Elly Awesome ‘blown away’ by features on Apple’s 2022 MacBook Air

Apple’s latest laptop may have a hefty price tag but Elly Awesome was blown away by its performance, display, sound quality and battery life.

Apple released its new MacBook Air which comes in four different colours - silver, space grey and new starlight and midnight.

This week Apple has launched its 2022 MacBook Air and it’s back with a fresh look and updated features.

The MacBook Air comes in four different colours — silver, space grey and new starlight and midnight — both of which I’ve had a play around with.

Unboxing

There’s not a lot in the box — just everything you need to get going. The MacBook Air, Apple stickers, documentation, new MagSafe to USB-C charging cable and a 30W USB-C power adapter.

I love how versatile this new MacBook Air is when it comes to being recharged. Not only can you charge it via either of its two Thunderbolt (USB-C) ports but you can also use the new MagSafe port which quickly detaches if it’s accidentally yanked on.

For example, if you trip on the cable it’s not going to pull the whole laptop off the table. We’ve had MagSafe on Apple laptops commonly in the past, so this is nothing revolutionary, but it’s great to have it back.

New Macbook Air Colours

I got my hands on both of the new starlight and midnight MacBook Air colours. Starlight is a really beautiful colourway that is kind of like silver mixed with gold but also tends to pick up hues from the light sources around you. Sometimes it looks more gold, sometimes silver, or even pink. I really like it.

Midnight is another unique colour that’s somewhere between black and dark blue, depending on your environment. In my opinion though, it definitely leans towards a dark blue most of the time, so don’t expect a jet black colour.

Elly Awesome with the new MacBook Air in starlight and midnight colours.

Features

More importantly, the new MacBook Air now has Apple’s M2 chip — a major upgrade in performance for the slimline machine. With a faster 8-core CPU, up to 10-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine it’s really offering some seriously pro performance.

In fact, the new Macbook Air can handle editing 7 streams of 4K video with titles and effects, which video editors would know is truly impressive for such a thin, fanless laptop. I edit video content a lot and now I’m considering using the Air as my on the go machine over my 16” MacBook Pro.

The design is less tapered and has moved back to the classic rectangular shape with rounded corners. And it honestly feels like two super thin iPads stuck together but one side has a keyboard and trackpad. It’s pretty much the same weight as the previous model but the screen size has been increased slightly from 13.3 inches to 13.6 inches and features a new Liquid Retina display.

There’s also a new four-speaker sound system including two tweeters and two ultra thin woofers, as opposed to stereo speakers.

They must make a difference as my partner asked whether I was watching TV when I was testing out the speakers on the Macbook Air.

I was watching the show Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+ and the sound quality, clarity, and volume was mind blowing for such a thin laptop — pretty impressive if it can be mistaken for the sound quality of a large TV. The video and image quality of high resolution content is seriously awesome too.

The sound quality when streaming was impressive.

New 1080p FaceTime Camera

Other new and notable features would have to be the 1080p FaceTime camera which has finally arrived on MacBook Air after years of being a 720p camera.

The camera quality looks improved when you have good lighting but to be honest I think it’s still a little lacking in low lighting conditions compared to my iPhone. I’ll forgive that though because later in the year Apple is making it possible to use your iPhone as your webcam with iOS 16 — how rad is that?

Battery Life

The battery life is ridiculous on this thing. It can last up to 18 hours. While testing the MacBook Air I kept intermittently checking the battery percentage during my work day, expecting it to seriously drop, and just wouldn’t.

From editing some videos in the morning, to doing a workout on Apple Fitness+ (using AirPlay from my iPhone), playing some games on Apple Arcade and writing this article, I was still sitting pretty at 54 per cent of battery at 8pm.

The MacBook Air is 1.13cm thin and weighs just 1.2kg.

Should you buy it?

I’ve been really blown away by the performance, display, sound quality and battery life of the 2022 MacBook Air.

Its new M2 chip has given me the ability to pack a lighter computer in my bag while still being able to use my intensive video editing programs, along with enjoying some streaming and games in my down time.

Aside from not having many ports, and not including old school USB ports or HDMI ports that some people may miss, this is now such a versatile machine for anyone.

The price is definitely on the higher side for us Aussies starting at $1899 but the features are well worth it. I think students especially would find the new MacBook Air to be a great investment, with new age tech that should hold up well into their career.

Elly Awesome is an Aussie tech and lifestyle vlogger | @ellyawesometech | YouTube