Disassembly of the MacBook Air M2: an accelerometer is present

After a first disassembly of the MacBook Air M2 recently, iFixit offers his. There are no big surprises compared to the previous generation, except for the presence of an accelerometer.

iFixit’s MacBook Air M2 teardown

The teardown shows that the MacBook Air has the M2 chip, an Apple-designed Thunderbolt 3 driver, chips for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and therefore that famous accelerometer. Apple has not publicly formalized its presence and there is currently no information on its use.

The model tested is the one with 256 GB of storage. And as confirmed by the first teardown, there is only one 256 GB SSD module. On the M1 model, there are two modules of 128 GB each. This switch to a module (which is also relevant on the MacBook Pro M2) is not very good news for users since benchmarks have shown that it is 50% slower in reading and around 30% more slow in writing compared to the M1 model. For its part, Apple ensures that the speed is there.

On the other hand, iFixit couldn’t find a heatsink, and the site isn’t clear on what passive cooling mechanism Apple might be using. “How does this thing get cold?” Sure, there’s a lot of thermal paste and graphite tape, and yes the M2 is effective, but that shield is super thin, so that doesn’t help much, and the case is lighter than last year. Maybe the MacBook Air M2 is secretly an iPad, or maybe Apple is just letting it get hot”says iFixit.

As for the battery, it is 52.6 Wh against 49.9 Wh on the M1 model. But according to Apple, the autonomy does not change (15 hours in Internet browsing, 18 hours in video playback).

Last, all MacBook Air ports are modular and not glued, but the SSD and M2 chip are soldered on and cannot be easily upgraded or replaced.