MacBook Air 15-inch

The all-new 15-inch MacBook Air is so darn brilliant – not only is it bigger but, for many, it will simply be better

The name MacBook Air 15-inch sounds like a contradiction, right? Apple's 'Air' line should be floaty-light and surely that's not going to be achievable in a larger form factor? Wrong! The MacBook Air is the thinnest, lightest 15-inch laptop on the market, giving it some serious kudos.

This MacBook Air's 15.3-inch screen notice it's not 15.6-inch, that'd be bumping elbows too closely with the MacBook Pro 16-inch-means it's still fairly portable, while embodying the goodness of Apple's M2 silicon in a fanless (and therefore silent) design.

But that raises the question: is the 15-inch MacBook in 2023 literally just a larger version of the 13-inch model from 2022 then? Well, it's not far off but there are some additional points of difference, the vast majority of which are positive.

Really, that's the only downside: the 15-inch MacBook is a little thicker and heavier than the 13-inch model but barely - it's literally 270g heavier and just 0.2mm thicker.

And, naturally, you'll have to shell out quite a few more notes for it. In its entry-level format - which is really anything but, thanks to Apple's M2 silicon - the 15-inch MacBook Air is priced at £1,399. It's effectively a couple of hundred more for the bigger-screen model, which seems entirely reasonable for the added real estate.

Display favourites

And so to the main reason that you'll want to buy a 15-inch MacBook Air: its display. Here it's a 15.3-inch panel, which is unusual in the catchall '15-inch' world, as it's actually marginally smaller than the typical diagonal measure of 15.6-inch. For us this feels like a benefit though: it's not too big, not too small, fulfilling the Goldilocks principle.