- Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
If you're new here, my name is Ali,
I'm a doctor based in the UK,
and this is a review
of the brand new Apple 2020 M1 MacBook Air.
And because, as you guys know,
I'm a huge fan of upfront conclusions,
I'm just gonna tell you upfront
I think this laptop is basically as close to perfect
as an entry-level laptop can be.
The early 2020 version of the MacBook Air was nearly there.
It was nearly the perfect laptop.
And even then I said that if anyone is in the market
for a laptop and you can afford a MacBook
and you want a MacBook,
you should just go for the MacBook Air.
That one had issues with thermal performance and fan noise
and overheating and stuff,
this one has none of those issues.
This laptop is absolutely sick.
And in the rest of the review, I'm going to try and justify
why I think this laptop is absolutely sick
and why it's pretty much a no brainer
if you're in the market for a reasonably priced MacBook,
look no further than this.
This is the one.
So if you've got $1,000
that you wanna spend on a laptop or 900 if you're a student,
'cause you can get this on student discount,
then you might as well just buy it.
I'll put a link in the video description,
for whatever that's worth and you can just buy it
and you can turn this video off
and do something better with your time.
But if you're interested in the full review,
that's what I'm gonna be talking about.
Now let's start by talking about the processor
and this is the big news.
Now in the past,
Apple has been using Intel based processors,
but now as of like this week,
they have switched some of the laptops, the MacBook Air,
the MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini,
reviews on those coming shortly.
They switched all of those
to their own internally designed Apple silicon M1 chip.
Now this means that the processor is similar
to what you get in iPhones and iPads,
i.e. it's really, really, really fast
and it's very like ridiculously well optimized
for Apple hardware because now Apple makes the software,
they make the hardware and they make the processor as well
and that means that you just get ridiculous levels
of performance and you get this always on thing.
So as soon as you open the device,
it just turns on kind of like you would expect
with an iPhone.
Let's talk about numbers now.
So when it comes to the Apple design processers
like on the iPhone, the iPad, and the Apple Watch,
they don't really talk about processor speed and clock speed
and all of that stuff that you hear
the Android phone manufacturers talking about
because Apple just kind of A, they don't care,
and B, there like to show the don't care
and C, it really doesn't matter what the numbers are
because everything is so tightly integrated.
In the past with the Intel based chips,
they were talking about processors.
They were saying, hey, this is a Intel Core i9,
3.2 gigahertz, overclocked to blah, blah, blah,
eight core processor, whatever.
Now they're just calling it the M1 processor
because no one really cares about the numbers.
But if you do care about the numbers
and I have now started caring about the numbers
because I'm trying to be a better tech reviewer,
you can look to benchmarks like the Geekbench score
and that gives you an idea of how, like the numbers
of how well the processor is performing.
So let's take a look at those.
Now here's where the Geekbench scores look like.
So if we look at single core performance,
you see the MacBook Pro the Mac mini and the MacBook Air,
the M1 versions are absolutely miles ahead
of everything else.
Even the mid 2020, you know, the one that just came out
Intel Core i9 3.6 gigahertz, 10 core processor on the iMac
is like 25% slower than these new M1 chips
that are on this $900 MacBook Air if you're a student.
This level of performance is absolutely insane.
If you're a normal person using this laptop,
even if you're a pro and using this laptop,
you are very unlikely to have any issues with performance,
just because of how fast these processers are.
Secondly, let's have a look at multi-core performance.
And now, you know, we've got the super fancy Mac Pros,
which costs like $50,000, the Intel Xeon, blah, blah, blah,
but if we look down,
this is the Mac mini with the M1
and these are the M1 processor.
So they're in the 7,200 to 7,400 range,
and all of these other ones are like very expensive,
but this tiny cheap laptop here is faster
in multi-core performance than the 16 inch MacBook Pro,
which came with the Intel i9 processers
with eight cores that only came out last year.
That's a huge beast of a laptop.
This is a MacBook Pro 15 inch MacBook Pro from 2018.
This has been my driver that's driving this whole setup
with like four Thunderbolt ports
and all of this stuff going on since 2018.
And I haven't needed to upgrade this
because it was fast enough.
I did not need to upgrade to the 2018 or the 2019
or the 2020 versions,
and this is so much faster than this
in terms of just the overall Geekbench scores,
and so when it comes to buying a laptop,
this is ridiculously cheap now,
like for the amount of performance you get,
you're not going to have a problem with processor speed.
