- This is the 2020 MacBook Air,
and it is a very very good laptop.
Is it enough to make you switch from Windows?
Maybe not, but it is in my opinion
the best Mac they've made in years.
For a very very long time, when someone would ask me
which premium laptop they should buy,
the MacBook Air was the default answer for me.
And the reason this became the default
is actually really straightforward.
Apple absolutely killed it
with this second generation MacBook design.
Not only was the actual design itself
incredibly thin and light but it really nailed
the fundamentals of a laptop.
So the build quality, top-notch.
Battery life was some of the best
on any laptop you could get.
Keyboard was good, Trackpad was world class,
performance was decent, the SSDs were snappy.
I mean really even here in 2020,
this old MacBook Air really only falls flat
on the screen side and well it's a little slow now
but it's really not that bad especially considering
this is seven years old now.
So when Apple finally decided to put the old MacBook Air
out to pasture and instead replace it
with an all-new model in late 2018,
it was a big step forward,
but this laptop still has its fair share of issues.
So there's a lot of things I really like here.
The Retina display is an absolutely massive leap
over the last generation MacBook Air,
Retina, 2560 by 1600, 16:10, I mean there's a lot
that's good with this display.
Some of the things though, not so hot.
I will say given the fact that most Windows laptops
have definitely switched to touchscreens at this point,
that the lack of a touchscreen feels a little bit odd
on the MacBook Air these days, although to be fair
Apple's pretty much making the iPad Pro a computer now,
so I guess that's kind of irrelevant.
But there are actually some legitimate criticisms
of this 2018 MacBook Air.
First and foremost, the butterfly keyboard.
So I will freely admit that I am in the camp
that I actually don't think the butterfly keyboard
was that bad.
While yes, there's not a lot of travel,
and while yes, it was absolutely plagued
with many many reliability issues.
But for me, it wasn't the worst keyboard in the world.
Something that actually did bother me a lot more
than that however, was the performance.
This MacBook Air was, I don't wanna say slow
because it certainly wasn't,
but it was a little bit pokey, right,
you only had a single dual-core processor as low-wattage,
it just didn't give me a lot of confidence
in the performance.
But it was of course a very expensive laptop.
Which brings us to this, the 2020 MacBook Air
which claims to solve pretty much all of those
major downsides of the last gen model.
Here we go.
All right, so we have the MacBook Air.
Of course it only comes in 13-inch size.
I know that they used to sell the 11,
and that was always my favorite.
But I feel like the 13 is probably the better option
for most people.
So physically, especially on the outside,
this is basically completely identical
to the last generation model.
But, it smells fresh.
Oh, I forgot, the new MacBook is always
just immediately turn on the second you open the lid.
Wait, here comes the real test.
Oh, that's like a real keyboard.
So this does take advantage of the magic keyboard,
something we'll take a look at a little bit later.
But it's pretty much the same as on the 16 inch MacBook.
Feel like I haven't done like a legit unboxing
of a Mac in a long time.
You still get Apple stickers, right.
- [Ken] Yeah, you literally just dropped them.
- Where?
Oh, okay, you know put this
on your Samsung Galaxy S20 ultra.
- [Ken] Wait, they're silver.
- Oh, see, we would have completely missed this.
Normally, I just skip by the unboxing 'cause who cares.
We get Silver Apple stickers.
- [Voiceover] It's a built-in screen reader
called Voiceover.
If you know how to use Voiceover, press Command--
- Then we do still have the same
tiny 30 watt USB-C power adapter
as well as our USB-C cable.
Now of course, it should be no surprise
that this MacBook has exactly two ports.
Pair of Thunderbolt based USB-C port
or Thunderbolt 3 based USB-C ports.
We do still have the headphone jack but hardware-wise,
the MacBook Air is not really all that different
besides that sweet keyboard.
Isn't that cool?
Josh can you like when I do that,
can you like play a harp sound
like Mighty Car Mods.
