darker than it should.

The Apple MacBook Air has an outstanding color gamut. It has full sRGB and DCI P3 coverage, the color spaces used in most SDR and HDR content, respectively. Its Adobe RGB coverage is excellent, but still not enough for professional photo editing as it's missing the saturated greens that define Adobe RGB.

The Apple MacBook Air has a flicker-free backlight, which helps reduce eye strain for people sensitive to screen flickering.

The Apple MacBook Air has a great keyboard. It feels spacious and has the same layout as every other MacBook, so if you're already familiar with a MacBook keyboard, it'll be easy to adapt to. The plastic used for the keycaps feels high-quality, and the keys themselves are stable. The keys don't require much force to actuate and provide satisfying tactile feedback; however, they have a very short travel distance, which might cause some fatigue if you're a heavy typer, as it's easy to bottom out. The most notable change from the Apple MacBook Air 13 (M1, 2020) is that the top function row keys are now full-size keys. Typing noise is very low, so you don't need to worry about causing too much noise in a quiet environment like a classroom or office. You can manually adjust the backlight brightness or let the system adjust it automatically according to your ambient lighting.

The Apple MacBook Air has an outstanding touchpad. It's large, smooth, and responsive to all movements and gestures. There aren't any issues with palm rejection or actions like dragging and dropping. It doesn't have physical buttons; instead, it uses haptic feedback to simulate the clicks, allowing you to click anywhere on the touchpad. It also supports Force Touch, meaning it's pressure-sensitive. Depending on the application, a harder press lets you access a secondary function or bring up a contextual menu.

The Apple MacBook Air has great speakers. They get reasonably loud with minimal compression at max volume, and they sound well-balanced, with a good amount of bass and treble extension. Compared to the Apple MacBook Air 13 (M1, 2020), they have more bass but sound a little boxier, likely because the speaker grills are at the back of the keyboard deck and fire towards the screen, while the M1 MacBook Air has up-firing speakers on each side of the keyboard.

The Apple MacBook Air's webcam video quality is outstanding. The image looks detailed, with good color reproduction and proper exposure. The microphone sounds loud and clear, albeit slightly more nasal than the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2021) and Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2021).

The Apple MacBook Air 2022 has a poor port selection. The two USB-Cs support USB 4/Thunderbolt 3 data transfer speed (up to 40Gbps), USB 3.2 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps), DisplayPort, and charging. Unfortunately, although both USB-Cs can output a video signal to an external display, the M2 SoC only supports one external at a maximum resolution of 6K at 60Hz. The MagSafe charging port is a new addition that frees up one USB-C port. The MagSafe plug attaches to the laptop magnetically and detaches easily to prevent the laptop from getting pulled off a table if you trip on the cable. If you need a laptop with a better port selection, check out the LG gram 14 (2023).

We can't confirm which wireless adapter the Apple MacBook Air uses.

The Apple MacBook Air is only available with an M2 SoC. Although there are two M2 SoC options, the CPU portion of the SoC doesn't change; it's only the GPU core count that changes. The M2's CPU has four performance cores and four efficiency cores, regardless of which one you choose. The most notable changes from the M1 to the M2 SoC are the increased memory bandwidth (up to 100GB/s) and the addition of dedicated video encoders and decoders to help with tasks like video editing. If you shoot videos in ProRes, there are also dedicated ProRes encoders and decoders. If you need more processing power for demanding workloads, check out the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M3, 2023).

For the GPU, you have two options: an 8-core GPU or a 10-core GPU. The performance difference between them isn't significant. For most people with a light workload like text processing, web browsing, and video playback, the 8-core GPU is powerful enough to provide a smooth experience. The 10-core GPU helps a little bit in more demanding tasks like video editing, although for video editing, it's the video encoders and decoders that do most of the heavy lifting.

You can configure the Apple MacBook Air with 8, 16, or 24GB of memory. 8GB is enough if you only perform light productivity tasks, but if you plan on editing photos or videos, it's best to go with 16GB or 24GB. The memory isn't user-replaceable, so you have to get the configuration that best suits your needs upfront.

You can configure the Apple MacBook Air with 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage.

