A solid-state cooling system called AirJet was able to cool an M2 MacBook Air enough to keep with the M2 MacBook Pro when running a demanding benchmark test over a sustained period.
The bad news is that the system isn’t available for sale to consumers to retrofit, and it’s hardly likely that Apple will use it to remove a key differentiator between the two models – but the company behind the tech does think it could help Apple reduce the size of cooling fans in future MacBook Pro models …
Macworld reports.
The AirJet is what Frore calls a “solid-state active cooling chip” that measures 27.5 by 41.5 by 2.8 mm, a lot smaller and thinner than a typical computer fan. It’s so thin that Frore was able to take an M2 15-inch MacBook Air and fit a set of AirJet chips inside the laptop. AirJet can keep the MacBook Air temperature at a proper level so the chip doesn’t have to throttle down.
Using the Cinebench R23 benchmark, an off-the-shelf M2 MacBook Air was 7 percent slower than the M2 MacBook Pro. But the modified M2 MacBook Air with an AirJet setup matched the Cinebench score of the MacBook Pro.
AirJet is a thin assembly of different materials used to make membranes vibrate. These can be used to create back-pressure to move air in a particular direction across the surface, so drawing in air from an inlet and pushing it out of an outlet. In other words, it does the same job as a conventional laptop fan, but taking up much less space, and using much less power.
Macworld suggests that if Apple used this tech in a MacBook Pro, it could create room for more battery. Whether it could really work well enough for this isn’t clear, but it did demonstrate the ability of the fanless MacBook Air to keep up for a 30-minute period of very demanding use.
Right now, the AirJet cooling system is early-stage tech that maker Frore is clearly aiming to pitch to Apple and other laptop makers. You can check out the demo in the video below.
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