Secondly, let's talk about thermal performance.
Now this MacBook Air famously does not have a fan.
And with the previous MacBook Air, the one in early 2020,
which I called my favorite laptop at the time
that had enormous issues with overheating.
If you did a few different things,
it would get really hot
and it would start to make a huge noise
because that had a fan.
And if you were like sitting on a sofa with it in your lap,
which I do a lot, then my jeans were getting really hot,
and I would always think like I've wet myself
because this thing was just getting so hot on my jeans.
This I've had like literally zero issues with it.
It does not have a fan,
it doesn't even need a fan
because this processor is so efficient.
And so the sort of stuff
that I use the computer for is Chrome,
Notion, Spotify, Slack,
very occasionally I'll use Final Cut
because I don't really edit my own videos anymore,
but like its fairly basic computing needs,
even though I'm a massive nerd,
I don't really use any apps that stretch it that much.
But even with like 20 tabs and Chrome open
and Slack and Spotify and Zoom call, this was not even,
it was not even coming close to getting hot.
It was that efficient.
The only context in which this might be a problem is
if you are using very intensive apps, in which case
you might wanna go for the MacBook Pro instead,
because that has a fan,
and so theoretically it will have less thermal throttling
at those higher levels of performance.
But for most people, including me,
you don't really need those high levels of performance,
and so the MacBook Air is absolutely perfect.
Final thing about the processor is the idea
of app compatibility.
Now because Apple have designed these processers,
the way that program is apparently designed their software
is that it is optimized for specific architecture
as a processor.
So all of the apps previously that were running on MacBooks
were optimized for Intel x86 based processers,
who knows what that means,
but that's what they were optimized for.
Now some of the apps and all of the Apple designed ones
are very well optimized for the new M1 chip.
So everything that Apple makes like Safari
and Final Cuts and the photos app and messages,
and most of the stuff you would need to use
is perfectly optimized for this.
But if you're the sort of person
who uses lots of third-party software,
a lot of products in the Adobe Suite for example,
are not yet perfectly optimized.
They're going to become optimized very soon,
and apparently a version of Photoshop
that's fully optimized, it's coming out early next year.
But in the meantime you are running
slightly suboptimal performance versions of those.
I don't really use any of those personally,
I haven't tested them myself,
but based on what other reviewers are saying,
even the unoptimized versions of Premiere Pro
and Photoshop still work completely fine.
And so the only circumstance in which you should worry about
app compatibility is if you, for your personal workflow,
you're using like a really niche app,
which might not yet be updated.
And so before you go buy one of these
or one of the new M1 chips,
what I'd recommend is that you do a Google
or you search on YouTube
and you see whether your app has been updated
and it's compatible with this chip.
For 99% of people watching this video,
you're not gonna have any issues at all.
Moving on from processor,
let's talk about the other things
that are important about this.
So firstly, the design, it's great, it's very light,
I'll put the weight over here once I've had a chance
to stick this on my scales, in fact, you know what?
I'm gonna do that right now.
Oh 1,262 grams,
and I'm not gonna say that in pounds and ounces
because I'm not a heathen, 1,262 grams, 1.2 kilograms.
This is very light.
In fact, this is my 12.9 inch iPad Pro
with magic keyboard, ah 1366,
this frickin MacBook Air for $900 if your student,
is lighter and cheaper than this setup,
which costs overall like 1300 or 1400 pounds
and is actually heavier, like that is, that's pretty cool.
So 1200 grams, let's get this out of the way.
Design wise, it's got two ports.
We'll talk more about that later,
and it's the same kind of wedge design
that you have grown to love.
They haven't really updated the design at all.
Everything is basically the same from the previous versions
of the MacBook Air,
which is fine because this is actually great.
The only slight beef I have with it is that,
I wish the bezels around the screen
were a little bit less thick.
You can kind of notice them,
and in some modern windows, laptops,
they don't have any bezels at all,
but hopefully they'll update that for the next time.
Let's now do my favorite part,
which is the test of the keyboard,
and I'm gonna do a typing test on 10 fast fingers.
Let's see what my typing speed on this keyboard is.
Isn't this fun, ooh they've changed their design, hello.
All right, let's do it.
(keyboard clatters)
Oh, legit.
I have beaten my record on this.
Previously my record was 156 words per minute,
this is 159 words per minute, I wanna get this on camera,
look at that 159 words per minute
on this new 2020 M1 MacBook Air.
