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Can some folks please run 2020 MacBook Air i3 vs i5 tests (with and without turbo mode)?
- Thread starter hipnetic
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I think the guy didn't think much of the battery life and the fans were on too often and were too loud. Can you 'tag' people in here so they see this?
Hey man,
The short version is as unoporfavor said - the battery life was shorter than my 2019 MBA, it was noticeably hotter doing very basic stuff, and the fans were coming on far more often.
Full version here - the i3 should arrive next week so I'll post an updated 2019/2020 i3 comparison then.
MacBook Air 2020 USER reviews
I have to concur with Loog. I'm by no means a power user, but I do use Facetime and Zoom, and I just haven't had an experience where the CPU isn't maxing out and the fans aren't at 8000 rpm. That in itself isn't a deal breaker, but the totality of the experience isn't what I wanted. I don't...
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Hey man,
The short version is as unoporfavor said - the battery life was shorter than my 2019 MBA, it was noticeably hotter doing very basic stuff, and the fans were coming on far more often.
Full version here - the i3 should arrive next week so I'll post an updated 2019/2020 i3 comparison then.
MacBook Air 2020 USER reviews
I have to concur with Loog. I'm by no means a power user, but I do use Facetime and Zoom, and I just haven't had an experience where the CPU isn't maxing out and the fans aren't at 8000 rpm. That in itself isn't a deal breaker, but the totality of the experience isn't what I wanted. I don't...
Sorry didn't mean to take over your reasoning RiaKoobCam and hope didn't say anything out of place!
Your original post is very well written and thorough. I have the 2020 i3 and so far it's been fine but my usage might even be more 'lite' than yours. I will say I am VERY sensitive to fan noise too coming from a 12" MacBook (fanless i believe), and I haven't once heard them using the MBA 2020 i3. That included doing a large OS update too which they can kick in for.
Cheers guys 🤘
Hey mate,
No stress, you covered it well and definitely didn't say anything out of place!
Yeah that's why I'm trying out the i3, I want the kinda experience you have. It may be that my i5 was faulty, I have no idea, I could only experience the one unit. My usage though was about as light as I can imagine - it's a very strange day when I have more than two tabs open, and I only video call for short periods of time.
Here's hoping for the i3.
Perhaps for the same reason I pushed my trusty old 2015 MBA to it's limits: I didn't have an endless pocket filled with money but wanted to get a quality laptop that runs MacOS.
Sorry, but it annoys me a lot when people just throw in "LOL get an MBP". I would have if I could.
I felt extremely lucky that I waited to buy the Air until they bumped up the default RAM to 8gb. That was a blessing then.
Now I just don't want a heavy laptop and trying to avoid touch bar. But it seems like you can't do it with any of the Pros.
Re-reading your "review" you mentioned using the Brave web browser (something, I honestly had never even heard of before reading your review). FWIW, I did a quick Google search and came across a Brave support forum thread where people were complaining about Brave draining their MacBook's battery quickly. It wasn't just Air owners, either. Sadly, that particular thread was closed without a clear resolution, so I'm not sure what the current status is. Anyway, it's something for you (and others) to consider.
I think one of the problems is trying to figure out what "pushing the limits" means. 4K video editing isn't something that most people need to be doing. But I would consider 1080p editing/exporting via iMovie to be a reasonable expectation, given that you can do those things even inside of your iPhone (in fact, I think you can do 4K video editing inside of a modern iPhone). That's part of why I started this thread and specifically asked some folks to test out some "light" 1080p video editing/exporting.
What about browsing the web and watching YouTube videos via the Chrome browser? I think that's a reasonable expectation, but it also may be something that even the MacBook Pro has issues with, which raises the separate issue/question of who is to blame for that? Apple or Google? And it may be that it will eventually get resolved via an OS or Chrome update, such that what is a problem today might become a non-issue tomorrow. In the mean time, you may need to consider whether you really *need* to use Chrome (or, at least, whether you need to use it as your primary browser) until that issue (hopefully) gets resolved.
Yes, would love to hear about the battery life. Ordered an i5/16/1TB that should be here in a week, and just wondering if I should switch to the i3.
Hey man,
The short version is as unoporfavor said - the battery life was shorter than my 2019 MBA, it was noticeably hotter doing very basic stuff, and the fans were coming on far more often.
Full version here - the i3 should arrive next week so I'll post an updated 2019/2020 i3 comparison then.
MacBook Air 2020 USER reviews
I have to concur with Loog. I'm by no means a power user, but I do use Facetime and Zoom, and I just haven't had an experience where the CPU isn't maxing out and the fans aren't at 8000 rpm. That in itself isn't a deal breaker, but the totality of the experience isn't what I wanted. I don't...
Hey mate,
Battery life depends on your use case etc etc etc. Here's the i5 vs i3 test I did, more info about differences in my full write up.
'Battery - 2019 still reigns supreme, 2020 i3 was about 15-20% worse, 2020 i5 was about 40% worse.
I did two battery tests in the week I had the 2020 i5, so I figured it was only fair to replicate them on the 2020 i3 and the 2019 to get a proper comparison.
Note: these tests were done after all indexing and synching were completed.
Test 1: The 'regular, every day' test. 50% brightness. Browse the web in Brave (Reddit, news sites, occasional YouTube, never more than 3 tabs) until the battery life hit 50%. Then, switch to Netflix and stream the same video at the same compression until the battery runs out.
Test 2. The 'Ah crap I'm stuck on an international flight and I'm bored' test. Obviously not such a worry anymore (ha ha ha ha 😢). 50% brightness. Netflix, stream the same video at the same compression until the battery runs out.
For those interested, the chosen series for the streaming portion of the tests was Start Trek: The Next Generation, because hearing people stress about warp core breaches in the background was fun.
Results:
1. 2019 i5 MBA: Regular, every day test - 9hrs 13m. Stuck on an international flight test, 10hrs 20m.
2. 2020 i3 MBA: Regular, every day test - 8hrs 3m. Stuck on an international flight test, 9hrs 22m.
3. 2020 i5 MBA: Regular, every day test - 6hrs 20m. Stuck on an international flight test, 7hrs 35m.
So, what does this mean for me in real life? I'm going to use pre-Corona examples. With the 2019 and the 2020 i3, that's all day battery life for me. If I'm going to a bring-your-own-device professional course (which I do frequently) where I'll be scanning through multiple PDFs, taking notes, and making slides, I don't have to worry about bringing a charger.
That isn't the case with the 2020 i5 - for me, it was 'it could be all day if I gimped everything, turned the brightness to one notch and made sure I didn't look at the computer the wrong way.' Since the 2015 MBA, I've never had to worry about hobbling the machine to ensure a full day's battery life. I know many of you are coming from a Macbook Pro where 6 hours might seem great, and if that works for you, cool. But I'm just not interested in turning off built-in essential functions like Turbo Boost to make it through the day or reduce temperatures - it shouldn't be necessary on a $1500 machine.
One of the main reasons I buy Macbook Airs is to reduce the amount of crap I have to carry around. I don't want to buy a power bank, I don't want to be playing the Hunger Games to try and get one of the few power points on the base where I work or at airport terminals, I don't want to be hunting around like Smeagol at a cafe for an abandoned USB-C charger. All day battery life is important to me, even if it might not be for you.'