Best Mac Laptop or Desktop for You – Consumer Reports

Apple makes two notebooks, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Both are powered by versions of the company’s M2 processor and do well in our ratings, but they’re aimed at different audiences.

The Air starts at $1,200, comes in one size (13 inches), and is a smart choice for everyday use. It’s capable of running a wide variety of apps, whether that’s a web browser such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari; a word processor like Google Docs, Pages, or Word; or a spreadsheet program such as Excel, Numbers, or Sheets.

Apple also still sells the 2020 Air, powered by the M1 processor, starting at $1,000. It lacks some of the improvements of the M2 Air, such as a better webcam, but is still a powerful and worthwhile laptop.

And because Apple’s M processors use the same underlying architecture as the processor found on the iPhone and iPad, you can run iOS apps on the Mac. It’s a neat feature—I enjoy using my preferred podcast app, called Overcast, on my MacBook Air—but because the Mac doesn’t have a touchscreen, the experience is slightly clunky.

At 2.7 pounds, the computer is lightweight (you’d hope so with a name like Air) but not uniquely so. The 13-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 and the 13-inch Dell XPS 2021 also weigh in at 2.8 pounds, while LG’s 14-inch Gram is a feathery 2.2 pounds.

In terms of specs, the Air starts with the Apple M2 processor, 8 gigabytes of memory, and 256GB of solid state storage, a type of storage technology that’s faster than traditional hard drives. Its battery can last as long as 16 hours on a single charge, according to our tests, an increase of 3 hours over the 2020 M1 Air.