MacBook Air becomes thinnest 15″ laptop

Apple has made sure that the world’s best-selling laptop, the MacBook Air, maintains its lead by making the range even more appealing: it has upped the ante with the thinnest 15″ notebook on the market.

The 15-inch MacBook Air offers an expansive 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, an M2 processor, up to 18 hours of battery life, and a silent, fanless design. A new six-speaker sound system delivers immersive Spatial Audio, along with a 1080p FaceTime HD camera. It will be available from Tuesday, 13 June at a new starting price of $1,299 in the USA, and $1,199 for US education use.

Apple provided the following information on the 15″ and updates to the rest of the range:

5.3-inch Liquid Retina Display

The new MacBook Air features a spacious, high-resolution 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, so users can see even more content. With up to 500 nits of brightness and support for 1 billion colours, the brilliant Liquid Retina display makes content look remarkably rich and vibrant, and text razor sharp. It is also twice the resolution and 25 percent brighter than a comparable PC laptop.

World’s Thinnest 15-inch Laptop

The new MacBook Air measures only 11.5mm thin, making it the world’s thinnest 15-inch laptop. It weighs just 1.5kg, so it’s incredibly portable. Even with its expansive display, the new MacBook Air is solid and durable. And it is also nearly 40 percent thinner and half a pound lighter than a comparable PC laptop.

MacBook Air also features MagSafe charging, two Thunderbolt ports for connecting accessories and up to a 6K external display, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack for versatile connectivity. It comes in four gorgeous finishes — midnight, starlight, space gray, and silver.

Blazing Performance and Tremendous Battery Life with M2

With the M2 chip, the 15-inch MacBook Air has incredible performance. It’s up to 12x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air. When compared to the best-selling 15-inch PC laptop with a Core i7 processor, the new MacBook Air is up to twice as fast It also delivers extraordinary battery life, with up to 18 hours — 50 percent more than on the PC — even with a better display and better performance. The 15-inch MacBook Air features a powerful 8-core CPU with four performance cores and four efficiency cores, a 10-core GPU for blazing-fast graphics, and a 16-core Neural Engine. M2 also delivers 100GB/s of memory bandwidth and supports up to 24GB of fast unified memory, so multitasking and working with complex workloads is superfluid. The performance of M2 lets users work, play, or create just about anything — anywhere.

1080p FaceTime HD Camera and Six-Speaker Sound System

The 1080p FaceTime HD camera on MacBook Air is perfect for FaceTime calls and video conferencing. Combined with the processing power of the advanced image signal processor on M2, users will look great on video calls. A three-mic array captures clean audio using advanced beamforming algorithms, so users come through loud and clear on video calls.

The design of the new 15-inch MacBook Air also features a phenomenal new six-speaker sound system with two tweeters and two sets of force-cancelling woofers. The new speakers deliver twice the bass depth for fuller sound, and Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos provides immersive experiences whether listening to music or watching movies.

Powerful Productivity with macOS

macOS Ventura takes the Mac experience to a whole new level that helps users achieve even more. Messages and Mail are better than ever, while Safari — the world’s fastest browser on Mac — ushers in a passwordless future with passkeys. Continuity Camera brings video conferencing features to any Mac, including Desk View, Center Stage, and Studio Light. Stage Manager automatically organises apps and windows, so users can concentrate on the task at hand and still see everything in a single glance. With iCloud Shared Photo Library, users can create and share a separate photo library among up to six family members, and the Freeform app provides a flexible canvas that enables users to be even more productive and expressive. Users can work effortlessly across Mac and iPhone with Continuity features like Handoff, AirDrop, Universal Clipboard, and Messages.

macOS Sonoma, coming in September, makes the Mac experience more delightful and productive than ever, including new ways to personalise with widgets and stunning screen savers, an optimised gaming experience with Game Mode, powerful video conferencing capabilities, a big update to Safari, and more.

Better for the Environment

The new MacBook Air is designed with the environment in mind, now using 100 percent recycled gold plating and tin soldering in multiple printed circuit boards, and 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets. MacBook Air also features 100 percent recycled cobalt in the MagSafe connector and 90 percent recycled steel in the battery tray. MacBook Air meets Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency, and is free of mercury, PVC, and beryllium. Over 99 percent of the packaging is fiber based, bringing Apple closer to its goal of completely removing plastic from its packaging by 2025.

Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and is focused on its Apple 2030 goal to make every product carbon neutral. This means every Mac Apple creates, from design to manufacturing to customer use, will have net-zero climate impact.

Pricing and Availability

• The 15-inch MacBook Air with M2 is available to order today on apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app. It will begin arriving to customers, and in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorised Resellers, beginning Tuesday, June 13.
• The 15-inch MacBook Air with M2, available in midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray, starts at $1,299 (U.S.) and $1,199 (U.S.) for education.
• The 13-inch MacBook Air with M2, available in midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray, now starts at $1,099 (U.S.) and $999 (U.S.) for education.
• The 13-inch MacBook Air with M1, available in gold, silver, and space gray, remains in the lineup, starting at $999 (U.S.) and $899 (U.S.) for education.
• Additional technical specifications and details on Apple accessories — including the new 70W USB-C Power Adapter for $59 (U.S.) — are available at apple.com/shop/buy-mac.