MacBook Air M2 vs The Best Windows Laptops!

The new Apple MacBook Air with the M2 chip is supposed to be a battery life and performance leader in the thin and light laptop category. This MacBook Air is all new for 2022 and the M2 chip is crazy fast but how does it compare to the best Windows Laptops we've reviewed? Let's see how the Ryzen 7 6800U in the Zenbook S 13 OLED and Intel Alder Lake i7-1260P preform vs the Apple M2. So is the MacBook Air worth it?

0:00 - The Apple MacBook Air M2 vs...EVERYTHING
0:46 - Specs
2:49 - Design and Build Quality
4:50 - All the Sizes & Weights
5:18 - Let's talk Power Cables
6:23 - Sponsor Spot
6:57 - The Best Keyboard?
9:26 - Are Trackpads Amazing?
10:46 - The Ports & IO
11:52 - Does the Apple Webcam Stack Up?
13:04 - Speakers...the Good, Bad & Ugly
14:05 - Who has the best Screen?
15:57 - Upgrade Options & SSD's
17:11 - Real-World Benchmarks
18:24 - Photo & Video Edition with the M2
19:45 - MacBook M2 Battery Life vs Windows
20:32 - Performance on Battery
21:08 - Noise Levels & Temperatures
21:52 - Final Thoughts

Review unit provided free of charge by Apple, ASUS and Lenovo. This video is sponsored by Corsair. As per Hardware Canucks guidelines, no review direction was received from manufacturer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Gear list (Available on Amazon):
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[buttattatt]

big props to apple for having a fanless device that is cooler than devices WITH fans, really shows the true power of the efficiency cores and the overall apple silicon architecture, also nice to see some windows laptops stepping up as competition

[themightiness]

I actually just got the M2 MBA a few weeks ago. It's my first Mac ever and I love it. It'll never replace my desktop PC of course, but for a dedicated work machine I couldn't be happier. I get over 2 full days of work on one battery charge which is incredible and the experience is so smooth. It's really like a giant phone. I can close the lid and in sleep it still receives imessages and rings on the laptop... but it'll last in that state for days and days. I used to be a big Lenovo fan back in the day but the efficiency of the current Intel chips is just so disappointing, I wish they would offer a Ryzen version of the X1.

[Ndumixo]

If Microsoft were to produce their own chips which would be tightly integrated with Windows performance, the game would change forever.

[tomis]

Thanks. So many channels barely compare battery life of windows laptops with mac or fail to do different tasks while measuring. Your three tests on battery life are exactly what I was looking for. Makes the decision tougher but more informed. Hope you do the same with the 14" and 16" m2 pro/max/ whatever they call them with other top tier windows pcs when ryzen 7000 and 13 gen intel comes out.

[LuffyY]

The Zenbook was a great choice. At the end it isn't about how good a machine is on paper or how it feels. It's about what software you need to run and if you want to game and at which level.

[vlkhvan]

I went with a base MBA M2. I don't do anything super-heavy on this machine. Most of my work is coding and accessing remote servers, and this is a perfect device for this type of workload. Great battery life, amazing screen, and awesome keyboard. Plus, fanless and super portable

[vishalpal]

A very decent comparison mate. Just wanted to point out since I own the S13 that Zenbook S13 has all 3 usb c ports compatible with Display Port and Charging capable. Maybe the review units sent earlier were different but mine has all 3 ports with full compatibility and interestingly they seem to be usb4 capable (with a BIOS update which might come later. A beta bios was available though which proved this). Also the lower performance on zenbook on battery is because of 18W power limit on battery power which you can bypass using any ryzenadj based tool like AMD APU tuning utility. It unlocks the full wattage like when plugged in and you get nearly same performance on battery (Maybe less battery life though so could be a tradeoff)

[hishnash]

One thing to note when looking at TB ports it is very important to look at the systems internally to check if each port has its own dedicated controller and bandwidth or if the 2 ports are sharing a controller. It is not uncommon for laptops to ship with 2 ports being handled by a single controller and thus sharing the bandwidth, this is ok if you running 2 lower resolution displays from them but if you wanted to say run a 4k 60 display or higher you will commonly find that you cant use both ports at once as there is just no enough bandwidth, . The other limitation can be power delivery if the ports share a power backplane then you can find if you plug in 2 devices that both need to draw some power (like a larger external and charging a phone) that one of the devices might fail to get power or will get a very very small power provided that might not be enough.

