Apple’s M2 MacBook Air has been named ZDNet’s “Product of the Year.”
Here’s why Editor-in-Chief Jason Hiner says the magazine gave the laptop the honors: “One of the other common criticisms of this product when it was first released was that it’s now a bit of a tweener in the Mac product line — with the very-capable M1 MacBook Air still on sale and now serving as the entry-level, under-$1,000 Mac laptop and the robust MacBook Pro line being the go-to option for professionals and creators who need more oomph.
But, a longer look at the M2 MacBook Air allowed me to throw a lot of power-hungry tasks at it and wait for it to buckle. I transferred monstrously large files, built multimedia-intense PowerPoints, rendered and compressed video files, and loaded up my three favorite Adobe Creative Cloud apps — Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom.
I was very surprised to find that the machine never blinked.
My work laptop is a 16-inch MacBook Pro (2021) running the M1 Pro chip. That machine is an absolute beast that delivers jaw-dropping desktop-class performance. In testing the M2 MacBook Air, what shocked me was how close it came to matching my MacBook Pro for most tasks.
My conclusion: The M2 MacBook Air can now handle about 75% of what you used to need a MacBook Pro to do.
That can potentially save you $500-$1,000. The M2 MacBook Air I tested included the 10-core GPU and 16 GB of RAM and retails for $1,700. But, a comparable MacBook Pro is going to run you at least $2,000-$2,500.
The Apple Watch Ultra was given an Honorable Mention in ZDNet’s “Products of the Year,” as was the Google Pixel 7 and Insta360 Link.
Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today
