The new Apple MacBook Air with the M2 chip is supposed to be a battery life and performance leader in the thin and light laptop category. This MacBook Air is all new for 2022 and the M2 chip is crazy fast but how does it compare to the best Windows Laptops we’ve reviewed? Let’s see how the Ryzen 7 6800U in the Zenbook S 13 OLED and Intel Alder Lake i7-1260P preform vs the Apple M2. So is the MacBook Air worth it?
Buy the MacBook Air M2 2022 – https://apple.co/3dkUebu
Buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2022 – https://lenovo.vzew.net/thinkx1gen10
Buy the ASUS Zenbook S 13 (AMD) – https://geni.us/yoo6FlB
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0:00 – The Apple MacBook Air M2 vs…EVERYTHING
0:46 – Specs
2:49 – Design and Build Quality
4:50 – All the Sizes & Weights
5:18 – Let’s talk Power Cables
6:23 – Sponsor Spot
6:57 – The Best Keyboard?
9:26 – Are Trackpads Amazing?
10:46 – The Ports & IO
11:52 – Does the Apple Webcam Stack Up?
13:04 – Speakers…the Good, Bad & Ugly
14:05 – Who has the best Screen?
15:57 – Upgrade Options & SSD’s
17:11 – Real-World Benchmarks
18:24 – Photo & Video Edition with the M2
19:45 – MacBook M2 Battery Life vs Windows
20:32 – Performance on Battery
21:08 – Noise Levels & Temperatures
21:52 – Final Thoughts
Review unit provided free of charge by Apple, ASUS and Lenovo. This video is sponsored by Corsair. As per Hardware Canucks guidelines, no review direction was received from manufacturer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Gear list (Available on Amazon):
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Main Lens (Dmitry) – https://geni.us/Tamron2875
Main Camera (Eber) – https://geni.us/CanonEOS-R
Main Lens (Eber) – https://geni.us/dLL
Main 2nd Lens (Eber) – https://geni.us/Canon24-70MKII
Main Camera Mic (D & E) – https://geni.us/RODEMIC
Cheap 4K Camera (Panasonic G7) – https://geni.us/24nm
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Our Shotgun Mic – https://geni.us/Sennheiser-MKE600
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Not, even, close.
nah bro, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon definitely have far better camera than the other 2 lol.. no excuse
Correction! Macbook Air M2 has 2 thunderbolt 3 (three) not 4 (four)
I have to say.. this is truly fun to watch.. that level of detail in comparing the three is absolutely clear. thanks!
Now lets test the gaming experience-
M2: Wait, that's illegal
1260P: Haha
-while unplugged
1260P: Wait a minute…
I hate to say this. And i dont own any laptop from apple anymore. But the actual performance on battery. Apple's just lightyears ahead. The hardware/software is just so optimized that a 2012 macbook air still runs more fluid and with better ''real life'' batterylife/performance on battery than a 2022 windows lappy. Even my dads old Ipad air 1 kills my 20 times faster Galaxy tablet from 2021 in overall respons, batterylife, ease of use. And i hate it. because as long as you run windows on the lappy and android on the tabby. there's just no real competition. on a mac you disconnect from the powercord. and in 99% of the time you dont feel a difference in performance between being docked on ac or on battery. On windows you instantly feels a difference when you unplug the pc.
I really enjoy your reviews.. keep it up 🙂
Ryzen absolutely destroys everyone. I wish the X1 was available with Ryzen.
just gonna say my M1 Air supports my Samsung CRG9 with its 5120×1440 120Hz display
It’s a perfect comparison, but you missed GPU benchmarks completely. Would be very interesting to see how the improved M2 GPU and the RDNA2 iGPU in the Zenbook compare against each other. And how much their lead is versus the Xe iGPU.
Hey friends, do you think the base model of m2 macbook air would be enough for coding or should I upgrade the ram to 16gb.
I’m an IT student and I do some tensorflow or pytorch python codes.
And the second question is, is it better to upgrade the ram or ssd, due to its slower ssd on the base model?
Tnx
you talk about real-world benchmarks … and doing cinebench r23 ? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Regarding the screen brightness, LTT recently did a video and they showed how better contrast and color saturation changes the perception regarding brightness. The thing is Asus's OLED display can very well be perceived by our eyes as brighter because of the better brightness control, way better contrast and color saturation. It's overall a better screen. The same way OLED TVs aren;t as bright but HDR generally delivers a more impactfull images because of the element I mentioned above.
Asus seems to me like best one (best balance performance/battery life with that gorgeous OLED screen).
For the price Asus is asking, Apple gives you less desirable configuration (either 8Gb RAM/512Gb SSD or 16Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD). Configuration with 8Gb will swap more often, so lower performance. Configuration with 256Gb will read/write slower on SSD, so again lower performance.
Something you did not mention: casual gaming, would be definitely better on AMD based system.
Plus, 400 bucks is not small amount. You can get a lot of things for that.
want to see M2 MBA vs ROG Z Flow 13
I’d love to see a comparison of the MacBook Pro 16” model vs the Razer Blade pro 17”.
Great job breaking down comparison of top laptops. I have been on the fence between MacBook Air and ZenBook.
Well definition for "the best" is wary for people, i see none of these 3 laptops being as "the best" for me.
Man the 6800U is really great on battery compared to other chips. CB only went 2k down and still was better than the M2. Also blender was still faster. Video and Photo editing was bad even when plugged in but it didn't take as much as a hit as Intel.
Thinkpad Z13 OLED review when?
The peak of laptops today are Macbooks with their silicone and Lenovo with their X1 series. I don’t think anyone has come close to them. Dell with their XPS used to be soo good, but they’re hit and miss with their bad thermal design and QC nowadays. Razer almost put themselves up there with their blade but their battery life sucks.
The ThinkPad can be configured with many IPS displays of various resolutions AND a 2.8K OLED like the Asus.
I felt a pretty good windows laptop trackpad before and it was pretty nice. I tried a macbook airs afterward and while I liked the functionality it didn't feel near as good so I'll have to disagree on the trackpad being the best if it's the same.
I was looking at laptops and I decided to get the MacBook m2. What brought me over the fence wasn’t really the performance, although it’s amazing, but the resale value. You can use this stuff for 2 to 3 year’s and still sell it for a good few hundred bucks. Compare that to windows, where reseller’s literally chase you down with 2 year’s old products below 50% msrp. It’s good for people who only buy used but people who buy brand new stuff loose a lot of money.
Been quite happy with my base M2 Air. I run Parallels now so I can get rid of my old gaming rig. For the games I like, mostly 4X titles it works beautifully. And my son is teaching me WOW, there’s a decent Mac client.