you guys asked when i was gonna use that
title again so here you go
we were wrong about the m1 macbook air
but i am so glad that we
along with many others were wrong and
i'll explain why in just a bit hey guys
it's max and welcome to my long-term
review of the 2020
m1 macbook air it's incredible
there are zero issues with it yes you
should buy it
a gigs of ram is fine and seven core
graphics don't matter
it barely thermal throttles it is stupid
fast
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the description click that circle above
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this has been max and i will see you in
the next video
all right all right fine i will expand
on my experience
after two weeks with this machine with
some really interesting findings but if
you guys don't want to watch
any more that summary is completely
accurate
i absolutely loved the previous intel
macbook air
but it had a few issues and downsides
which i'll cover
but the biggest one was how dang hot it
got
even from basic tasks and if you did
something somewhat difficult
the fan would scream and even at full
speed it wouldn't cool down
until a few minutes after you quit what
you were doing because of that we
recommended people to buy the dual core
i3 model
with weak graphics because the quad
cores would thermal throttle and slow
down
anyway but even the i3 would be loud if
you are web conferencing
and watching a video at the same time
that is because intel
cpus run hot and apple's cooling
solution
sucked but i still loved it and picked
it up over the 13-inch macbook pro for
normal use
because i love the design the classic
wedge shape
not only looks great but it's also more
comfortable for typing
since the edges don't dig into your
wrists like they do with the boxy pros
i'm also a sucker for the gold color
which you can't get with any other mac
and the air doesn't have the annoying
touch bar
with that said if i had to do anything
mildly intensive like photo or video
editing
or even multitasking i would have to go
grab a pro
but not anymore now yes it is slower
than the pro and i'll show you exactly
how much slower soon
but that's no longer an issue i know
it's no longer new
but the magic keyboard is fantastic to
type on
and thankfully we have no reports of
reliability issues
since it has come out the trackpad is
also the best of the best now yes it is
slightly smaller than the pros
but i've never noticed a difference in
usability when switching between them
the speakers are also very good better
than pretty much
all windows laptops and it's actually
louder than the m1 macbook pro
albeit slightly worse quality go ahead
and take a listen for yourself
with that the webcam is still the same
720p
module apple has been using for years
but the m1 chip's image signal processor
does a better job at video processing
here it is side by side with my favorite
windows laptop
the new xps 13 9310 i'm not sure if the
microphones were changed or just the
audio processing but it sounds fantastic
and for reference here's how the dells
mic sound compared to it
this is the microphone quality from the
dell xps 9310
this is the microphone quality of the m1
macbook air
because of that in the new fanless
design with the m1
i believe that the macbook air is the
best web conferencing laptop
on this planet the ssds on the air were
decent before but they were slower than
the pros
but now they are much faster which helps
opening apps
and with ram swap another issue i had
with the macbook air
was the display now the resolution was
always great with a retina rated 2560 by
1600 resolution which is a perfect blend
of sharpness and battery life
compared to many windows laptops where
you have to choose between 1080p or 4k
my complaints were the brightness and
colors when this design launched we had
no true tone which adjusts the white
balance based on your lighting
but apple added that later to match the
macbook pros next
was brightness it launched at 300 nits
but then they updated it to 400 nits
which is still
dimmer than 500 of the pros but not
enough to matter for most
the last thing was colors the pro
supported dci p3 colors just like
iphones and ipads
which makes it the clear choice for
those that are serious about photo or
video editing
but thankfully apple finally added it to
this
m1 macbook air and when you consider the
256 gigabytes of base storage
at 999 compared to 128 gigabytes for
1200 when it launched in 2018
it is an incredible value and that's
without taking performance into account
so let's finally talk about it compared
to the 10th gen intel base 2020 macbook
air
the new m1 chip absolutely smokes it and
what i'm showing you
is the very best i7 model macbook air
which was a 250
dollar upgrade here is the i5 quad core
which was a 100
upgrade and finally the base model that
the m1 chip
replaces at the same price where it
becomes really comical
is when we add in the very best i9
quad-core processor in the 16-inch
macbook pro
that you'll spend at least 2 700 on
now of course this doesn't account for
thermal throttling which we'll cover in
a sec
but here's how the air compares to the
very best
new 11th generation intel i7 and the top
spec
xps 13 that costs at least 1700
but wait there's more that is with the
xps plugged in
when we unplug it the performance drops
dramatically and that's with windows and
dell power settings set to maximum
performance modes
whereas the m1 macbook air performs the
same
regardless and it's completely silent
