Lowest price! The MacBook Air M2 is $200 off in epic back-to-school sale
Apple's 13-inch MacBook is a great laptop for students returning to school
Prime Day may be over, but that doesn't mean you can't still take advantage of some great deals over at Amazon. And if you're a student who's about to return to school or college, the MacBook Air M2 has just hit its lowest ever.
Right now, the 13-inch MacBook Air (M2) is on sale at Amazon for $799. That's $200 off the 256GB model, as this lightweight laptop normally retails for $999, making for a juicy $200 saving. It's worth noting that this particular discount only applies to the silver, Space Gray and Starlight editions, with the Midnight version costing $899 at time of writing.
MacBook Air 13 (M2/8GB/256GB): was $999 now $799 @ Best Buy
LOWEST PRICE! The MacBook Air M2 is one of our most recommended laptops because it's remarkably light and thin yet sports a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, a speedy Apple M2 CPU w/ 8-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD and a great 1080p FaceTime camera. In our MacBook Air M2 review, we gave this laptop an Editor's Choice award because of its versatility, battery life and performance.
Price check: $799 @ Best Buy
While the M3 MacBook Air is also on sale for $899 at Amazon (down from $1,099, which makes for another $200 discount), every penny counts when you're a student. So if funds are tight as you prepare to go back to school, the M2 chip is still a very capable performer that will handle your everyday computing tasks for college with ease.
At $799, it's really tough not to recommend the M2 MacBook Air at such an appealing price point. After all, Crew Cupertino's super-skinny laptop started at $1,099 for the 256GB model when it first launched back in July 2022. So yeah, it's hardly a dinosaur, and it's not like you need the added power of the M3 chip to play the best Mac games, as you really should be working on that next paper, right?
When we first reviewed the M2 MacBook Air, our global editor in chief Mark Spoonauer had this to say: "The MacBook Air M2 is the best laptop for those willing to spend a little bit more for a great laptop. It delivers top-notch performance, over 14 hours of battery life and a bright and colorful display all in a delightfully portable design."
And now you get to pay much less.
From a design perspective, there's a whole lot to love about this Air. First and foremost, it's pretty remarkable that it weighs a mere 2.7 pounds, which makes it ideal for throwing into a backpack as you head to the library or next class. The fact it's just 0.44 inches wide is a similarly impressive piece of engineering.
Provided you're not looking for a prosumer MacBook to handle demanding video work, the M2 MacBook Air will suit your school needs just fine. When we first tested the incredibly svelte machine, it could comfortably handle photo editing, while we managed to run dozens of Google Chrome tabs on it and the 2022 Air didn't miss a beat.
Predictably being an Apple product, the display on the M2 MacBook Air M2 is a bit of a stunner. That 13.6-inch screen is both vibrant and colorful, and when we put it through its paces in our lab, it produced a more than respectable peak brightness of 495 nits. Its panel is also super-sharp, with a 2K screen (2560 x 1664) that makes it great for watching the best Netflix movies on. But come now. Shouldn't you be getting on with your studies?
A few final notes? It boasts a strong 1080p webcam and it's also somewhat of a battery beast, lasting for 14 hours and 6 minutes during our tests that involve continuous web surfing with the Air M2 set to 150 nits of screen brightness. And when it comes to ports, it sports a duo of Thunderbolt 4 ports, x2 USB-4 connections, a mic, and a headphone jack.
So if you need a new laptop for returning back to school, there aren't many better options out there when it comes to the M2 MacBook Air, which we were all too happy to award an Editor's Choice award to in our 4.5/5 review.
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Dave is a computing editor at Tom’s Guide and covers everything from cutting edge laptops to ultrawide monitors. When he’s not worrying about dead pixels, Dave enjoys regularly rebuilding his PC for absolutely no reason at all. In a previous life, he worked as a video game journalist for 15 years, with bylines across GamesRadar+, PC Gamer and TechRadar. Despite owning a graphics card that costs roughly the same as your average used car, he still enjoys gaming on the go and is regularly glued to his Switch. Away from tech, most of Dave’s time is taken up by walking his husky, buying new TVs at an embarrassing rate and obsessing over his beloved Arsenal.