My Macbook Air 2020 verdict - After one week of initial usage

[SeraphicWings]

Hello everyone, this is my first review, and before raising your pitchfork and trashing me about my laptop choice, at least hear me out on this review

 

In 2007, Steve Jobs and Apple shocked the world of laptop with the MacBook Air, a device that looked impossibly thin at the time, that Steve put it in an envelope. The thinness and portability of the Air sweeped the floor many Windows machine back then. That was the beginning of a era where portability laptops reached a new height. 

 

Fast foward to 2020, Windows laptop has gotten much better in terms of design, performance and portability, with well-known models like the Dell XPS 13 9300 with its industry-leading design. So how does the OG name in Ultrabook - Macbook Air fares against its opponent? Here’s my quick review after one week using the Macbook Air 2020 - base configuration with an i3, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD, this configuration costs $999 - $100 cheaper than the 2018 and 2019 model.

 

Design-wise, Apple has adopted the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” way: the overall design hasn’t changed since its biggest refresh in 2018, we still have the very thin, full 6000 series aluminium chassis that feels sturdy and premium on the hand. However, they are not as light nor as thin as the competition now (both the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and LG Gram are example of machines that are lighter and thinner than the MacBook Air), in fact, the 2020 Air is a hair thicker than the 2019 due to the change in keyboard mechanism, which we will talk about later, but still the Macbook Air is light, only 1.29kg. Flex is almost non-existant in both the keyboard are and the panel due to the very stiff chassis and the edges are more rounded than the Macbook Pro. The Apple logo on the lid is, as usual since 2016, mirror finished which is beautiful but can be prone to scratches. Overall, the Macbook Air is a very premium and good-looking device, which is its biggest strength over the competitions.

 

 

Port situation includes 2 Thunderbolt 3s and a headphone jack. This is still irritating for people who still want legacy ports (like me for my 4TB hard drive), but it can be fixed with a dongle. The one complain I am going raise is the position of the ports: Apple should have put the port on each side of the machine, this will make cable management much better. For those who are working and home and need a headphone / microphone solution but can’t stand the latency of wireless device, the combo jack is there. 

 

 

The keyboard makes a big leap over the 2019 model, they are now scissor switches which Apple called “Magic Keyboard”. While the butterfly switches are faster to type for short bursts, any longer work like coding or writing a thesis on that is a pain in the ass and makes you feel like clicking on the board itself because the travel is almost non-existent, not to mention the infamous reliability issues over time when using it. All of those are now fixed with the new keyboard, the 1mm travel will not satisfy ThinkPad users, but to those moving from butterfly, it’s definitely game changing, also changes like the T-inverted arrow keys, matte-finished Touch ID are welcome changes. The Force Touch TrackPad, needless to say, remains the best on the market due to the huge size, smooth glass surface, Haptic Engine which creates the feel of clicking-down, great palm rejection and “almost” perfect acceleration.

 

 

The screen is still 13 inch, 2560 x 1600 IPS display like the 2018 and 2019, with True Tone supported, ~95% sRGB color space and around 400 nits of brightness, so nothing in particular has changed. The speaker sounds exceptional amongst thin & light machines, with very loud sound for its size, pronounced bass and treble and crystal clear vocal - dare I say nothing in the thin & light category matches the Macbook Air in the speaker department here. One change compare to the 2019 model is the addition of the Studio-quality mic that Apple advertises on the 16 inch Macbook Pro, and the quality is great. The webcam is still 720p, which is subpar. Other features like AirDrop and AirPlay makes it very convenient for me as I transfer photos and stuff between my iPhone and the Air, as well as mirroring to my LG TV when needed, this comes as a privillge of an Apple ecosystem, which is to be expected by now.