The Apple MacBook Air has an outstanding score in the Geekbench 5 benchmark. The M2 SoC has incredible single-thread performance, beating even the M1 Max SoC in the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2021) and all recent Intel and AMD CPUs. Its multi-thread performance is also remarkable, but it falls behind CPUs with more cores, like the Intel Core i7-12800H in the Dell Precision 5570 (2022). The M2's GPU performs reasonably well in GPU compute tasks; it's better than most integrated graphics but slower than discrete GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650. In short, the M2 SoC can handle general productivity tasks like web browsing, text formatting, and video playback, and it can even handle some light photo and video editing. However, it isn't a professional device. If you need to perform demanding tasks for work, you're better off getting a laptop with a more powerful CPU/GPU and active cooling, like the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2021), the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2021), or a Windows mobile workstation with a discrete GPU.

The Apple MacBook Air has an outstanding score in Cinebench R23. It can get the job done, but if you're a professional with deadlines, the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2021) and Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2021) are better options as they can complete renders much faster. You can also get a Windows laptop with an H-series Intel or AMD CPU, like the Dell Precision 5570 (2022) and the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED (2021).

The Apple MacBook Air performs well in Blender. Both the CPU and GPU can complete the render quickly, but again, if you're doing 3D rendering work at a professional level, there are better options that can significantly cut down the rendering time, like the Apple MacBook Pros with Apple silicon or Windows laptops with an NVIDIA GPU that supports NVIDIA Optix hardware acceleration.

The Apple MacBook Air scores reasonably well in the Basemark GPU benchmark. The performance is very good for integrated graphics, but it's still behind even entry-level discrete GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650. Gaming performance will also vary a lot depending on the game since most games haven't been optimized for Apple silicon and need to run through Rosetta 2. Even for optimized games, you likely need to play at a lower resolution or low graphics settings to get playable frame rates. The 10-core GPU will perform better, but not significantly.

The Apple MacBook Air's storage drive performance is excellent. The sequential read speed is slower than the Apple MacBook Air 13 (M1, 2020) because the 256 GB storage variant only uses one chip, whereas the M1 MacBook Air uses two in a RAID array. However, it's still fast enough for general productivity tasks like text formatting and web browsing. The slower speed is only noticeable if you perform demanding tasks that require access to large files or in situations where the system runs out of memory and needs to offload data to the SSD. If the sequential read speed is important for your workload, it's best to get a variant with a 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB SSD. The speed of the SSD may vary depending on the size, as larger SSDs tend to perform better.

The Apple MacBook Air's battery life is great. You can easily get through a typical day of light productivity on a full charge. Video playback consumes more power, but you can still get through a couple of movies and TV show episodes. Gaming, and other demanding tasks like video editing, drain the battery very quickly, so you'll have to use the laptop plugged in most of the time. Battery life varies greatly depending on your usage.

Borderlands 3 runs poorly on the Apple MacBook Air. It's unplayable at 1080p with high settings due to low average frame rates and frequent stutters. It doesn't get much better at low settings. The 10-core GPU model will perform a little better, but the game will still be very choppy.

The performance in Civilization VI is middling. The game is a little choppy at 1080p with high settings, but it gets much smoother at low settings. You might still experience some stutter here and there, but it's playable since this is a strategy game. The turn time is quite long, though. The 10-core GPU model will push slightly higher frame rates, likely closer to 60 fps at high settings.

CS:GO runs very well on the Apple MacBook Air. The 8-core GPU M2 SoC has no problems pushing high frame rates at 1080p with high settings. Motion looks smooth, with almost no stutter at all. The 10-core GPU M2 won't have any issues running this game. Unfortunately, we don't have the 1% and 0.1% data because the software used to capture it doesn't work on macOS.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs poorly on the Apple MacBook Air. It's unplayable at 1080p with high settings, and even with low settings, the game is still choppy. The 10-core GPU M2 SoC will perform better, but you'll still experience stutters.

The Apple MacBook Air's keyboard is fairly cool at idle, but it gets hot under load and can be a little uncomfortable as the hottest spot is close to the center of the keyboard. It doesn't make any fan noise because it's a fanless laptop.

The Apple MacBook Air's performance over time is okay. The CPU only throttles slightly under load, but the GPU throttles significantly. The CPU's temperature averages around 87°C (188.6°F) at the end of each benchmark run, but it can get as hot as 108°C (226.4°F) during the run (recorded via TG Pro). The GPU's average temperature is 77°C (170.6°F).

The Apple MacBook Air 2022 comes with macOS Monterey. There's no additional software other than the ones that typically come with macOS.

There's a fingerprint sensor built into the power button. You can use it to log in quickly, authorize purchases in the Apple App Store, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.