Review of the New Mac Products from WWDC: Mac Studio and 15-inch MacBook Air

At last week’s WWDC, new Mac products were also announced.

Among them, I have the trial equipment of “Mac Studio” and “15-inch MacBook Air” at hand, so let’s check how it has changed.

15-inch model with attractive screen size and “sound quality”

First from MacBook Air.

15-inch MacBook Air.color is midnight

It can be said that it is a model with a large display of 15.3 inches while keeping the contents of the 13-inch model equipped with M2 that came out last year.

Compare size with 14-inch MacBook Pro.It’s a little bigger impression

The size of the keyboard and touchpad is the same as other models

It’s an overly simplistic explanation, but it’s true. I took a benchmark, but the performance is almost the same as the 13-inch model. The battery operating time in the catalog is also the same at 18 hours.

So, the essence is “whether a large screen is necessary”. I think this is quite an ant.

A large screen is better not only for work, but also for watching videos. I think it’s powerful enough for personal use. If it weighs close to 2.5kg like in the past, it will be a problem, but in the case of the MacBook Air, it is 1.51kg, so it is not that heavy. I also feel that it is lighter than the image received from the size of the appearance.

Unlike the MacBook Pro, it does not use mini LED + local dimming, so the brightness is not so high. However, among LCD products, Macs generally have high image quality, and MacBook Air is no exception.

What surprised me more than the image quality was the “sound quality”. It is equipped with a woofer and is quite close to that of the MacBook Pro. I also feel the ringing of the sound with a large size is good. The spatial audio effect is better than the 13-inch MacBook Air, and it is suitable not only for music but also for watching movies.

“Mac Studio” has become faster in the M2 generation. Enhanced GPU + new software to enhance the appeal of the game

Now let’s move on to Mac Studio.

Mac Studio.The processor generation has changed, but the design is the same

This time, Mac Studio has also moved to the “M2 generation” and has been equipped with M2 Max or M2 Ultra. There is also a “Mac Pro” that uses the same processor and has PCI bus expandability, but this time it was the Mac Studio that was lent out.

The evaluation machine is a model equipped with M2 Max (CPU 12 cores, GPU 38 cores, main memory 96 GB).

Last year I had the opportunity to review the M1 Ultra (CPU 20 cores, GPU 64 cores, main memory 128 GB) equipped model, but let’s compare it with the benchmark at that time.

Although it cannot compete with multi-core performance, it is nearly 20% faster with single-core performance, and the GPU has a considerably advantageous value compared to the number of cores. If you compare with the same class, about 20% of the performance has been steadily improved, and it can be considered that it is a bargain for that amount. It is attractive in applications such as graphic production and video editing, where time reduction due to performance is important.

In addition, the improvement in GPU performance is also a plus for games.

This time, I used the current macOS Ventura and compared the frame rate in “Resident Evil Village”. The resolution is 1,920 x 1,080 dots and the graphic setting is set to the heaviest “limit break”.

In the opening scene of “Resident Evil Village”, the settings are the same and the frame rate is compared

We compared the 15-inch MacBook Air (M2), the 14-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Pro), and the Mac Studio (M2 Max).

You can see the results. Although it was in a scene with low load, it became an overwhelming value in Mac Studio. A higher resolution would still be comfortable.

Results for MacBook Air 15 inch (M2), MacBook Pro 14 inch (M1 Pro), Mac Studio (M2 Max) in order. Mac Studio has an amazing frame rate

Games on Mac… You may think, but at WWDC, the “Game Porting Toolkit” was released to make it easier to port Windows games to Mac. It’s essentially an emulator that lets you run Windows games running Direct X12 almost out of the box. If so, the time may come when it’s not so strange to play games on a Mac.

At that time, the time will come when not only professionals but gamers will buy Mac Studio. With that in mind, the benchmark results are pretty interesting.