basically what i'm trying to say is that
this thing is an
absolute beast now as far as single core
performance
the m1 chips are the highest that i've
ever seen and because of that
everyday tasks feel much snappier than
my fifteen thousand dollar mac pro
now i'm not going to get into the crazy
specifics like wattage
frequencies and how the m1 is pulling
this off
let's just call it magic for now and
let's leave the details for our macbook
pro review
if you guys want to see that click that
subscribe button below as for the
graphics it's
also impressive smoking the intel
macbook air
and once again that was the best i7
comparing it to the same price i3 model
it is just
embarrassing and this is the 7 core gpu
not the 8 core now of course these are
benchmarks and not real world tests
so here's me video editing and exporting
a 5 minute color graded 4k project
the i7 macbook air took 19 minutes and
40 seconds
and the m1 took three minutes and six
seconds and i didn't even want to test
out the base i3 model that's priced the
same
the same project in davinci resolve took
5 minutes and 40 seconds
and the brand new most powerful dell xps
13
takes 12 minutes and 50 seconds with the
fans
screaming whereas the air is completely
silent
like i said at the start this thing is
stupid
fast so now that we've proven the
performance let's answer
the biggest questions most of you have
how much slower
is the air compared to the pro since
it's fanless
and should you get the 8 core graphics
option and with that
should you get 16 gigs of ram yes the
air does run hotter than the pro under
sustained load
and the performance does drop over time
as i found in cinebench
with a total of about a 15 loss once it
fully heats up
which takes about seven minutes but
after that it performs consistently for
hours
overall the same m1 chip in the macbook
pro is 20
more powerful under sustained 100 cpu
loads
but doing that is quite rare so what
does that mean for real world
performance
as i mentioned i previously wouldn't
recommend the air for photo and video
editing
but now it is surprisingly capable so i
decided to push it to its absolute
limits
starting with exporting 500
42 megapixel raw images that have a
bunch of color changes
to fully test thermal throttling in the
real world
our 13 inch macbook pro took 29 minutes
and three seconds which is shockingly
fast
as even desktop pcs struggle with these
massive files
and the macbook air took just three and
a half minutes longer
even though it's completely silent and
this is one of the few
tasks where i can actually hear the
macbook pros fans spin up
three and a half minutes is nothing
unless you do this
each and every day with that the actual
photo editing
smoothness is the same next i threw the
toughest video editing test that i have
at the air which maxes out the 7 core
graphics and uses a ton of cpu
the pro took 27 minutes and 30 seconds
to export
and the air took just two and a half
minutes longer
i also tested this on my mac mini which
has by far the best cooling out of the
three m1 max
and mine also has 16 gigabytes of ram
and that was only three and a half
minutes faster
than this fanless macbook air so does
thermal throttling
matter with the macbook air no not
really i would definitely not buy the
pro just because it has a fan
and that's how many of us tech youtubers
were wrong
we expected the air to perform quite a
bit worse than the pro since it was
fanless
and you can't really blame us because
every other fanless machine in the past
would thermal throttle like crazy that
is until
the m1 macbook air because of that
and how well rosetta works to translate
intel based apps like lightroom classic
and all of the other improvements i
already mentioned the macbook air
is the perfect laptop for almost
everybody
and 95 percent of you that are trying to
decide between the macbook air and the
pro
should get the macbook air and no i
wouldn't spend the extra for the eight
core graphics and as far as ram
from our testing eight gigabytes of the
new unified ram seems to
act like 16 gigabytes of regular ram so
if you are fine with 16 gigs before
you should be fine with eight but if you
want to see
my real world ram stress test with the
pro that's also completely relevant with
the macbook air you guys can check out
that video
after this one the m1 macbook air is the
first
perfect laptop that i have ever tested
at least as close to perfect as possible
and considering the price point and form
factor i
have zero complaints now of course you
can't run
windows yet on this machine but vadim
does have a gaming video going up
tomorrow
where he actually runs different windows
games and yes you can't use an egpu
on this mac at least for now but with
that said
the previous macbook air was pretty much
worthless even if you attach any gpu
because of thermal throttling
so with that said i consider the m1
macbook air
perfect oh and one last thing i thought
that the instant on thing was kind of
gimmicky
but after using this and going back to
an intel mac
the three to five second startup after a
deep sleep
frustrates the heck out of me now also
the battery life is
absolutely ridiculous for normal use
most people will only need to charge
every three to five days
go ahead and let me know your thoughts
down in the comments section below and i
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video description
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right over there this been max and i
will see you in the next video