 

Now, onto watch LTT forum cares most, performance. Ironically, there’s nothing to write home about the performance on the Macbook Air, the model I’m using rocks an Intel Core i3 1000NG4, which is based on 10nm Ice Lake, with a laughing stock of 2 cores 4 threads and a base clock of 1.1GHz that “can” turbo to 3.4GHz, I say “can” because this machine will probably never reach its max turbo speed, due to the 9W power limit, and a joke of thermal solution, which everybody should have known by now. I don’t need to install a sensor to know that the machine will shot up to 100 degree Celsius on any heavy CPU-demanding tasks and thermal throttles to oblivion. Because of this, competitions which use 4 cores 8 thread Intel CPU and better thermal solution will eat the Macbook Air for breakfast, you can config the Air to a 4 cores 8 thread i5 or i7, but power limitation and the thermal solution will held it back so much that it’s not even worth getting it so the i3 actually makes a lot more sense here unlike certain YouTubers trashing it, the fan is very quiet, but also gets very loud too (even when I’m updating the machine). Now, does this mean the Macbook Air is trash? No. Typing areas only feel a bit warm when the machine gets hot and MacOS is still very optimized even for low-powered machine like this, provided you use apps that are properly optimized cough Chrome cough, so everyday task on this machine is still smooth and snappy, but expect hiccups when you open too much tabs on your browser because of 8GB RAM (upgrade to 16 if you open lots of browser tabs). That said, it’s still a 20% improvement on both single and multi-core from the 2019 model, and the new Iris Plus onboard GPU is very welcome, as it helps with better graphic acceleration on light use of Lightroom, Premiere or Final Cut Pro. Overall, the performance is fine, if your work doesn’t require constant torturing the CPU with heavy tasks. SSD speed on the 256GB model is of average, with around 1200MB/s of read and 900MB/s of write speed, personally I'm not satisfied with this speed, Apple should have included better SSD, as prices of good NVMe SSDs are getting cheaper.

 

The Macbook Air is equipped with a 49.9Wh battery, which translates to about 8 to 8.5 hours of mix usage including web browsing, watching YouTube, listening to music. The battery is recharged through a 30W brick, though you can use higher wattage charger too, both my 45W Xiaomi and Samsung USB Type-C charger reports 45W, which helps reducing charge time. You can also use battery banks with Power Delivery to charge the Macbook Air, which is a huge plus to me.

 

Long story short, the Macbook Air is a very good machine for the majority of people out there who just want a machine for everyday use. One might argue that the iPad Pro is better for those tasks, but the flexibility of x86 apps from MacOS still outweighs iPadOS. But in reality, it’s very hard to recommend the Macbook Air, because the competition has lots of option that offers better CPU and upgradability. That said, if you are like me, who loves MacOS on a portable machine, already have a PC rig and just want a stylish, light machine for light tasks, a Macbook Air 2020 is a decent compliment piece of tech for the everyday life.

 

[5x5]

Do you have observations on VRM thermals? They're packed REALLY tightly and have no cooling at all. That usually results in 100-110*C load temperatures

[SeraphicWings]

7 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

Do you have observations on VRM thermals? They're packed REALLY tightly and have no cooling at all. That usually results in 100-110*C load temperatures

I don't have thermal camera so I can't observe the VRM thermals, but these thing definitely get super duper hot if you run heavy load.

In fact, I think the whole chassis act as a heat dissipation unit, since it's so thin and small I suspect the cooling get contact with the bottom panel itself. So on normal task, the CPU sits at 52 ~ 54*C idle and the chassis is quite cool

 

[5x5]

4 minutes ago, SeraphicWings said:

I don't have thermal camera so I can't observe the VRM thermals, but these thing definitely get super duper hot if you run heavy load.

In fact, I think the whole chassis act as a heat dissipation unit, since it's so thin and small I suspect the cooling get contact with the bottom panel itself. So on normal task, the CPU sits at 52 ~ 54*C idle and the chassis is quite cool

 

The chassis doesn't make contact with the heatsink, I've seen that tested. It gets hot due to the entire board (small as it may be) generating heat and there being almost no airflow. The fan is positioned very strangely as it can't draw in air but also exhausts air and creates negative pressure that only really serves to draw in dust

[SeraphicWings]

13 hours ago, 5x5 said:

The chassis doesn't make contact with the heatsink, I've seen that tested. It gets hot due to the entire board (small as it may be) generating heat and there being almost no airflow. The fan is positioned very strangely as it can't draw in air but also exhausts air and creates negative pressure that only really serves to draw in dust

I also question the existence of the fan, too. there are no air vents to suck air in nor vents to push air out, yet the fan is there doing god-knows-what.

