13-inch MacBook Pro M2 will be available to preorder on June 17th

You won’t have to wait too long to buy a Mac with an M2 chip inside. Apple has announced that it will start taking orders for the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 on June 17th, with customers getting their orders on June 24th. The system starts at $1,299 ($1,199 for education) with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro offers a simple performance boost over the M1 model, for better or for worse. You’ll still get the familiar design, the Touch Bar and two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports. It’s still a capable machine with 20 hours of battery life, but this isn’t a major overhaul.

In a sense, its greatest rival will come from Apple: the still-to-be-released MacBook Air M2. You won’t get a cooling fan or the longest possible runtime, but you will get a larger screen, a MagSafe power connection, more free ports and a slimmer, lighter chassis. The 13-inch Pro is best for those who need sustained computing power for long periods, but can’t rationalize the cost of the 14-inch system.

Dell XPS 15 review (2022): Still the best 15-inch Windows laptop

How can Dell improve on its already excellent XPS 15? By adding the latest hardware from Intel, whose new hybrid chips promise far better multitasking performance than before. We loved the XPS 15’s updated design when it debuted two years ago, and last…