The M2 does more than improve speeds and endurance. That was enough to land it atop our list of laptops with the best battery life, a feature that is sure to come in handy at some point in your college career. While the redesigned Air and larger MacBook Pros may look sleeker, you could have the last laugh when their owners are looking for an outlet to charge while you have hours to go as the Pro lasted for an almost unbelievable 18 hours and 20 minutes on our battery test. The design, while admittedly a bit dated, it's hard to get too mad at the classic look. The internal upgrade with the M2 gave it a more significant performance boost than many expected, which keeps it well ahead of the Windows 11 competition at this price point and well beyond. The MacBook Pro M2 is an excellent laptop that is a bit overshadowed by its siblings. See our full 14-inch MacBook Pro (2023) review. With that said, stick to that base model, spending more than $2,000 on a MacBook Pro is completely unnecessary for 99% of users. While you can now find the base model for around $1,799, well-specced models you will quickly cross $2,500 and can land north of $3,000 in a hurry for M2 Max configurations. Waiting for the other shoe to drop? It's the same old Apple shoe, price. Add to this the more than 14 hours of battery life, quick charging, a gorgeous display, and a robust quad-speaker array and it's easy to see how this laptop will win over a lot of college students. And the M2 Pro or M2 Max chips can handily defeat the Intel and AMD competition at any task outside of gaming. The MacBook Pro 14 is lightweight and sleek while still offering a full HDMI and an SDXC card reader. The performance is going to be more than the average college student needs, but for those in majors with more demanding computing needs like engineering, coding, or creative work, this is the right choice for you. The MacBook Pro 14 is an evolution over its revolutionary predecessor, but it's an incredible blend of portability and power for college students. If you find yourself cresting the $1,499 mark for your configuration then you may want to consider the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, which can regularly be found for $1,799. As I mentioned, the Air M1 is Apple's trick for keeping the $999 price point, so you are paying a premium for the M2 model. The biggest consideration with the Air M2 is the price if you need to upgrade much from the $1,199 base model. That first will be particularly welcome to students that are using the Air M2 in classrooms, coffee shops or a corner of the library with less than optimal lighting conditions. The list of upgrades also includes a brighter display, a quad-speaker array and a new 1080p webcam. The fact that it does all this while staying whisper quiet and cool without fans remains astounding. The M2 gives you a reasonable performance bump, bringing it roughly on par with the M1 Pro and it still delivered 14 hours and 6 minutes in our battery life test. The notch in the display takes a minute to get used to, but the rest of the changes are welcome with the addition of MagSafe charging freeing up those two Thunderbolt 4 ports for other purposes. While most college students will be happy with the MacBook Air M1, there's no denying the appeal of the new design and chip inside the Air M2.
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