There’s still plenty of time to snap up a holiday gift for a loved one (or yourself). If you’re feeling particularly generous and you or someone you care about could do with a new laptop, it’s worth checking out deals on Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air. Some configurations have dropped to record low prices, including one with 256GB of storage and an M2 chipset. That MacBook Air has dipped from $1,299 to $1,049 — which is $250 off the regular price.
This is an excellent entry point into the Mac ecosystem. In fact, the M2-powered MacBook Air (albeit a 2022 configuration) is our pick for the best MacBook overall. The 15.3-inch model that’s on sale here has a Liquid Retina display with 500 nits of brightness, 1080p FaceTime HD camera and Touch ID.
While the M2-powered MacBook Air should be more than capable enough of handling most tasks, it’s disappointing that the base model only comes with 8GB of RAM. That’s going to make tasks such as video and image editing, as well as even gaming, a bit more onerous on this MacBook Air.
In any case, we gave the 15-inch MacBook Air a score of 96 in our review in June. We appreciated the larger display compared with the 13.6-inch MBA, though lamented the fact the refresh rate is limited to 60Hz. Great battery life (the MBA ran for about 12 hours while handling day-to-day work tasks), terrific audio and a top-notch keyboard and trackpad are major plus points. One quibble is that, despite its great performance, the M2 chipset is getting a little long in the tooth — rumors suggest an M3-powered MacBook Air could debut in March.
Meanwhile, if you could use some more built-in storage than the 256GB that comes with this laptop, you can opt for a variant with 512GB for $1,249. That’s also $250 off and marks another record low. However, that model still only has 8GB of memory.
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