MacBook Air (M2, 2022)

The 2022 MacBook Air marked the most significant external redesign of the Air line since the original 2008 wedge shape debuted, discarding the tapered silhouette that had defined the Air for over a decade in favor of a flat-sided, uniform-thickness chassis that visually echoed the larger M1 Pro/Max MacBook Pro's redesign from the year before. Apple brought MagSafe charging back to the Air for the first time since the Intel era, freeing up one of its two Thunderbolt ports for actual peripherals, and introduced a new display notch housing an improved 1080p webcam, alongside a brighter, larger 13.6-inch Liquid Retina screen and a four-speaker sound system that punched well above the Air's slim, fanless chassis. Under the hood, the new M2 chip offered a modest but real generational improvement over M1, an 18 percent faster CPU and, more notably, a substantially upgraded GPU, alongside greater memory bandwidth and support for up to 24GB of unified memory, though this remained entirely fanless, keeping the Air's signature silent operation intact even as thermal headroom became a slightly more meaningful consideration under very sustained loads compared to the outgoing M1 Air. Available in a refreshed color lineup including a striking new Midnight dark blue and Starlight, the redesigned Air was broadly adored by reviewers, who called it a near-perfect everyday laptop for students, writers, and general consumers, even as some benchmarks showed the outgoing, cheaper M1 Air remained a genuinely excellent value alternative that Apple controversially kept on sale alongside it. A handful of reviewers also noted that under very sustained heavy workloads, the fanless M2 Air could throttle slightly more than the actively cooled 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro released around the same time, though for the vast majority of everyday and even most creative tasks this was a non-issue in practice. Overall, the M2 Air was viewed as a triumphant, fully modernized continuation of the redesign language the M1 Pro MacBook Pro had introduced, proving Apple intended that language, MagSafe, flat sides, a notch, to become the new standard across the entire Mac laptop lineup rather than a one-off exception for the higher-end Pro models.