Apple 15-inch MacBook Air review: Is bigger better?

Note: This review was first published on 12 June 2023.

Supersizing the MBA

It’s easy to view Apple’s new 15-inch MacBook Air as nothing more than just a MacBook Air with a larger display. But this is Apple’s largest MacBook Air ever. In other words, it’s the first affordable MacBook with a large screen. That’s a big deal because users who wanted a MacBook with a display larger than 13-inches have had to cough up for a far more expensive MacBook Pro. So what do you gain apart from the larger display, and is it really light and portable? Answers to all these and more below.

The TL;DR version:



The 15-inch MacBook Air’s combination of performance and portability makes it the ideal 15-inch notebook for most people. It might even tempt owners of the 13-inch MacBook Air to make a switch.

Physically and aesthetically, the new 15-inch MacBook Air is best described as mostly a blown up version of the 13-inch MacBook Air. That’s no bad thing. It means it looks sleek and build quality is top notch – it feels rock solid. It retains the 13-inch version’s slim profile. At just 11.5mm thick, it’s remarkably svelte and Apple claims this is the slimmest 15-inch notebook in the world. I can’t think of a thinner 15-inch notebook. Colour options are unchanged so you have Midnight, Starlight, Space Grey, and Silver.

Weight is up slightly from 1.24kg to 1.51kg. I immediately noticed the extra heft, but then I spend a lot of time working on the 13-inch MacBook Air. Even so, it’s remarkably light for a 15-inch notebook and I believe most people will no problems shrugging off the difference in weight in favour of the larger display.

The display now measures 15.3 inches diagonally. There's a notch at the top which houses a 1080p webcam, but it's honestly a non-issue at this point. You won't notice it after a couple of days. The increase in display size, however, is immediately palpable. You can see much more of a webpage or document. It’s also a Liquid Retina display, which means it uses a regular IPS LCD panel – not OLED. Resolution is 2880 x 1864 pixels which gives it the same 224 pixels per inch pixel density count as the smaller 13-inch model. You could nitpick and say it isn’t quite as vivid as a notebook with an OLED display, but I doubt the type of people who buys these notebooks will care too much. This is still, by most accounts, a great display.

The other noteworthy upgrade you can’t see: it’s the speakers. It has a six-speaker sound system that consists of tweeters and force-cancelling woofers – just like the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros – and supports Spatial Audio when you play compatible content. Unsurprisingly, it sounds beefier than the 13-inch model. There’s more body to the sound and the bass is stronger. In addition, the sound stage is wider and it gets louder. MacBooks have always had good speakers and this new 15-inch MacBook Air is no different. It’s easily one of the best-sounding notebooks.

I’ve been told the keyboard is identical to the 13-inch model. Apple doesn’t believe in number pads, which I think is the right move. I rather have a perfectly centralised keyboard than a number pad that I may only use once or twice a year. The keys don’t feel quite as well-damped as the MacBook Pros’ keyboard, but it’s still a pleasant keyboard to work on. Like the 13-inch model, the 15-inch model also gets a row of full-height function keys. To the top right corner is the Touch ID button that doubles as the power button. The trackpad is massive, responsive, accurate, and an utter joy to use.

Ports are unchanged, so you have a MagSafe port for power and you get two USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt 3 and USB4 and a 3.5mm headphone jack that Apple says works well even with high-impedance headphones. It’s a pity that Apple didn’t add any ports or memory card reader given the vast amount of space by the sides. An SD card reader would have really knocked this MacBook out of the park.

Powered by M2

The 15-inch MacBook Air is powered by the M2 chip, which made its debut in the middle of last year in the 13-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. I won’t go into details because I’ve already done it before, but very briefly, it’s built on a second-generation 5nm process and promises to be faster and more power efficient than M1.

Though the smaller 13-inch MacBook Air uses the same chip, there is one key difference, and that is all 15-inch models will come with the 10 GPU core version of the M2. There is no 8 GPU core version, unlike the 13-inch MacBook Air. The unit I have is a custom order version with a 10-core GPU M2 chip, but with 16GB of memory and 1TB SSD. 