(harp music)
Probably the most noticeable change with a 2020 MacBook Air
is the return of the magic keyboard.
Although return is not quite accurate,
and as you can see here,
I have all three of the most recent MacBook Airs.
The 2020 model with the magic keyboard,
the 2018 model with the butterfly switch
as well as the older school MacBook Air
with the much-loved old school keyboard.
What did they call the old one?
They just call it the keyboard.
- [Ken] Yeah, no, there was no name for them.
- I don't think they had a name for it.
Okay, cool, good, I'm not crazy (laughs).
So it's the original keyboard.
Yeah man, this thing absolutely holds up.
So it has just sort of good key travel, good feel,
that thing is solid.
I mean, I'm definitely biased here.
This one still feels okay to me
but again I never really mind these keys that much.
However, this is gonna be the real test.
I like this a lot.
You know what, I actually think I like
the 2020 MacBook Air keyboard most.
The magic keyboard feels good,
it feels like a nice blend honestly
of the old-school MacBook Air keyboard
and the butterfly switch.
It's kind of in the middle,
it's certainly a lot closer to the old school.
But you know what, let me give them a big thumbs up here.
This feels a lot better, I think everyone can agree,
even me was a little bit biased than the 2018 MacBook Air.
Yeah, I mean just, it's so much more travel.
And of course you have to keep in mind
that the 2020 MacBook Air does have Touch ID,
you also have the inverted T layout,
really, I think two things that most people appreciate.
And what you don't have is a touch bar.
I again, I think I'm a little bit biased here
'cause I don't really mind the touch bar
but I do feel like most people will prefer
the full-size Escape key and everything
being sort of as you remember it.
Especially if you're upgrading from an older MacBook Air,
this should feel right at home.
So when it comes to the webcam on the MacBook Air,
it is fine, I don't think anyone would consider this
to be high quality but it's good enough for a video call.
But what they have improved this year
are the actual microphones.
So the MacBook Air has three microphones built in.
And as you can hear, well, it might not sound amazing,
and actually is pretty significantly better
than most laptops.
I mean quite as good as the 16 inch MacBook Pro
but they're definitely doing some really good work here
on the audio front.
Speaking of audio, according to Apple,
these speakers are not only 25% louder
but deliver double the bass.
- [Austin] I'm Austin.
- [Myke] I'm Myke.
- [Austin] We are the Test Drivers.
- [Myke] And we put tech through its paces.
- [Austin] Myke, today I really wanna find out
if you ended up joining the Z Flip gang.
But first, we have a Test Drivers bonus exclusive
on the Xbox Series X.
- You know what, that's actually really impressive.
So while again, you can't really compare this
to something like the 16 inch MacBook
which obviously has much larger speakers,
but for a 13 inch laptop, this is about as good
as I've ever heard.
That's really impressive.
- [Ken] Are you gonna be covering the new MacBook Air
on the Test Drivers?
- Well, yes, yes I am.
If you'd like to follow the Test Drivers,
you can find it everywhere,
your ears can listen to beautiful podcast music.
- [Ken] On the radio?
- No, you can't listen to the Test Drivers on the radio.
We pop open the MacBook Air, we'll see,
this looks exactly like last year.
I mean, I'm not entirely sure what I expected (laughs).
So we do have our three battery cells,
the Trackpad which honestly takes up
a huge amount of space underneath here,
the two speakers which also are fairly large
and it does have a fan. So I know there are a lot of rumors
when the MacBook Air was refreshed, that it would be fanless.
However, it does have a fairly small fan
because it does have I believe a seven watt chip.
Yeah, there we go.
So we also have under this tiny little flap
the Apple T2 chip.
Now that actually does a lot,
so not only does it run like Touch ID
but it handles the SSD, it handles your audio.
And it also can actually help out the processor.
So this T2 chip can do things like offload,
like video processing specifically with like H.265,
this is a nice little setup,
very simple though, very simple.
