The MacBook Pro 14 combines a little bit of old with a whole lot of new for a tantalizing product that MacBook fans were waiting years for.

If you find yourself cresting the $1,499 mark for your configuration then you may want to consider the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, which can regularly be found for $1,799. As I mentioned, the Air M1 is Apple's trick for keeping the $999 price point, so you are paying a premium for the M2 model. The biggest consideration with the Air M2 is the price if you need to upgrade much from the $1,199 base model. That first will be particularly welcome to students that are using the Air M2 in classrooms, coffee shops or a corner of the library with less than optimal lighting conditions. The list of upgrades also includes a brighter display, a quad-speaker array and a new 1080p webcam. The fact that it does all this while staying whisper quiet and cool without fans remains astounding. The M2 gives you a reasonable performance bump, bringing it roughly on par with the M1 Pro and it still delivered 14 hours and 6 minutes in our battery life test. The notch in the display takes a minute to get used to, but the rest of the changes are welcome with the addition of MagSafe charging freeing up those two Thunderbolt 4 ports for other purposes. While most college students will be happy with the MacBook Air M1, there's no denying the appeal of the new design and chip inside the Air M2.

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