But for my usage, the laptop usually stay cool enough for me, plus I'm not doing any heavy-lifting with it 

[Berrnard]

seen vids of breakdowns of these and cooling is horrible.  If apple would engineer better cooling and not thermal throttle the cpu, this would definitely be a better product.  I am a windows gamer but i enjoy my apple products.

 

thanks for the review

[SeraphicWings]

8 hours ago, Berrnard said:

seen vids of breakdowns of these and cooling is horrible.  If apple would engineer better cooling and not thermal throttle the cpu, this would definitely be a better product.  I am a windows gamer but i enjoy my apple products.

 

thanks for the review

I agree, all Apple need to do is to connect a heat pipe to the fan, drill an air vent above and that's it, no extra engineering needed since the CPU is very low power, that would have make a massive difference.

 

Sometimes I'm baffled at how Apple can do so well at one thing and mess up at another 

[The Sloth]

On 8/7/2020 at 7:40 PM, SeraphicWings said:

no extra engineering needed

as someone who works in this, it would be kind of complex( you would have to retool, which costs a lot of money) but for apple it really wouldn't take much effort.  I am assuming it's designed for ARM chips, that's why cooling was subpar, it was more of a place holder, so they can make some money. 

 

 

No offence, most people who are buying this are not very tech literate, so it's fine for the audience. a older 13 inch refurbished pro is better in every way, and the same price.( can be cheaper at places like bestbuy)  

 

 

 

 

 

[SeraphicWings]

A few updates now that I'm into the 3rd week

 

Regarding thermals and heat, this thing gets hot pretty fast, even on simple tasks like YouTube and web browsing, but it is also very fast in dissipating heat due to the nature of full aluminium body. So if you install a sensor app, you will not be surprised seeing this thing idling around 50 ~ 60. But in reality, the whole machine doesn't feel that hot to touch, but in terms of longevity, I can't say for certain if it can last for 3 ~ 4 years, maybe after the warranty is out I need to clean it often. Also, if you frequently use social network like Facebook, Twitter,... 8GB of RAM in this base model is mostly not enough as it chews through memory even on Safari, so if you can help it go for 16GB of RAM

 

Yesterday I met my team on my study group, and one of the guy has a 2019 Macbook Pro 13 inch. I tried pressing that butterfly click, and I'm forever grateful for choosing my scissor switch Macbook Air

[SeraphicWings]

Updated for the 3rd week, so far so good, the machine has not let me down for most of the time, only issue so far is how fast RAM run out when browsing Facebook, but this is due to the 8GB of RAM. I'll continue observing the device until the end of the month for the final verdict

[DrMacintosh]

23 hours ago, SeraphicWings said:

only issue so far is how fast RAM run out when browsing Facebook, but this is due to the 8GB of RAM.

Don't feel bad for not getting the 16GB option. I have a 10th Gen 2020 MBP with 16GB and FaceBook and Reddit will fill this thing up extremely quick and hit me with "this webpage is using significantly memory" notifications. 

[SeraphicWings]

30 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Don't feel bad for not getting the 16GB option. I have a 10th Gen 2020 MBP with 16GB and FaceBook and Reddit will fill this thing up extremely quick and hit me with "this webpage is using significantly memory" notifications. 

We don't have Apple Store in my country, only Authorized Reseller, so our options are limited to i3 and i5 only, if I want 16GB of RAM on a Mac, I have to pay an obscene amount of money for the 13 or 15 / 16 inch or buy used

[Darkseth]

On 8/6/2020 at 7:34 PM, SeraphicWings said:

I also question the existence of the fan, too. there are no air vents to suck air in nor vents to push air out, yet the fan is there doing god-knows-what.

But for my usage, the laptop usually stay cool enough for me, plus I'm not doing any heavy-lifting with it 

The Vents are in the Hinch of the Display. Open the Display, and there will be a Gap.

That's also where the Air is beeing exhausted on EVERY Macbook. Even the Base Pro model.
Even the Pro with 4xTB and the 16" Model, just that they have Vents on the bottom where fresh Air is beeing pulled in, because these models have 2 Fans.

 

Let's take this Video here (btw, if you want to try it, that Cooling Mod gives you a few °C):

On like 3:30 onwards, when he has opened it up.