Apple's really put all the main components like right here.
The rest is just like a fan and battery and speakers.
So the MacBook Air here has always been a battery life champ
but something that's kind of interesting
is that well yes it's still rated for the same
like roughly 11 hours of use,
it almost seems like they could have gone
a little bit bigger on the batteries.
So you can see there's a little bit of dead space here,
there's a little bit of dead space down here
especially when you pull up a little flap
which there's no actual battery in.
The same thing here and here.
I almost wonder, if maybe they just sort of hit
their battery life goals and they're not really pushing,
but it does seem like there's at least a little bit
of empty space that Apple could have extended
the size of the batteries a bit.
I guess they're just that confident.
I'm gonna put our T2 chip little thing back in place
before it catches on fire.
So after running some benchmarks
and spending a little bit of time
with this 2020 MacBook Air,
it's actually a pretty major upgrade.
So there's a couple of things to consider.
First of all, we're going up to 10th generation
Core processors which have obviously brought
a major wave of performance across the board
but especially when you compare this to the 2018 model,
it's not even close.
Do keep in mind I am taking advantage of the Core i5 model,
this is the quad core.
So if you have the base Core i3,
you still have the dual core chip,
so it'll be a little bit closer.
But I'm seeing significantly
better CPU performance here,
the graphics are way way better.
And that actually has proven out
with a couple of real features, right.
So you're probably gonna be playing a lot of games
on your MacBook Air but using Thunderbolt,
you actually can drive a full 6K Pro Display XDR
with the MacBook Air now.
Keep in mind that even the iMac Pro
can't run it at full resolution.
So it's actually pretty impressive
of what they've been able to pull off here.
Oh hi, quarantine Austin here with a quick update.
So since recording the main part of this video
there have been a few people who have claimed
that the MacBook Air is now thermal throttling
and is running dangerously hot.
This is not true, so let me explain.
When you take a look at the heat sink,
it is obviously an odd design to have the fan
not directly attached.
However, you also have to keep in mind
the MacBook Air has a 10 watt chip.
So if you pull up the full specs which is available
I'll have it linked in the description,
it is using a Core-i5-1030NG7.
Now this chip is rated with a 1.1 gigahertz base frequency.
Now, yes it can and does boost
up to 3.5 gigahertz all the time.
And when you think about what you do with a MacBook Air
like web browser and do things, it's very bursty, right,
so it's really easy for it to jump up
and down up and down, totally fine.
However, when you do throw the worst case scenario at it,
so something like Cinebench
which is a 3D modeling application,
what you'll see is when you have that CPU
sitting at a 100%, it starts out at 3.5 gigahertz
but then the system gets very hot
and it does start to lower the clock speed.
Now I wanna be clear, this is not throttling, right.
Pretty much all laptops will do this,
they will have a really high boost frequency
and they'll come down to their base.
In this case, the MacBook Air, at least mine,
lands around 1.5 gigahertz.
However, it's still 12 watts, more than the rated TDP.
So yes, it does run warm, you will pretty much instantly
see the MacBook Air hit 100 degrees Celsius on the CPU,
but spoiler alert, so does like every other Apple laptop
that's ever been made.
Clearly, Apple are not concerned about running it at,
what is very clearly the max temperature,
but it is that, the max, it is not a dangerous temperature
for a processor to run at.
May be a little uncomfortable
if you're running at a 100 degrees all the time.
However, you also probably shouldn't be 3D rendering
on your MacBook Air, there are better choices for that.
Anyway, back to the video.
But getting away from the benchmarks because honestly,
it's a MacBook Air, you're probably not getting this
as a speed demon, the real difference here
is just in the everyday usability, right.
So the old MacBook Air was fine
but it felt a little bit pokey especially compared
to newer systems like the XPS that I daily everyday.
The MacBook Air however feels just as snappy
as pretty much any modern premium laptop out there.