The keyboard in fairness is exactly the same
as it was last time.
But clearly my typing speed is slightly improved.
This is a good keyboard, this is sick, pitching,
I can update how I type really fast,
would you to say 159 words per minute.
Now that's very exciting.
But yeah, overall, this keyboard is great.
I really like the fact that it has an escape key
and this is like one annoying thing
about the MacBook Pro lines.
It has that crappy touch bar,
over here there is a touch ID button
which can lock the computer as well,
and they've got the function keys at the top,
that you increase brightness, do funky stuff.
I don't really use the function keys for a lot,
it is nice to have them for like play fast forward,
rewind on Spotify,
and the escape key is really helpful.
But yeah, this is an absolutely fantastic keyboard,
no complaints, favorite keyboard of all time.
Yeah, it's just the new Apple keyboard model.
So after that flex of typing speed,
let's now talk about battery life,
which is probably more important than the keyboard
because battery life is another area
in which this machine has made absolute gains
over the previous models.
Now Apple are advertising
that you can get like 15 to 17 hours
of video playback slash web browsing on this new MacBook Air
and another two hours on top of that on the MacBook Pro,
which has a slightly bigger battery,
and this is absolutely insane.
This is like at least a 50% increase
over previous generations.
And I've done a lot of browsing the web
for these battery tests.
And basically everyone is saying that's guys,
when you look at the battery behind the thing,
like the battery size itself has not changed
compared to the previous models,
but because of this new Apple designed M1 chip
is very efficient at using the battery.
It just does really well in terms of battery life.
Now, if this was the only thing that was improved
with this generation of the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro,
I would have upgraded because I think an extra 50%
to a 100% battery life is worth it,
because now with this MacBook,
I have to carry around a charger everywhere I go.
And because of the battery life improvements in this thing,
it means that I actually don't need
to carry a charger around.
And this is a significant quality of life improvement for me
and my shoulders and my back.
So basically zero complaints on the battery life front,
but actually the battery is one of the reasons
why I'm probably gonna go for the MacBook Pro
rather than this MacBook Air, because for an extra $300,
I'm getting an extra two hours of battery life,
which is useful day to day.
But if you're the sort of person who buys one of these
and has them for a very long time,
like my housemate has been using her MacBook Air
for five years,
my old housemates been using a laptop for eight years,
if you're using a laptop for a very extended amount of time
over time, the battery gets less and less good.
And so if you're buying a laptop to have for the long run,
then you might wanna buy the MacBook Pro instead,
which has for $300, it's slightly better battery,
and therefore you're gonna have
slightly better battery life overall
throughout the life of the machine.
Next let's talk about the trackpad,
which as usual is best in class.
I have used so many track pads over the year
and every time I go to a computer shop,
I try out track pads and this is nothing,
this is nothing that is as nice
as one of these track pads.
These haven't really changed a lot
apart from adding force touch and like haptic feedback.
They haven't really changed a lot since like 2012, 2011,
which is good because it's a perfect track pad.
I can't imagine a track pad being better than these ones.
I really sound like an Apple fan boy in this review,
but these apps are amazing
and they've just made them even more amazing
with the M1 chip and it cost exactly the same,
which is just next level.
Moving on to the display,
it is exactly the same as it's been recently.
It's a high definition,
high resolution retina display 2560 by 1600 pixels,
and it has 400 nits of brightness.
What does that mean?
Well, 400 nits of brightness, it's maximum point.
It's reasonable, but not super bright.
The MacBook Pro has 500 nits of brightness,
so it's 25% brighter.
400 nits is pretty good
for most people in most circumstances.
But for example, if you're on the beach
or you're trying to work outside in the garden,
and there is a lot of sunlight,
you might struggle to see something
on a 400 nit of brightness screen.
If that's something that you really care about,
you might wanna go for the MacBook Pro instead.
This is something I do actually care about,
which is why I'm probably gonna go for the MacBook Pro
rather than the MacBook Air, but it is what it is.
Let's talk about ports now.
So we have two USB,
three slash four slash Thunderbolt ports over here,
and you have a headphone jack on the other side.
This is a little bit annoying.
It would be nice if they have more than two ports
because you know, one, two, three, four,
I'm using all four ports on my 2015 inch MacBook Pro
to connect to my big display on the GPU
and all this other kind of stuff.
It would be nice if it had more ports.
Now for most people, two ports is absolutely fine,
especially given the improved battery life.
