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The previous Air M1 needed 9:15, so that’s quite an improvement. On our Handbrake video editing test, which involves transcoding a 4K video clip, the new MacBook Air M2 took 7 minutes and 52 seconds to complete the task. The Air M2 easily beats the best Windows laptops, defeating notebooks like the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (7,606) and Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 7 (7,140). However, the new Dell XPS 13 Plus with a 12th gen Intel Core i7 reached a higher 10,621. The MacBook Pro M2 was on par with the Air M2, reaching 1,898 and 8,911. That’s 11% faster on single core and 17% faster on mutli-core. On a slightly older 5.3 test, the MacBook Air M1 hit 1,736 on single core and 7,575 on multi-core. On Geekbench 5.4, which measures overall performance, the MacBook Air M2 hit 1,932 on the single-core CPU test and 8,919 on multi-core. But in general I didn’t notice a step down in performance for everyday tasks versus the MacBook Pro 14-inch with M1 Pro chip, which is a pretty big compliment. I noticed only one time when the new Air showed lag, and that was when I had more than 100 tabs open in Chrome across multiple windows. And the MacBook Air M2 powered through it all with ease.
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I was juggling dozens of open tabs in Google Chrome, jumping between lots of Slack messages and editing photos in Photoshop all while uploading files to our CMS. The best thing I can say about the MacBook Air M2 is that it easily handled my Prime Day deals workload (which is pretty freakin’ intense) with ease. When I played both laptops side by side, the Pro had a fuller bass and was less tinny, but it’s also $800 more. The lyrics had plenty of room to breathe, and the beat was punchy enough, but the sound wasn’t as well rounded as the six-speaker sound system on the MacBook Pro 14. The MacBook Air M2’s four-speaker sound system is pretty good, delivering clear audio when I played “I Ain’t Worried” from One Republic on Spotify. However, the Air’s Delta-E accuracy score of 0.2 was the same as the XPS 13. The XPS 13 OLED notched a higher 117% and 83%, respectively. The Air M2’s display registered 107% of the sRGB color gamut and 75.9% of the more demanding DCI-P3 color space. Things looked just as good in terms of color reproduction and accuracy. That’s slightly better than what the MacBook Pro M2 turned in (474/490 nits) in the same tests and brighter than the Dell XPS 13 OLED’s 357-nit average. It averaged 489 nits of brightness and peaked at 495 nits with HDR content. The MacBook Air M2’s panel impressed in our lab tests as well.
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Plus, the picture was bright enough that I could enjoy the action from wide viewing angles. While watching the trailer for Minions: The Rise of Gru, I was captivated by the level of detail in little Gru’s eyes, hair and scarf as he exploded down the road on a jet-powered bike. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) (opens in new tab)
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