Another situation that can be very painful if the TB ports share bandwidth is if you want to use a high speed ethernet adaptor on one port and a display on the other.

[Dedej]

Just want to say that the Macbook Air M2 in the video config cost €2329 here in Europe. U can get the 14inch Macbook Pro basemodel for €2249 (But with 512GB storage)

[BrianJones-wkcx]

Great perspective on the question of competition between the platforms in thin and lights. While the M2 is the marquee entry, the field is pretty impressive all around. It’s a great time to be a consumer, thank you for your continued excellence in coverage!

[UltraFighter]

Regarding the screen brightness, LTT recently did a video and they showed how better contrast and color saturation changes the perception regarding brightness. The thing is Asus's OLED display can very well be perceived by our eyes as brighter because of the better brightness control, way better contrast and color saturation. It's overall a better screen. The same way OLED TVs aren;t as bright but HDR generally delivers a more impactfull images because of the element I mentioned above.

[sethdbrown]

You should've threw in the Asus Vivobook 14 Pro Oled. Ryzen 5800h with Nvidia Rtx 3050, 16gb Ram, 1TB ssd, all for around $1300

[JohnnyB]

I moved by chance from DELL to ASUS over that last few years.
I got a really great offer on a older 14" ZenBook - that was just supposed to be for web browsing and travel.
But when my main laptop broke / became a brick [DELL XPS 15] I was reliant on the ASUS for everything.
And it never let me down.
[in contrast the DELL XPS was a replacement for a DELL Precision M that also became a useless brick a week or two after it was 1 year old and out of warranty]
Now my main workhorse is an ASUS Zephyrus, and I am very happy with it.
Anyway, not really the same category as what you have here in this video, but I am just putting across that on the reliability stand point in my experience ASUS are great and you do get offers where you can get them for a bargain price.
cheers!
JB

[gibby]

I have been loving my M2 Air so far! I got the 16gb ram and 512gb storage at a heavy discount with the Apple student discount and I'm so happy! Coming from a mid-2015 Macbook Pro (maxed out apart from the storage fyi), the battery, feel, lightness, speed, and more is just so fantastic. Highly recommend whatever M-series Apple laptop you can afford, they are all super good!

[codeebebout-valentine]

I'd actually be very interested to see how the M2 MacBook performs with Windows 10 or 11 on it.... Those specs and that long battery life would be incredible with Windows!

[maxmusic]

Alder lake cpus are fantastic when building a pc. I mean the i5 12600k is a beast. Beating out even the Ryzen 9 5900x in some cases. BUT putting an alder lake chip in a laptop, where battery life, heat, and fan noise are important. It’s just not a good idea.

[TheRealMafoo]

I am not sure I would say “undoubtedly” with respect to performance being better on the Mac. This seems to only be true for video editors. for the other 99%, the AMD looks pretty strong.

[naels]

I have been using apple and windows (Lenovo) for years now and i am sad to say that the competition between windows and apple is almost non existing! Windows is obviously a better choice for some specific tasks, but overall its hard to beat an apple specially with their new M chips. Again it all depends on the kind of work you do. For me, as a researcher in the field of history of architecture, i use my computer mainly for writing, doing some presentation, reading, checking emails, bowsing the web and some light autocad and photoshop and the MacBook air does this perfectly! with a great battery life and its amazing portability. Really having an Macbook Air (I have the 2020 intel) gives you a great feeling of knowing that you can take your laptop everywhere, work on it for hours and it will never fail you. I would really love to have a windows laptop with the easy to use interface of apple and the reliability of IOS but until now there is nothing like it. I will hopefully be getting my M2 air soon. Thank you for a very good review.

[deejayrubio]

I have to say.. this is truly fun to watch.. that level of detail in comparing the three is absolutely clear. thanks!

[satishprasannan]

The USB Ports on the Zenbook S 13 OLED are USB 4 Ready (via firmware} and all of them support Power Delivery and display port.