KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 21 — When the MacBook Air first came out, it seemed to be the laptop everyone wanted. Ten years have gone by since its debut and its long-awaited upgrade doesn’t try to change too much — which is both a blessing and a curse.
Why was the Air so beloved? It set the standard for ultraportable notebooks; something super-light and yet was good enough for most basic tasks. Apple understood that most people didn’t need a desktop they could carry around; they wanted a machine that made working on-the-go easier.
New and old in a box
The biggest upgrade to the new MacBook Air is the display. Now that it’s gone Retina, the LED IPS display supports a 2560x1600 native resolution. Brighter colours, sharper contrast and details mean a world of difference when compared to previous years’ MacBook Airs.
How comfortable is the screen to use a daily basis? Apple’s slimmed down the bevels so you get a lot of screen space despite the machine being very compact.
Speaking of being compact, the Air is just 1.25kg and while not nearly as light as the MacBook, it’s still super-easy to carry around.
Then there’s the Butterfly keyboard, on its latest iteration after previous complaints about earlier versions.
I will always love the pre-Butterfly keyboards but the MacBook Air’s version isn’t terrible. Typing is easy enough and while it takes some getting used to especially if you use a full-sized desktop keyboard (like I do), on the whole I haven’t experienced any issues typing at decent speeds.
A nice addition is the Touch ID that is nestled in the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard, which allows for one-touch login. You will still need to use a password when just turning on your PC or after 48 hours of being unlocked.
It’s fairly easy to set up and works like a charm. With the addition of Apple’s T2 security chip, your fingerprint data is encrypted on the machine itself.
The Touchpad is still the best thing about Apple’s laptops. No Windows laptop has really come close and on the Air it’s the same. It’s pretty impressive that Apple managed to fit a Touchpad of this size as well as a full-sized keyboard without it feeling cramped.
Now, the ports. Only two Thunderbolt 3 ports here on the left and a 3.5mm audio jack on the right. I think people would be slightly less sore about it if Apple could at least throw in one dongle. We’re all still using our USB 2.0 devices, Apple.
Overall, the machine feels solid and well-designed. It’s a premium machine and it feels like one, with the aluminium looking sleek without feeling anything less than solid.
Day-by-day
The new MacBooks come with a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8210 as well as 8GB of 2133MHZ LPDDR3 memory (configurable to 16GB).
It’s slightly disappointing that Apple is sticking with a dual-core processor and older RAM, though to be fair its nearest competition in Dell’s XPS 13 comes with the same RAM though with better graphics and processor.
Will you feel all that much crippled by it? Not necessarily. I’ve never felt it lag doing routine tasks. Word processing, the odd Excel sheet, watching a lot of videos (for testing, I swear) and it’s run silent even when throwing the odd game at it.
Not that you can game on much as the dual-core processor and low-end GPU limits you to basic games. But you can enjoy a decent multimedia experience as the speakers on the Air are actually pretty decent, and loud.
The MacBook Pro I reviewed last annoyed me a little with how noisy the fan got and how it would heat up fairly quickly on hotter days. In contrast the Air is silent and runs fairly cool. Likely that’s an upside to using less powerful components as you will get less issues with heat or noise.
Battery life? That’s one thing to love about the Air. Most days it would stretch comfortably past the nine-hour mark and usually would need charging past 10.
Charging though — it’s a pity Apple’s 30W charger doesn’t charge quite as fast as I’d like. But it won’t kill you to wait more than two hours for a full charge I suppose, especially as the Air’s battery lasts so long.
Maybe, nearly perfect
I feel like Goldilocks, comparing the three Macs I’ve reviewed this year. This computer feels like it sits right in the middle and also feels more right than the others.
The MacBook Air, to me, is the perfect Mac... for most people. Pro users such as artists, designers and programmers would be better off with the MacBook Pro or even the iPad Pro.
Price-wise, in the ultraportable category, even the XPS 13 is priced around the same as an Air but offers a better processor and GPU while Huawei’s alternative has more ports. What neither offer is OS X as well as its smorgasbord of software, as well as the assurance of not having to pay for future software updates unlike with Windows.
The MacBook Air is a premium product, there’s no getting around that. But the ultraportable notebook category has become a premium segment; you want a super light notebook that’s a joy to use? Pay for it.
If you want a portable Mac, there is really no question that the Air still provides the best usage experience and unless you’re a programmer/designer/other heavy user, the Air might really be as close to perfect as you can get. As long as you can stomach the price tag, that is.
The MacBook Air is now available on the Apple online store as well as official retail distributors from RM5,249.00 onwards for the version with 128GB storage and RM6,099 for the 256GB model.
