The M2 MacBook Air is worth the upgrade, and it's on sale for $150 off
Save $150: As of Sept. 28, the M2 MacBook Air with 512GB of built-in storage is 10% off Amazon and Best Buy, bringing it to a new low price of $1,349, down from $1,499.
Even those of us working on the crustiest and dustiest laptops out there can find it hard to justify an upgrade to the latest tech if it fails to offer much improvement while very much offering that brand new price markup.
That's not the case with Apple's latest MacBook Air powered by the M2 chip. Yes, in many cases, we'd recommend opting for an older model (the M1 is still great) if you're trying to save some cash. But as of Sept. 28, you can get the M2 MacBook Air with 512GB of built-in storage for just $1,349 at Amazon and Best Buy — that's $150 off a laptop released only two months ago.
There is a decent step up from M1 to M2 — you jump from 8-core GPU to a 10-core GPU, allowing you to process more complicated tasks at a time without experiencing lag. According to Apple, this can translate up to a 40% faster performance time in programs like Final Cut Pro or 20% faster time with Photoshop.
The upgrades don't start and stop with the more powerful processor, either. The Liquid Retina display has been bumped up to 13.6 inches, while the overall laptop became slimmer, and ditched the Air's tapered design to more resemble a MacBook Pro. Though the changes might sound small, Mashable tech reporter Alex Perry made note of them in his review, writing "I’ve spent the last three and a half years working on a 2016 MacBook Pro with a 13.3-inch display and immediately felt the difference here."
The FaceTime camera also got a much needed upgrade from a 720p camera to a 1080p camera, though you will have to deal with a notch. Other drawbacks include a lackluster refresh rate and a general lack of ports. However, you still get that same 18 hour battery life.
The 512GB M2 MacBook Air is available for $1,349 in starlight, silver, and space gray.
Bethany Allard is a Los Angeles-based shopping reporter at Mashable covering beauty tech, dating, sex and relationships, and headphones. That basically means she puts her hair through a lot, scrolls through a lot of dating apps, and rotates through a lot of different headphones. In addition to testing out and rounding up the best products, she also covers deals for Mashable, paying an especially obsessive amount of attention to Apple deals and prices. That knowledge comes in handy when she's covering shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, which she's now done for three years at Mashable.
