Apple just unveiled a Mac many of you have been lusting after for years: a bigger MacBook Air. The new 15-inch MacBook Air takes everything that we love about the 13-inch MacBook Air and super-sizes it, scaling up the screen (while maintaining battery life), and kicking the performance up a bit. However, everything else is pretty much the same.
The best part is what doesn't get bigger: The Air itself remains slim and light at 15 inches, and the $1,299 starting price (not to mention at $1,499 for the extra memory and storage) is as competitive as Apple products come.
Apple's MacBook Gets Big Air
On the 15-inch MacBook Air, just about everything is bigger. It starts with the display, which is sized up to 15.3 inches and has a resolution of 2,880 by 1,564 pixels. As a Liquid Retina IPS display, that gives it the same pixel density seen on the 13-inch model, but boosted in size for the larger dimensions of the 15-inch panel. The display brightness also remains the same, at up to 500 nits, and Apple says it will support full DCI-P3 color.
At least the audio system gets bigger, too. With room for six speakers inside, the 15-inch Air produces a bigger and bolder sound than earlier MacBook Airs. The highlight of this six-speaker array is the dual-woofer setup, which pairs upward and downward-firing woofers in a configuration that Apple calls "force-canceling sound."
Thanks to the physics of displacing air to create sound waves, pairing them in this up-and-down setup actually allows the pair of speakers to deliver more sound for the same amount of power. The result is a louder, richer sound with no hit to battery life.
The touchpad gets a proportional increase in size, as well, providing a similarly generous expanse of touchable surface, but a little wider and a lot taller, thanks to the 15-inch Air's larger palm rest. Naturally, that touchpad delivers all of the same gesture controls and haptic feedback that you will be familiar with if you're a Mac fan.
Apple has scaled up the base model for the 15-inch on the inside, as well, with the base processor being the version with the 10-core GPU that is offered as an upgrade on the 13-inch model. In addition, the larger chassis ought to allow for slightly better passive cooling in the fanless design. That could translate into better-sustained peak performance out of the 15-inch system than you would find on its smaller sibling. (This will only apply under specific circumstances, as general day-to-day performance should be nearly identical between the two systems. But I will reserve judgment until I get a chance to actually test it in the lab.)
Finally, the larger MacBook Air holds a larger battery, which Apple claims will give you up to 18 hours of battery life. (While watching Apple TV, that is; Apple rates it at 15 hours for mixed web use.) Given that the 13-inch model topped out around 13 hours and promised the same amount, that should be par for the course.
Apples to Apples: What Doesn't Change
With so many features being enlarged for the 15-inch MacBook Air, it's also worth noting what stays the same.
The ultra-slim design of the MacBook Air is exactly the same as it is on the 13-inch model. Measuring only 0.45 inch thick and weighing just 3.3 pounds, this is an absolute featherweight of a machine, is easily hoisted with one hand, and is light enough that it will barely be felt in a laptop bag. The visual design is also the same, with the same slim profile and rounded corners providing plenty of family resemblance.
The other thing carried over from the 13-inch model is the port selection. If you are hoping that a larger MacBook Air would also include niceties like an HDMI output, you're out of luck. The port selection is exactly the same as on the smaller model, with a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, a single 3.5mm audio jack, and a MagSafe charging port. If you need an SD card slot, an HDMI output, a full-size USB, or anything else, you'll need to pack along a docking station or adapter—or spring for a MacBook Pro.
Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air also comes in the same colors: Silver, Starlight, Space Gray, and Midnight, with a color-matched MagSafe charger.
The Takeaway: Could This Be a Big Value MacBook?
Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air price is higher than that of the 13-incher, but not by much, at just $1,299 to start. The smaller 13-inch MacBook Air launched with an $1,199 price, but just saw its starting price drop to $1,099 upon the launch of the 15-inch model, making the total price difference $200 instead of what would have been just $100.
While Apple didn't take this opportunity to add more ports, the 15-inch MacBook Air enlarges the macOS experience in just about every other way. Plus, it comes in quite competitively priced against just about every flagship Windows laptop—15 inches or otherwise.
The new Apple MacBook Air 15-inch is available to order now and will begin selling on Tuesday, June 13. We expect to have it in the lab for testing pretty soon, so keep an eye out for our full review. Meanwhile, check out our deeper comparison of the 15-inch Air with the last version of the 13-incher we tested.
