Jason Snell just posted his review of the M2 MacBook Air. It’s almost exactly as I thought.
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Quoted from there for emphasis re: throttling.
(I’ll point out that, even throttled, the M2 Air scored higher than the M1 Air in the same 10-minute test.)
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It seems that a lot of ‘preliminary warning’ about throttling issues were rather overblown. The Cinebench 10-min test scores for M2 MBA is less than 5% lower than the single-run score, compared to close to 10% for M1 MBA. (In addition, I don’t think a typical MBA user will run extended loads on regular basis so it is probably a non-issue in the first place.)
Separately, I was also quite pleased that the new design team opted for a clean, simple, “honest” design* language as compared to the tapered design of the previous MBA/MBP designs. Quite surprising considering that honest design is one of the values advocated by Dieter Rams, who inspired Jony Ive; yet it took the new team to realise this.
*Another subtle point about honest design is living up to promises, quoting Dieter Rams: “Good design is honest. It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.” - Tenuous at best when Intel chips were used, esp. inside MBPs.
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I ordered my M2 MBA last week, due to ship to my nearest Apple Store for pickup on August 9. I’m very happy with that review. I’ll never use it for anything that stressful, and I hope this one lasts me a good long time. My current portable Mac that I use most of the time is a 2015 MBA with 8 GB RAM so this will be a dramatic increase in performance.
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John Gruber has another glowing review at Daring Fireball.
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Like John Gruber, my main Mac is a 14" MBP and like him I see how this new M2 MBA is really getting very close to being what the ideal Mac should be.
Also like him, one of the only things I’d change about this MBA if I could would be port placement.
Instead of putting both Thunderbolt/USB-C ports on the left, it’d be nice if one of them were on the right.
I’m really anxious to see what Apple will do in terms of M2 Pro/Max 14" MBP refresh. I have to admit, seeing how much smaller and lighter this MBA is, and how the M2 performs so incredibly well, I’d be very tempted to swap this 14" (to me its card slots are all but useless) for a new M2 MBA. Not that the 14" MBP isn’t great (it is!), but this new MBA is just all-around so great, it’s one heck of a temptation. IMHO probably one of the greatest portable Macs we’ve ever seen.
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