Feeling MacBook Air 15 after nearly 1 week of use
If I could meet Tim Cook, I would ask what made Apple take until 2023 to release this 15-inch version of the Air.
The void has just been filled
My story will start with the screen size of a laptop. Do you remember how old your first laptop was? And I was in 2011, which is the 3rd year of the University.
At that time, after a month of researching and comparing prices,
I finally chose for myself the ASUS K53SV because it met my two criteria at that time: having a discrete graphics card for gaming and a 15-inch screen for a large display – of course also for gaming to look “more pleasing” to the eyes.
After 4 years of “plowing”, my ASUS K53SV is also officially retired.
At that time, partly because I wanted to focus on work (not playing games anymore), partly because I wanted to step out of my comfort zone, I decided to give up my Windows laptop and move to MacOS.
2015 is the time that marks my first exposure to Apple’s computer line,
which also means focusing on my career more, avoiding being distracted by games during working hours.
The 15-inch MacBook Pro (2015) was the first Apple laptop in my life.
The reason I continue to choose 15 inches is because I have been so used to this screen size since using Windows, even, this tradition is still continued by me until the next generations and until…
Apple stopped releasing laptops of this size and replaced it with 16 inches.
color blind test
The removal of the 15-inch size makes many people, myself included, confused and extremely difficult to choose the right product line.
At that time, I only had to choose the 14-inch MacBook Pro version for two reasons: more affordable than the 16-inch and more compact.
Back this year, after much speculation, Apple officially launched a 15-inch version for the MacBook Air.
Compared to the MacBook Pro 14 I’m using, the MacBook Air 15 gives me more space.
That old feeling of split-screen or multi-tasking seemed to come rushing back to me,
something that a 14-inch phone has not yet been able to show.
So besides the size, what does this MacBook Air 15 have to pay attention to when compared to the Pro 14 desk?
But with daily use, even placed side by side, I still hardly notice the difference between the two.
A slightly “disadvantaged” point of this Air line compared to the Pro is the use of Liquid Retina IPS panels instead of Liquid XDR.
If you are a user for daily office tasks, or image editing like me, using the Air 15’s Liquid Retina is more than enough.
Putting both cameras side by side to compare the same series of photos in post-production, I see almost no difference.
Bigger but thinner
When it comes to Apple’s Air line,
everyone will immediately think that this is a laptop for thin, small and light.
However, with this 15-inch version, the word “small” may no longer be relevant.
Compared to the size of the Pro 14 that I am using, the Air 15 brother seems to be “bigger”.
But to make up for this greatness,
the Air 15 shows itself to be still an indoor supermodel with an impressive thinness, only 11.5mm compared to the 15.6mm of the Pro 14.
In addition, its weight is also approximately 100g lighter than its brother Pro 14.
Speaking of 100g, you may think it’s not worth much, but in fact,
what makes your daily luggage more burdensome is not only the laptop but it also comes from the charger.
I have long left the Windows laptop product line and
have not been able to return to that ecosystem for many reasons,
but the most important thing that the chargers of Windows laptop brands are still too bulky and heavy,
not to mention that if using a Type-C PD cable to power,
it possible that the laptop has not been “charged” at full capacity.
Instead of having a headache to worry about the absolute performance of the machine I am using,
I choose to return to Apple to make things easier and pay more attention to the performance of my work.
Going back to Pro 14 and Air 15, why do I mention the story of the charger?
You may not have noticed, but the decisive factor for Air 15 owners to have a lighter luggage is this: Just 35W charging capacity.
Right from the moment I opened the box,
the Air 15 with the charger was very compact than the Pro 14 that I am using.
And thanks to this low charging capacity,
I can also boldly leave the charger at home and just bring this extra backup battery with me (also with 35W output capacity) for working days or even traveling for a few days.
Performance and battery
It would be remiss not to compare the processing performance between the two machines that I have here.
In terms of configuration, the MacBook Pro 14 in this article uses the
M1 Pro processor with 10 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
With the MacBook Air 15, the version
I’m experiencing equipped with an M2 with 8 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores, and 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD.
The write and read speed of the internal memory on the Air 15 is also far different from the Pro 14
when it only reaches 3030MB/s and 2804MB/s compared to 5146MB/s and 5491MB/s on the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test.
