The MacBook Air I love is on sale for Cyber Monday [Updated]

Apple’s 13-inch M2 MacBook Air in Midnight is just $749 for Cyber Monday. I recently bought this machine myself, and I’m head-over-heels in love with it. It’s the best laptop I’ve had for years, and if you’re looking for a lightweight, everyday Mac, I highly recommend it.

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MacBook Air Cyber Monday

Loveable laptop

13-inch M2 MacBook Air, Midnight

5.0

~~$999.00~~ $799.00

Possibly the perfect laptop. The 13-inch MacBook Air brilliantly blends portability with performance. Top-notch industrial design and a beautiful Midnight finish.

Pros:

16GB RAM, 256GB SSD Storage
M2 chip: Built for Apple Intelligence
13.6-inch Liquid Retina Display
Backlit scissor-switch keyboard

Cons:

Non-upgradeable RAM or SSD
Poky 256GB storage

Buy from Amazon

Buy from Best Buy

01/03/2025 03:57 pm GMT

All this year I’ve been looking for a new MacBook Air. I wanted a light, portable machine that wouldn’t break the bank. I like working in noisy coffee shops. It helps me concentrate.

My work is mostly text-based, so I don’t need the latest M4 screamer. But I often have a million tabs open, so 16GB of RAM was the minimum. Plus, 16GB is better for Apple Intelligence.

I kept looking for deals, but most were for base-level 8GB machines. Finally, a 16GB, 13-inch M2 MacBook Air popped up at Best Buy for $800 (regularly $999) so I jumped on it.

Fool that I am!

It’s now on sale for Cyber Monday for just $750 at Amazon and Best Buy (save $250, or 25% off).

This is an insanely great deal

A 13-inch MacBook Air with the lid closed. — This is peak industrial design. It’s a beautiful piece of high-tech engineering.
Photo: Lyle Kahney/Cult of Mac

$750 for a machine of this quality is an insanely great deal. It’s nearly half the price when it was launched two years ago at $1,400 for the 16GB model.

Note: The $750 price tag makes this the cheapest way to get a new MacBook Air with Apple silicon and the latest industrial design. The newer 2024 MacBook Air with the M3 chip and 16GB of RAM is also on sale for $844.00 at Amazon ($255 off, or 23%) and $849 at Best Buy. If you want to spend the extra $100, you get a 20% faster chip, similar improvements in the GPU and Neural Engine, and support for a second external monitor. None of these were important to me, so I elected to save the extra money.

I’m head-over-heels in love with it. And not just for its functionality. I love the flatter, boxier design and blackish-bluish Midnight case. It’s a beautiful object, period.

Light and thin, I get a kick out of just opening the lid and marveling how the bottom doesn’t shift at all. I know from my reporting that Jony Ive and his industrial design team at Apple labored on special, complex hinges that allow this. No one but Apple sweats details like lid hinges, especially at this price.

Tons of thoughtful details

MacBook Air's magnetic MagSafe charging port and 2 Thunderbolt ports. — MagSafe is wonderful, and the two Thunderbolt ports are plenty.
Photo: Lyle Kahney/Cult of Mac

And that’s not all. The M2 Air has a bunch of thoughtful hardware details that make it a pleasure to use.

MagSafe is back! Possibly the single best feature. You can play all day with the magnetic charging tip that magically pulls itself from your fingers and attaches with a satisfying click.
A Touch ID button that actually works: Logging in and authorizing passwords is super quick and easy.
Bulletproof keyboard: Begone the cursed butterfly keyboard, and instead the Air has a full-size, backlit, scissor-switch keyboard with a full set of function keys at top.
World-class trackpad: I love the wonderful, responsive trackpad that’s so much nicer to use than any mouse.
Four-speaker setup: Sounds surprisingly great for movies, games, and video calls.
Classy braided cable: I love the details that only Apple cares about. Even the braided charging cable is premium.

Light and fast

Comparing the thickness of the MacBook Air to a pile of coins. — Yes, it’s thin.
Photo: Lyle Kahney/Cult of Mac

Weighing only 2.7 lbs, the M2 Air is almost a pound lighter than the 14-inch MacBook Pro (which weighs 3.6 lbs). It may not sound like much, but the Air is featherweight. I barely feel it in my backpack.

It’s also wafer-thin, less than an inch thick, even with four rubbery feet that protrude slightly from the bottom.

I much prefer its boxier design to the Air’s old wedge shape, which looks dated. It resembles the more expensive and very refined MacBook Pros.

The lovely screen

The new design allows for a bigger screen with thinner bezels. (The lid is mad thin, almost impossibly so).

The 13.6-inch Liquid Retina LED display is bright, glossy and vibrant. It’s the perfect size for working in most single-window apps.

It’s Full HD (2560 x 1664 pixels), which is easy to read and perfect for my needs. It’s a Retina screen: You can’t make out individual pixels. If it were higher resolution I’d likely have trouble making out text on the screen.

It’s super fast, but more importantly, multitasks well

Though a couple of generations old, the M2 chip is still very, very fast. No spinning beachballs for me.

Thanks to the clever system-on-a-chip (Soc) design and Unified Memory, the 8-core M2’s memory bandwidth is 100GB/s, twice as fast as comparable Intel chips. The 16GB of Unified Memory gives it plenty of headroom to run multiple apps at the same time. Paired with its fast SSD, any memory swapping is fast and painless.

All this makes multitasking a breeze, and it doesn’t even need a fan. The machine operates in complete silence and rarely heats up. No scorched privates.

Infinite battery life

Thanks to the battery-efficient SoC design, it’s extremely power-friendly. The battery life is almost unbelievable. Apple claims 18 hours, and in light usage, that’s what I get.

That means I often work 4 to 5 hours a day on a single weekly charge. Yeah, I charge it once a week! I rarely worry about bringing a charger. And if it runs low, it’s easy to find a USB-C cable to top it up via one of the Thunderbolt ports.

Downsides

If you’re considering this machine, there are a couple of drawbacks to be aware of:

Smudges: Yes, the Midnight color shows fingerprints and smudges, but it’s easily wiped clean with a cloth. It’s so good-looking, it’s worth it.
Non-upgradeable: You’re stuck with the memory and storage you buy initially. Neither the RAM nor the SSD can be upgraded later. That’s why you should get the 16GB model. Consider 8GB only for very light usage.
Skimpy storage: The 256GB SSD isn’t very big and I know it’ll become an issue down the line. It’ll definitely fill up sooner than later. But that’s what external drives and online storage are for. I’ll deal with that headache later.
Only two ports: The two Thunderbolt ports and lack of USB-A ports may give some people pause. But there are plenty of great, inexpensive USB hubs that add any port you need, from SD card slots to HDMI.
Supports only one external display: The M2 supports only a single external display (up to 6K). Not an issue for me.

The perfect laptop

Graphic illustrating features of M2 MacBook Air.

The 13-inch MacBook Air is the perfect everyday laptop. It’s a brilliant blend of portability with functionality. The design is flat-out gorgeous, and the Midnight color stuns.

And priced at just $750, it’s a great MacBook Air Cyber Monday deal.

Buy from: Amazon or Best Buy