Further blurring the Mac notebook lineup the 15″ M2 MacBook Air is part Pro, part Air, and part disappointment.
When I think “Air” I think of the tiny, envelope sized delicacy of the first edition, but I also think of the most replaceable battery of its time. When the Retina was taking the MacBook world by storm, and stubbornly gluing down its batteries, the Air’s simple battery replacement procedure was a breath of fresh… well, you get it. Today’s standard Air is a bit more complicated, and with the advent of the larger “semi-pro” 15″ Air that trend not only continues, but deepens.
To Pro or Not to Pro
This bulked up beauty is a mere .2 mm thicker than the 13″, but weighs a nearly Pro-sized 22% more. With no active cooling this machine is clearly not intended to compete with the Pro line, but at that weight, “Air” seems more misnomer than anything.
Repair Nightmare
The Air takes more after a parfait than the Airs of yore. Components are layered on top of each other, leaving the best for the very last. Unfortunately for the 15″ Air, the battery is one of the very last components to come out. The rear case, speakers, heat shield, and logic board must all come out before you can get to it. That’s not even mentioning the dozens of screws, brackets and easy-to-damage connectors along the way.
Li-ion batteries will always wear out, no matter if they’re 66.5 W and 25% bigger than their predecessors, that’s just chemistry. Not even the additional cells—probably to enable faster charging—can prevent eventual degradation. That means batteries should be the most accessible and easily replaced component in any battery-powered tech.
Air Power—Not the Failed One
The 15″ Air has a 26% more pixels compared to the 13″ Air, and gains an equivalent amount of battery power. Screens are hungry, but are they that hungry? Our guess is that the increase in battery size more than covers for the bigger screen, but marketing wants the specs to line up with its Airy siblings, and not compete too much with the Pro lineup.
Speaking Loud and Clear
It’s not all hot air in here, the new 6-speaker system is actually very clever. As a point of fact there are only two speaker units, one for each side, but each has three internal drivers. Two of the drivers are opposed, composing the force-canceling woofer, which maximizes volume while minimizing unwanted vibrations. The third is actually 90º off axis, driving sound straight through the Air’s grilles, very cute stuff.
Putting the “Air” in Repair?
All in all the 15″ MacBook Air earns a 5/10* on our repairability scale. It’s worth noting that much of that is due to the lack of potential failure points like the fan—a strategy that hopefully pays off in the long run. It’s also worth noting that Apple earns nearly two full points for having publicly released their service manual and for making replacement parts available to end users.
* Editor’s Note: We initially awarded a repairability score of 3/10, but uprated it to 5/10 after Apple came through with a public service manual and replacement parts.
4 Comments
Typically iFixit hates on apple. U think the Apple Engineers are dumb? they know what heatsink type they need for their inhouse chips. the air is staying perfectly cool for the tasks its made for. so ur stupid hate that it has no fans is pointless.
Peter Ben Jumanne - Reply
The lack of cooling fan is quite irrelevant for performance, since as Linus demonstrated with previous Macbook Airs, the chip is power limited so any improvement in cooling would not make a great improvement. However a cooling fan could be beneficial to keep the chassis temperature lower and improve user comfort, at the detriment of noise and reliability. There is a market for a fanless laptop, particularly if you think of a classroom or office environment. The battery replacement is annoying, but due to the large capacity, I fully expect this battery to go the distance and last more than long enough it's not like you can really cycle the battery more than once per day of normal use.
Tom Zeimet - Reply
Your teardowns used to be fun, but turned to whining that you can't sell spare parts.
Pavel Kubal - Reply
On the M2 MB Air 15", I used the MacPorts package manager to try to install a few apps. After about 60 seconds of compiling on all cores, the CPU core temp reached 105 deg C and the UI/Finder response became sluggish, suggesting throttling. The same would happen with any sustained load with image/video processing, or simulation/graphics tools. I use a M3 MBP for these use cases (the Airbook belongs to my spouse), but based on what I saw, and iFixit's observation, I think Apple did less than they should have to couple the silicon thermally to a spreader and the Airbook case.
stefanoaz - Reply