Now when you get into video editing
and sort of hard core tasks,
you are going to start running into some throttling.
But in general day to day use,
this thing feels very very quick.
And that's not something I've been able to say
about the MacBook Air in a long time.
I can't believe I'm about to say this,
but the MacBook Air has actually seen
a price cut this generation.
So when this MacBook Air was first refreshed back in 2018,
it started out at $1200 for the base model.
Last year it's saw $100 price cut,
but today the 2020 MacBook Air starts at $999.
And on top of that, if you look at the site,
you can see that you start out with 256 gigs of storage
as opposed to 128 of the previous base model.
Those are both big wins.
And on top of that, if you're a student
or someone with a .edu email address,
you can actually save a further $100 on the MacBook Air
potentially bringing this guy below $1,000.
This could legitimately be the new student special.
However, before you go rush out and grab that base model,
I actually would highly recommend upgrading
at least a little bit.
So the base model of the MacBook Air
comes with a dual-core core i3 processor
but perfectly reasonable.
However, for only another $100,
you can jump up to a quad-core i5 chip
which is what these MacBook Airs I'm using right now has.
Now it's up to you.
Obviously, there are other things,
you can upgrade to 16 gigs of ram, which is kind of expensive,
you can get more SSD storage which is up to you.
But at $1099 with a quad-core chip,
this thing actually makes a lot of sense
for a lot of people.
It's not a huge powerhouse
but the thing you have to consider is that the MacBook Air
used to be the standard default laptop
for most people, right.
And I feel like this spec of the MacBook Air
really comes very close to replicating that old formula.
Not a powerhouse, not crazy, what it is is enough laptop,
what I would argue is the vast majority of people out there.
So for context, my current daily driver
is the XPS 13 2-in-1.
I really like this laptop, and while sure,
it's not the cheapest thing in the world,
it's actually pretty reasonably priced,
and yet, and yet my friends, the MacBook Air
is actually very equivalent.
If you look at the XPS 13, what you're getting here
for the exact same price is almost the same spec;
13-inch display, you've got the eight gigs of ram,
the 10th gen i5, you've got 512 gigs of storage.
Really the main difference here is that
this is a slightly lower wattage Y-Series chip.
But the main takeaway here is that Apple
has actually become competitive on price, right.
And I would argue that for a lot of people
the MacBook may be a better call based on the build quality,
based on the fact that's running macOS,
based on the fact that these have
pretty legendary reliability,
well, notwithstanding the keyboard issues
for a couple of years, but yeah man,
I'm like legitimately surprised
at how good this MacBook Air really is.
Look, I've been kind of harsh to the Air in the past,
the previous generation was legitimately
one of my favorite laptops to recommend to people.
When it came to the 2018 refresh, it was just fine,
it wasn't really great though.
When it comes to the 2020 Air,
they pretty much rectified all of my major issues.
I mean this is a legitimately very excellent laptop,
and that's not something I've said about a MacBook Air
in like 8 years, 7 years, a long time (laughs).
Obviously, if you're in the Windows camp,
there's not a lot here to tempt you away
when it comes to looking at the MacBook Air for what it is.
A premium laptop, there's a lot to like,
you've got an excellent screen, good keyboard finally,
one of the best trackpads in the business.
You've got killer build quality, Thunderbolt 3,
good performance, fast SSD.
I mean there's very little to complain about
especially considering that this guy
now has a reasonable price.
Yeah, bet you didn't see that one coming, did you?
- [Ken] I watched the whole video.
You did mention it a few times.
- Oh did I mention the fact
that I'm amazed that this computer
is not ludicrously expensive unlike usual?
Yeah, that.
The next time someone asks which premium laptop I recommend,
the MacBook Air has very quickly reclaimed its spot
on top of the list.
Although if we're being real, the XPS 13 still has a spot
in my bag for now.
(upbeat music)