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MacBook Air 2020 USER reviews

Really annoyed by reports of Air problems. I was very keen on getting one to replace my awful (keyboard) 2017 16GB MBP. A friend wants to buy it from me for £700 ish.

To chime in on the fan issues here, my MBP goes wild on Microsoft Teams when I'm on a video call with more than 2 people.
 
erasr said:
To chime in on the fan issues here, my MBP goes wild on Microsoft Teams when I'm on a video call with more than 2 people.
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Mine Air base model is dead silent when using MS teams with around 5-6 people. But we only use screen sharing if that makes any difference.
 
erasr said:
Really annoyed by reports of Air problems. I was very keen on getting one to replace my awful (keyboard) 2017 16GB MBP. A friend wants to buy it from me for £700 ish.

To chime in on the fan issues here, my MBP goes wild on Microsoft Teams when I'm on a video call with more than 2 people.
Click to expand...

Can't tell you what Teams is like, but I had a seven participant Zoom meeting and my i5 Air remained silent and comfortable for the entire 40 minute duration. No screen sharing though.

As for the reports of Air problems...

Mine's been fine. Since the first day or so when it was indexing and Photos was doing whatever it was doing, mine's been silent and comfortable throughout my normal usage.

Yes it'll spin up the fan when I push it - exporting (converting) a bunch of RAW image files. Building 1000 previews from RAW files. So does my MBP15.

Look at what your workload is - if it's mostly idle with short bits of CPU need, the Air likely would be a fine choice. If you're doing stuff that's going to be continually pushing the CPU, then you may need to look at the new MBP just released with the new keyboard.
 
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My new Air continues to be a great machine. Just deciding now if I couple it with an 11 or 12.9 iPad Pro.
 
oilers780 said:
How is the Air with 16gb RAM/i7/512gb SSD?
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Depends on what you do with it.

if your workload is low CPU utilization with bits of bursty CPU usage it’s great.

If your workload is compute intensive, including choosing to use cpu heavy browsers or choosing to do VP9 codec video that is software decoded, then you’d do better to buy a MBP
 
deeddawg said:
Depends on what you do with it.

if your workload is low CPU utilization with bits of bursty CPU usage it’s great.

If your workload is compute intensive, including choosing to use cpu heavy browsers or choosing to do VP9 codec video that is software decoded, then you’d do better to buy a MBP
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I use Safari and Chrome for web browsing, mainly Safari. I will be doing spreadsheets (Vlookups, models, pivot tables), Tableau, emails, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint slide decks, research, watch videos, play music, Python coding, social media, etc. I think the 16gb of RAM and i7 should be sufficient for these things?
 
LostAggie said:
Desk, mostly driving the Apple LG 4K monitor.
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Ah ok, yeah adding the monitor probably helps run the MBA through it's paces. By any chance, do you have the gold one? I wish I could see it in person to see if it's more of a "rose gold" with a pink hue or an iPhone XS/iPad Mini 4 gold hue. I think I may opt for the space grey to be safer because the rose gold looks ugly imo.
 
oilers780 said:
Do you use it on your lap a lot or physically on a table or a flat surface?
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While I don’t have your workflow, and I don’t use the Microsoft products, I have spent multiple evenings tagging and culling photos in photo mechanic and lightroom. Multiple hours on my lap and never uncomfortable. i5 model here.
 
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oilers780 said:
Ah ok, yeah adding the monitor probably helps run the MBA through it's paces. By any chance, do you have the gold one? I wish I could see it in person to see if it's more of a "rose gold" with a pink hue or an iPhone XS/iPad Mini 4 gold hue. I think I may opt for the space grey to be safer because the rose gold looks ugly imo.
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I saw it in store before corona (just), it's definitely more of a rose gold than a gold to my eye.
 
oilers780 said:
Ah ok, yeah adding the monitor probably helps run the MBA through it's paces. By any chance, do you have the gold one? I wish I could see it in person to see if it's more of a "rose gold" with a pink hue or an iPhone XS/iPad Mini 4 gold hue. I think I may opt for the space grey to be safer because the rose gold looks ugly imo.
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Got space gray... wish I had gotten silver though.
 
For general use (multiple browsing tabs, Office apps, streaming) is 8 GB enough? I am looking at either i5/16gb/256 or the base i5/8gb/512 for $1299.
 
oilers780 said:
I am going space grey. Why Silver though?



Thanks, that helps. Space Grey seems more sleeker and it will be a nice change up from my 2015 MBP.
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I like the look of silver more these days. Nothing wrong with the space gray.
 
LostAggie said:
I like the look of silver more these days. Nothing wrong with the space gray.
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Ah ok. Does the space grey retain more value? If you want, at least down the road, trading it in or reselling it could help. Right now, I don't think it's worth parting ways with a 2020 Mac unless you're still in a return window and can still backup your current files.

I am going all in on the 2020 MBA for the next 5 years or so.
 
oilers780 said:
Ah ok. Does the space grey retain more value? If you want, at least down the road, trading it in or reselling it could help. Right now, I don't think it's worth parting ways with a 2020 Mac unless you're still in a return window and can still backup your current files.

I am going all in on the 2020 MBA for the next 5 years or so.
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I am definitely keeping the space grey. Everything is solid on this one.
 
I had a silver Pro for 7 years and bought the space grey Air a few weeks ago. Really happy with the colour - it makes a nice change. However, if your previous laptop wasn't space grey (maybe, shock horror, it wasn't even Apple) then silver is also great.

I've seen photos of the gold that make it look the best of the three, but I've seen other photos that make it look quite "rosey". However, I'd already ordered the space grey at that point and I had a hard enough decision wondering whether to pay the extra for the i5 over the i3 (I did - i5/8/256) so couldn't be bothered to dither over a colour choice as well :)
 
magbarn said:
It’s believable. Remember i9 is still using slightly modified sky lake Cores while 2020 mba is using new ice lake cores which have Better ipc. On Geekbench my i7 2020 mba looks like a much faster option compared to the i5, but when really using the cpu, the power limits have it behaving almost the same as the i5. So in real world apps, the i9 will still be much faster.
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does your i7 get hot quickly like other reports of the i5's?
 
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