You probably, aren't gonna need
to lug around a charger with you
if you're taking this out for the day
and therefore you probably won't need
to have a charger permanently plugged in at all times,
like I have to do with old laptops.
And of course, because they're USB C slash Thunderbolt,
you're gonna need a dongle
if you still have old USB devices.
Most of my stuff these days is now USB C anyway,
so this is absolutely fine,
two ports is reasonable, but if you need more,
you probably don't wanna go for one of these.
Let's talk about the microphone and the camera all in one.
Now this has pretty standard microphone features on it.
And so I'm gonna film a video using photo booth
and you'll see that this is with the microphone
on the MacBook sounds like,
and this is what my proper $500
audio setup thing sounds like,
and now going back to the MacBook Pro,
this is what it's like.
And if I look at the camera,
it's still this really annoyingly 720P FaceTime,
allegedly HD camera.
But what they've got this time
is now they've used the neural engine fancy bits
of the processor,
which means that the processor is doing image improvements
on the fly, so I look a little bit better.
And this is similar to what the iPhone and the iPad do
with their cameras.
That even like there's a lot of computational software stuff
happening behind the scenes to make you look good,
and now this is what is on this camera as well.
So if you're on FaceTime calls with your friends and family
or Zoom calls with your friends and family and colleagues,
then you'll have a very slightly nicer camera,
but it's not because of the camera,
it's because of the neural engineering thingy underlying it,
that improves the image quality.
Final thing to talk about is
what configuration of this you should get?
So let's have a look.
So I'm gonna talk about price and pounds,
which is basically identical to the price in dollars.
Now the base model costs 999 pounds or $999,
and you get a 100 pound discount if you're a student.
I actually think the base model is completely fine
for most people.
You could just buy this
and you don't need to get any upgrades
because a 256 gigabyte SSD is reasonable for most students,
and for a lot of people and eight gigabyte Ram
is again reasonable for the vast majority of people.
If you're a pro and you need to run lots of perform lots
of applications that use multi-core stuff,
and that needs to store a lot of stuff in its Ram,
then maybe you wanna upgrade to the 16 gig version.
But if you're a pro,
you probably don't wanna get this one,
unless you're like, man, you just wanna upgrade every year.
If you're a pro, you probably wanna wait
until early next year for the proper six, 14 inch
and 16 inch MacBook Pros to come out,
because if you're a pro, then those are gonna have
even better performance than this,
you probably wanna wait for that.
And so if you're a student and strapped for cash,
then the basic model, the cheapest model of the MacBook Air
will be completely fine for you.
If I was getting one personally,
for me, I care a lot about performance
and I don't really care about spending money,
and so I had to go for the upgrade
and I'd actually probably go
for the two terabyte SSD as well.
It's because I do a lot of work with videos,
and so for me, even like one terabyte SSD isn't enough.
This one has a one terabyte SSD,
which used to be a lot more expensive back in the day,
and I often find myself running out of space.
So if you do a lot of work
with like really huge ass 4k video files,
like the files of this video,
are gonna be like 150 gigabytes in total.
If you're that sort of person,
then you might wanna upgrade the SSD.
But again, if you're that sort of person,
you probably don't want one of these as your daily driver,
because you're probably doing more pro workflow type things.
But long story short, the configuration I would recommend
is just the cheapest one.
There is a case to be made for upgrading the Ram,
usually I upgrade Ram.
This is controversial.
Should you stay with a gigabyte Ram
or should you go 16 gigabyte Ram?
A lot of people say that you actually don't need
to upgrade the Ram.
Some people say that you should.
I think if you're a student and you're strapped for cash,
you probably wouldn't notice the difference
between eight gigabytes and 16 gigabytes.
But if you can shut out the extra cash, then hey,
why not upgrade to 16 gigabytes,
especially if you're gonna be keeping this laptop
for a very long time.
And so the question is,
should you buy at the 2020 M1 MacBook Air?
And my answer is,
if you wanna spend a thousand dollars on a laptop
or thereabouts, then you really can't get
anything better than this.
But as I'm gonna be talking about in my next video,
if you can,
if you intend to keep this for a very long time
and you wanna shut out an extra three, $400,
then I would consider upgrading to the MacBook Pro instead.
And that is what we're gonna be talking about in this video,
over here in the next few days, if it's not already.
So thank you so much for watching,
I really hope that was useful.
Do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already,
and I'll see you next time, bye.