And according to Apple, it's 35% faster than its predecessor. The MacBook Pro’s integrated graphics chip, the M2 GPU, has ten cores compared to the M1's 8. The performance cores deliver a 18% boost in CPU performance over its predecessor. According to Apple, the high-performance cores will deliver industry-leading speeds on single-threaded tasks and when combined, they deliver a sizable boost to multithreaded performance. The M2 features an eight-core CPU with four of the cores being dedicated to high performance and the remaining four focusing on efficiency. The backlighting allowed me to work in just about any environment whether I was in my darkened bedroom or outside in my backyard pop-up canopy at night. I easily surpassed my usual 70 word-per-minute on the 10fastfingers typing test at 80 wpm. The backlit keyboard is firm with springy feedback and gloriously quiet which definitely comes in handy in an office or coffee shop. The Magic keyboard is just that –– magic. It brings an immersive factor that can enhance music and movies. However, like most ultraportables, the low-end is not as powerful as I would like as I learned listening to TeaMarrr and Sir’s “Tick.” Still, both artists’ sensual vocals melded with the synthesized instrumentals without affecting the percussion.Īnd similar to other Apple products, the M2 Air’s speakers are capable of spatial audio which creates the illusion of a 3D audio experience. And despite their diminutive size, the speakers get loud, filling my smallish bedroom with audio. New speakers, who dis? Apple has redesigned the Air’s speakers, going for a quad setup between the keyboard and display. Speaking of brightness, the M2 Air’s panel has Apple proprietary TrueTone technology which automatically adjust the luminescence and color temperature based on environmental lighting conditions. The M2 Air easily outshone the 440-nit category average, Slim 7 Carbon (369 nits), Spectre x360 (391 nits) and XPS 13 (442 nits). The M2 Air did manage to beat the Spectre x360’s 67.7%Īpple says that the M2 Air is 25% brighter than its predecessor, a claim that was proven during our test with the new Air averaging 489 nits compared to the M1’s 366 nits. It also doesn’t come close to either the 90.4% premium laptop average nor the Slim 7 Carbon (139.3%). It’s slightly below the previous Air (80.9%) as well as the XPS 13 (76.9%) which was a surprise. When we measured for color reproduction, the Air registered 75.9% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.