Comparing the New 15-inch MacBook Air to the 13-inch MacBook Air M2: Which One is Worth the Investment?

Apple introduces 15-inch MacBook Air to its MacBook lineup

Apple has expanded its MacBook Air range by including a 15-inch model in its latest lineup. The MacBook Air already featured a 13-inch model, which has been a standard option for consumers for a considerable time. The new variant will include a few changes to the design, specifications, and utilities to the compact laptop. Let’s dive deeper into the comparison of the 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air.

Physical Dimensions

One of the significant differences between the 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air is the size and dimensions. Apple has worked on refreshing the 2022 MacBook Air’s design by ditching the signature wedge and opting for a flatter appearance. The dimensions of the 13-inch MacBook Air are uniform, with 11.97 inches width, 8.48 inches deep, and 0.44 inches thickness. In contrast, the 15-inch MacBook Air, sharing similar styling to the 13-inch model, boasts 13.4 inches width, 9.35 inches deep, and 0.45 inches thickness.

Display

As part of the upgrade from the previous model, the 13-inch MacBook Air features a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display with True Tone and P3 wide color support. The 15-inch MacBook Air uses a 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, again using the IPS LED-backlit panel, alongside similar technologies with the identical 500 nits of brightness. It has a higher resolution of 2,880 by 1,864 but only negligible less pixel density of 224ppi as compared to the 13-inch MacBook Air.

Processing

The 13-inch MacBook Air is powered by an M2 chip, including an eight-core CPU with four performance and four efficiency cores, and a 16-core Neural Engine for tackling image processing tasks. It also houses Media Engines that provide hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding of video. The same CPU, Neural Engine, and Media Engine are in the M2 option for the 15-inch MacBook Air with the only difference being the 10-core GPU for the latter one, whereas the former one can have an 8-core GPU or a 10-core GPU configuration.

Graphics and Video

The M2 chip in the 13-inch MacBook Air includes two GPU options, starting with an 8-core GPU and a maximum configuration of the 10-core GPU. The M2 in the 15-inch MacBook Air has only the 10-core GPU option, which is graphically superior. When comparing the benchmark test results, the M2 in the 13-inch MacBook Air scored 1,898 in single-core tests and 8,941 in multi-core tests under Geekbench.

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