Like the 13-inch version, the 15-inch model has a fan-less chassis. The obvious upside is that it is utterly silent regardless of what app it is running. The downside is that throttling can be an issue when running longer workloads. That said, because the 15-inch model has a larger chassis, I was told that it can maintain peak performance before throttling kicks in for slightly longer. Let’s see the benchmark results below to see if it’s true.

The general performance of the M2 chip in the 15-inch MacBook Air is mostly similar to that of the 13-inch model, but only for the shorter benchmarks where sustained performance is not required. On the shorter and less intensive benchmarks like Geekbench, Cinebench, and GFXbench, the two systems put up identical numbers. On longer and more intensive benchmarks, however, the 15-inch model has a small lead. In the video transcoding test, for example, the 15-inch model was nearly two whole minutes faster. And in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, its peak frame rates were over 60% higher.

That said, throttling was still an issue and its numbers can drop quite drastically after multiple consecutive runs. So yes, the 15-inch MacBook Air may be slightly more performant than the 13-inch model, but it depends greatly on the type of workload. Ultimately, if you were to keep taxing it and if it were to start throttling, its performance would end up at the same level as the 13-inch model.

Real-world user experience and battery life

My overall experience using the 15-inch MacBook Air has been positive. Like all other Macs powered by Apple Silicon, it feels snappy and responsive. And for the kind of work that I do, which is mainly responding to emails, editing photos, and writing reviews, it never felt underpowered. 

Readers concerned about the lack of an active cooling system shouldn’t worry. Even when it’s throttled, it never stutters or lags. Even so, it must be said that the MacBook Air isn’t really a machine designed to run intensive apps for extended periods and users who intend to do so are probably better off with a MacBook Pro. But for people whose primary requirements are to browse the web, answer emails, watch videos, and edit the occasional short video, this machine has more than enough performance.

And as for battery life, Apple claims up to 18 hours and that feels about right. Despite this 15-inch model having a larger capacity battery, I don’t feel like battery life is any longer – whatever advantage it might have in battery capacity is offset by the power drain of the larger display. In my few days with it so far, my estimation is that most people should be able to get 12 hours of non-stop use with no issues. With the screen brightness set to a very sensible 60% or so and with about a dozen apps opened, I could easily get it to last about 10 hours of work.



 

Final thoughts and buying advice

Prices of the 15-inch MacBook Air will start at S$1,899, which is S$300 more than the cheapest 13-inch MacBook Air. But that’s not the best way of looking at their costs because even the cheapest 15-inch MacBook Air has a more powerful M2 chip with more GPU cores. The more accurate way would be to look at the step-up models which have 512GB of SSD storage because these models have the same 10-core GPU version of the M2 chip and 8GB of memory. If you compare the two, you might be surprised to find that the 15-inch MacBook Air only costs S$150 more. Bigger may very well be better, just look at the prices below.

The 15-inch MacBook Air represents good value, not just from a Mac perspective, but even in comparison with a Windows notebook. To get a 15-inch Windows notebook with comparable performance will cost a lot more. And even then, it won’t be as slim and portable, and won’t offer anywhere near the same kind of battery life that the 15-inch MacBook Air does. However, I must point out that prices go up real quick once you start ticking off options when ordering the Mac. So go light on the options if you want to keep the value quotient high.

Like most other MacBooks in the Apple Silicon, this new 15-inch MacBook Air is a great MacBook with few flaws. It is slim, portable, has good performance and battery life, features a large vivid display, and is reasonably priced. My only real gripe is that I wish it had more ports. It should definitely be on the shortlist of anyone who's shopping for a new notebook. And I won’t be surprised at all if it outsells the smaller 13-inch version. That’s how good it is.



 

Note: You can find the 15-inch MacBook Air on Amazon, Lazada, Shopee, and the Apple Online Store.

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