Apple MacBook Air 2020 - Full Review with Pros and Cons

The MacBook Air is one of the most popular 13” laptops in the market from Apple.

In this year’s new MacBook Air 2020 Apple has made some required improvements to make the laptop an overall better machine. It is mostly the same machine as last year but Apple has made 3 major upgrades in the device – the new Magic keyboard, Intel’s latest 10 th gen processors and much improved Intel’s Iris plus graphics.

Contents

Build & Design

Right off the bat, the new macbook looks exactly like the macbook of last year with its traditional Apple look with the unibody aluminium construction and slim profile which makes this year’s macbook again one of the best build laptops of this year. It still comes with the one hand openable hinge and weighs in at a mere 1.29 kgs which is great for travelling. There are 3 colours available – Space Grey, Silver or the Fancy Gold and all look beautiful as you would expect. The bezels though in this device has started to show its age since the closest competitor the XPS 13 has much slimmer bezels and looks more modern and sleek.

Ports and I/O

This is the area where the macbook has not much to offer with its 2 thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone jack which means you have to live the dongle life.

Maintenance

MacBooks are quite easy to maintain. The build quality is great and Apples customer care, support and offline service is one of the best. Talking about upgradations, only the SSD can be changed as the RAM is soldered on.

Input Devices

Keyboard

The keyboard is one of the biggest improvements in this year’s macbook air as Apple put the much better Magic keyboard which is used in the MacBook Pro 16. The keyboard is silent and more responsive with its scissor mechanism than last year’s model. Overall it’s a great keyboard to type on and some might even say it’s the best keyboard on a thin and light machine.

Touchpad

This is a no brainer since macbooks have got some of the best trackpads in the industry. The touchpad is huge with good accuracy and clicky buttons. It does suffer from some accidental touches during typing.

Display

The macbook air has got what Apple calls Retina Display. The 2560 X 1600 panel hits a sweet spot between 1080p and too much-4k resolution and is at an aspect ratio of 16:10 which is so much better than 16:9 for creative productivity. It is pretty colour accurate with sRGB gamut although it does lack the P3 colour gamut, HDR (High Dynamic Range) or OLED Technology. The average 386 nits of brightness makes it pretty bright as well. The only real con are the chunky bezels which makes it look outdated considering the competition.

Performance

The new macbooks start with 10th gen Intel core i3 and can go as high as the quad core i7.

The base model can handle basic activities like browsing, multimedia and some light photo editing in lightroom with minor hiccups here and there although the i5 model is more recommended.

The 10th gen core i5 is a quad core processor which makes it a much better option than the dual core i3. Daily activities feel snappy and fast with good app opening speeds and shorter render times in lightroom. The i5 model can do some 1080p video editing on Final Cut if you are into videos.

You can get the top of the line i7 model which can do decent 4k editing but at that price the MacBook pro makes more sense.

Let’s be real no one buys Macbooks for gaming unless you are planning to play the Arcade games from Apple but the new Iris graphics does help improve the render times.

All MacBooks are still pretty silent due to the fanless design.

Storage

The base model comes with 256 GB SSD and there are options of having 512 GB , 1TB and 2TB and all of them are plenty fast with no complains.

Speakers

The speakers on the Air are great. It has dual front firing speakers unlike the quad speaker setup on the macbook pro 16 which is the best in the business but the dual speakers sound really good with 25% increase in volume and double the base. Basically they sound louder and fuller and they also support Dolby ATMOS playback with Apple’s own spatial technology.

Battery Life

Battery life in the new Air is pretty good as well topping in at 8 to 8.5 hours of SOT during regular use.This means this laptop would comfortably get you through a day with light to medium usage. The charging speed with the 35 watt included charger is okay at best.

Beautiful design with good colour options.
Amazing unibody aluminium build
Improved 10th gen i3 and quad core i5 and i7 processors.
Good battery life
Great keyboard and touchpad
Great dual front firing speakers