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2020 MacBook Air Reviews Praise Magic Keyboard and Faster Performance at Lower $999 Starting Price

PatriotInvasion said:
Can you explain what benefits the average user would see from this?
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Imagine paying for 1gig internet speeds and getting very close to that over wifi with tons of devices connected. That plus the range are pretty significant upgrades. Where someone might need 2-3 "mesh" points to cover their entire house due to interference, you can probably get away with a single WIFI 6 router.

WIFI 6 is a big upgrade for everyone, and we are going to see pretty much every tech product released with it. The new iPad Pro has it, and I think the only reason the Air does not is because intel.
 
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AxiomaticRubric said:
No mention of Wifi 5 in a Wifi 6 world?

Too, as noted by Anandtech, the new MacBook Air also has faster RAM.
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Personally, I think that's a great concession to make. Of course some stuff need to be cut in an entry level model trying to meet a price point. WiFi6 seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to drop and would be an unnoticeable difference to 99% of the target market
 
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I’m interested in how the base i3 performs compared to older MacBooks I.e say the core M in the 2016 retina MacBook and the i5 processors in the late 2013 MBP
 
gk4 said:
Personally, I think that's a great concession to make. Of course some stuff need to be cut in an entry level model trying to meet a price point. WiFi6 seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to drop and would be an unnoticeable difference to 99% of the target market
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Then why does Apple make a big deal about the iPhone 11/iPhone 11 Pro and new iPad Pro all having WiFi 6?

It's inconsistent.
 
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IPPlanMan said:
Then why does Apple make a big deal about the iPhone 11/iPhone 11 Pro and new iPad Pro all having WiFi 6?

It's inconsistent.
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What's inconsitent, that an entry level product does not include every single possible feature?

Apple makes a big deal out of everything, so by your logic having any tiered product levels are inconsistent.
 
gk4 said:
What's inconsitent, that an entry level product does not include every single possible feature?

Apple makes a big deal out of everything, so by your logic having any tiered product levels are inconsistent.
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The MacBook Pro 13 inch and 16 inch don't have it either.

Nor does the iMac, iMac Pro or Mac Pro or Mac Mini.

At this rate, the rumored 14 inch MacBook Pro may not have it either.
 
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nexu said:
And I still cant decide:( base model/base+upg cpu/base+16gb of ram or pricier i5+16ram+256ssd
i'd like to keep it for as long as possible, but it's gonna be my first macbook and i dont know what i need
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I'd recommend the i5 plus 16gb of RAM if you can do it. Lot's of cheaper options for thunderbolt external storage - yes a small annoyance, but 256GB is workable, but you can't upgrade performance. I regretted not spending a bit more on our mid-2012 MBA and have been looking forward to upgrading, but waited until they addressed the keyboard. Best of luck!
 
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canonical said:
"the Core i3 chip [at 1.1 GHz] is a "big upgrade" from the 8th-generation 1.6GHz dual-core Core i5 chip" ----- Sounds like something Donald Trump might say. I'll believe it when I see benchmarks that prove it. I suspect the 2020 model will be significantly slower.
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Agreed - from what I can tell the 10th gen i3 will be on par, perhaps a touch better, than the 8th gen i5, but definitely not a 'big upgrade' on that front.
 
NOTNlCE said:
No shots of the internals? I'm interested to see if they keep their "indirect active cooling" solution like on the 2018. Assuming they're using an i5-1035G4, that's got a base TDP of 15W... Much higher than the 7W Y-Series on the previous gen.
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Why would they move to the U-series? This is likely the 1030G7 at 9W, cTDP'd up to 12W.
 
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nexu said:
And I still cant decide:( base model/base+upg cpu/base+16gb of ram or pricier i5+16ram+256ssd
i'd like to keep it for as long as possible, but it's gonna be my first macbook and i dont know what i need
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The Core i5 seems to be plenty fast enough and definitely worth it over the Core i3. I would recommend the Core 15/16GB DRAM/256GB SSD and get 512GB if you can. Skip the CPU upgrade...I was thinking about it quite hard, but thinking I may skip it now and get i5/16GB/1TB SSD. The Core i5's better Iris Plus GPU (64 EUs versus i3 48 EUs) makes the Core i5 upgrade a complete no-brainer. Just my 2¢.
 
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DoctorTech said:
I ordered a base model 2020 MBA for my wife yesterday to replace her early 2015 MBA. She mainly uses it for web surfing, email, and writing letters in Microsoft Word. I agree with the earlier comments in this thread, I think Apple just hit home run with the value / $ for this model.
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Personally, I would have sprung the extra $100 for the quad-core processor. The difference in performance is worth it.
 
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Zdigital2015 said:
The Core i5 seems to be plenty fast enough and definitely worth it over the Core i3. I would recommend the Core 15/16GB DRAM/256GB SSD and get 512GB if you can. Skip the CPU upgrade...I was thinking about it quite hard, but thinking I may skip it now and get i5/16GB/1TB SSD. The Core i5's better Iris Plus GPU (64 EUs versus i3 48 EUs) makes the Core i5 upgrade a complete no-brainer. Just my 2¢.
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I think you nailed what I am going for. i5/16GB/1TB
 
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Zdigital2015 said:
The Core i5's better Iris Plus GPU (64 EUs versus i3 48 EUs) makes the Core i5 upgrade a complete no-brainer. Just my 2¢.
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100% this. If there's one upgrade I'd definitely recommend, it's the Core i5. The difference in CPU and GPU performance is big and worth the extra $100 USD.

On a side note, the new iPad Pro & Smart Keyboard definitely look great but for me the new MBA represents the best value out of all the products announced on Wednesday. The MBA is great again.
 
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Spungoflex said:
This might overtake the 4K iMac as the best value in Apple’s lineup.

Double the storage, better graphics, way better keyboard, for *less* money.

I’ve been a bit critic of their pricing, but this and the bump to 256GB for the Mini are both great.
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Is the 4K iMac really a good value?
Maybe I'm just spoiled because I haven't used a spinning hard drive since the debut of the MacBook Air in 2008 (12 years of SSD!). But doesn't the 4K iMac even come with a 5400rpm (not even 7200rpm) drive? I've seen so many people that are sad the first time they boot it and notice how slow it is.
 
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calzon65 said:
IOS as a replacement for an operating system like MacOS is ridiculous.
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Depends on what the buyer does with their computer. For those that use it write email, browse sites, and other tasks not heavily using local resources the iPad Pro is fine. But if you write code, work with big spreadsheets, etc, than it is has limitations.

I find that iPadOS has evolved I can use my iPad Pro for more and more tasks. I still have my MBP 16" for development and because I like working with shell command lines. But, for casual task and light business work, the iPad Pro and iPadOS is fine.
 
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