On the right side, where the Fan is, the Air is beeing blown OUT. You can see the Vents on the other Side of that Metal Strip.
The Air moves through the Fan, is beeing pulled through the whole Device, through the Heatsink, and enters the Device on the Vents at the other side (Left side here).

 

 

It's not the most effective, strongest Cooling System. And the Heatsink could be better, by not having such a huge Gap between it and the Die of the Chip, or even the Chassis (the ladder can be improved by this Video's Mod).

However, there IS Airflow, and the Air IS moving through the Heatsink, and is beeing exhausted.
You can see that on the pictures, you can hear that if you put your ears to the exhaust fans, and you can feel the warm Air coming out.

 

The Cooling System is legit, and works. It is just not very good/effective.

A Car with 60 Horse Power is also absolutely Legit.
It'll just drive/accelerate very very slowly.


I also think, the tables will turn alot with the A14X, that will be somewhat cooled here, much stronger than in an iPad, resulting in like 10-30% higher Performance compared to the next iPad Pro with A14X.

Keep in Mind: The A12Z chip right now is a 12W TDP Chip (or even 15W i think), while the Macbook Air i3 Dual core is a 9w Chip.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

On 8/16/2020 at 5:08 AM, DrMacintosh said:

Don't feel bad for not getting the 16GB option. I have a 10th Gen 2020 MBP with 16GB and FaceBook and Reddit will fill this thing up extremely quick and hit me with "this webpage is using significantly memory" notifications. 

how? that seems like a bug in Safari or whatever.. is it the same in chrome? because that's not normal. 

 

this is normal.... 

[DrMacintosh]

3 hours ago, Ashley said:

how? that seems like a bug in Safari or whatever.. is it the same in chrome? because that's not normal. 

It might be an issue with Safaris memory management. I tend to avoid Chrome on my MBP except for when I play Kantai Collection, but I do know that Reddit performs a lot better on Chrome than it does Safari. A lot less stutters. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

14 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

It might be an issue with Safaris memory management. I tend to avoid Chrome on my MBP except for when I play Kantai Collection, but I do know that Reddit performs a lot better on Chrome than it does Safari. A lot less stutters. 

why avoid chrome? it's the best browser across the board. if you don't feel like installing google's crap you can use https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

 

EDIT: my screenshot int aht previous post was on Windows, so maybe it's a macOS thing as well. don't really know. 

Edited August 22, 2020 by Ashley xD

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, Ashley said:

why avoid chrome?

BC of Safaris integration with my iOS Devices (iCloud Tabs and iCloud Key-chain). I know Chrome has identical features, but Safari is just more convenient imo. Safari is better on mobile than chrome is as well (AdBlocker support, built in website tracker blockers, native, better Reader Mode, Downloads manager, etc.)

 

I do use Chrome on my Desktop PC though.  

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

2 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

BC of Safaris integration with my iOS Devices (iCloud Tabs and iCloud Key-chain). I know Chrome has identical features, but Safari is just more convenient imo. Safari is better on mobile than chrome is as well (AdBlocker support, built in website tracker blockers, native, better Reader Mode, Downloads manager, etc.)

you can use chrome with handoff integration. if you set it as default browser on your Mac and then open a page on your iphone in safari handoff will work just as you're used to but instead of safari you can open chrome from the Dock icon that pops up. 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Ashley said:

you can use chrome with handoff integration.

I'm aware. That still does not solve my Password syncing though. Safari is just more convenient for my mobile devices. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

I'm aware. That still does not solve my Password syncing though. Safari is just more convenient for my mobile devices. 

you can import all your passwords into each browser? it's like 2 or 3 clicks?

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Ashley said:

you can import all your passwords into each browser? it's like 2 or 3 clicks?

I'm not switching to chrome

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

I'm not switching to chrome

but it would solve these issues? don't you want your web browser to take up 2gb with reddit and facebook open instead of 16gb? also you can get password sync if you also use chrome on your iOS devices? 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Ashley said:

but it would solve these issues? don't you want your web browser to take up 2gb with reddit and facebook open instead of 16gb?

Safari eventually frees up the memory on its own. It doesn't actually cause the system to slowdown. Just the web page itself. I also kinda exaggerated the extent of the problem.