Apple’s $1,299 15-inch MacBook Air is its largest to date

When is an ultraportable not an ultraportable? It’s a riddle posed by Apple’s latest addition to the MacBook Air family. The much-loved thin and light line just got its largest model to date. The 15-inch MacBook Air is – by some measures – also the company’s largest consumer laptop, given the work/enterprise focus on its 15- and 16-inch Pro models.

The company is, naturally, calling it the “thinnest 15 inch laptop to date,” weighing in at 3.3 pounds. As expected, the Air uses last year’s M2 chip (supply chain shortages are suspected to be at play here). That’s an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU. Memory can be configured up to 24GB and storage up to 2TB. There’s a MagSafe charger and only two thunderbolt/USB-C ports (like the 13-inch).

Image Credits: Apple

Apple is promising 18 hours of battery on a charge – and, again, as with the other Airs, there’s no fan on-board (“silent design,” as Apple calls it). The company’s clearly not expecting people to push it as hard as the Pro models.

Screen real estate has always been a bit of a sticking point for the line – though its also been understood that some sacrifices have to be made for the sake of portability. A 15-inch Air occupies an interesting space in the ever-shifting MacBook line, taking the parts of the company’s best laptop and scaling them up. The design means it’s quite portable for such a large screen – but again, portability is relative at 15 inches.

Image Credits: Apple

The 15-inch Air is available for pre-order today and ships next week, starting at $1,299. The 13-inch is sticking around, at $1,099 — a $100 price drop.

Apple’s $1,299 15-inch MacBook Air is its largest to date by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch