MacBook Air 2020 USER reviews

[mick2]

You liked Mick2’s posts citing exactly what I said and then came after me for disagreeing with him which is all based on the 4K Youtube situation. That was literally my source of disagreement with Mick2.

Not to mention, it’s not me moving away from the initial argument. I realised some of you guys have gone from saying or agreeing that the Macbook Air could play 4K 60FPS Youtube videos to now saying effectively “Why would you want to”?

While the Air isn’t 4K, it’s also not 1080p. It occupies a middle ground between 1080p full HD and 4K. Video does look clearer when downscaled to the Macbook Air’s retina 2560 x 1600 resolution rather than upscaled from a lower quality 1080p stream.

I’ll also note Mick2 is saying the Macbook Air has a 1440 x 900 screen. I hope I don’t need to go to the same effort to explain that is also not correct and just another falsehood which shows they should not be giving advice on this machine.

@Billiejoe87 This discussion has, for me, only ever been about one thing, and I have taken great care in my posts to keep it so. I claimed that the 2 assertions in your comment (a reply to @deeddawg) that "the newer processor isn't able to even watch a 4K Youtube video or run Chrome without heating up and the fans going crazy" is an exaggeration and overly dramatic.

That's all it's ever been about from my end. Everything else - the conspiracy your see between me and my 'mates'(!), the claims you're perceiving being made that watching 4k YouTube videos on a MBA is 'fine' or is a reasonable thing to do, the 'MBA can't be used for work' and all the other exaggerated stuff you're seeing has come entirely from you.

Now, I've put up with you repeatedly accusing me of lying (on more than one occasion), the evidence i've posted being 'disingenuous', not to mention the tone deaf comments about coronavirus in London (now thankfully removed) and even swearing at other posters. You need to stop with this, take a breath and focus on what people are actually saying to you - not what your anger imagines they're saying.

 

[Billiejoe87]

LOL. Go to Amazon and Best Buy and look at reviews. Look at reviews in this thread also.


Do you know what minority and majority mean?

I work with multiple programs at work and conference. My fans have been off or inaudible. Care to continue with the hyperbole more?

Now who’s losing credibility?

This thread is filled with people like yourself justifying their purchase. It is a Macbook Air thread afterall. i’ve stated this.

You also said you only open up a spreadsheet for work and stated that is normal use. You can find lots of posts from people other than me stating fans have ramped up on Zoom calls and other people have noticed. Those posts are on Macrumours as well, have a look. I don’t know what conferencing you are doing.... but yeah. I’ll be the bigger guy here and accept you are having a genuinely different experience.

You can also go to Youtube, Reddit, the comments section of any major review site, Whirlpool... You’ll see. I don’t know why Amazon and Best Buy have great reviews. I’d be interested in whether people are just excited and leaving great reviews when they receive the Macbook Air (as it looks great) and not fully testing it out first.

I’ll finish this off by saying there is a real effort in this thread to discredit Max Tech, but you do so at your own peril. He’s right about this issue, and it does severely hamper what would otherwise be Apple’s best overall laptop.

 

[Bolanders]

Now who’s losing credibility?

This thread is filled with people like yourself justifying their purchase. It is a Macbook Air thread afterall. i’ve stated this.

You also said you only open up a spreadsheet for work and stated that is normal use. You can find lots of posts from people other than me stating fans have ramped up on Zoom calls and other people have noticed. Those posts are on Macrumours as well, have a look. I don’t know what conferencing you are doing.... but yeah. I’ll be the bigger guy here and accept you are having a genuinely different experience.

You can also go to Youtube, Reddit, the comments section of any major review site, Whirlpool... You’ll see. I don’t know why Amazon and Best Buy have great reviews. I’d be interested in whether people are just excited and leaving great reviews when they receive the Macbook Air (as it looks great) and not fully testing it out first.

I’ll finish this off by saying there is a real effort in this thread to discredit Max Tech, but you do so at your own peril. He’s right about this issue, and it does severely hamper what would otherwise be Apple’s best overall laptop.

Again let me know when you understand what the word majority means.

Also just went to youtube and search MacBook Air review.

That was the first one. Scrolled down to comments and see very few negative comments

As deeddawg just posted almost 800 reviews with an aggregate score of over 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Would you like to make up anything else?

 

[deeddawg]

LOL. Go to Amazon and Best Buy and look at reviews. Look at reviews in this thread also.


Do you know what minority and majority mean?

Amazon - 4.5 of 5 with 203 reviews - https://www.amazon.com/Apple-MacBook-13-inch-512GB-Storage/dp/B086371NTJ/?th=1
BestBuy - 4.8 of 5 with 416 reviews - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-...ive-latest-model-gold/6366612.p?skuId=6366612
BestBuy - 4.7 of 5 with 130 reviews - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-...ive-latest-model-gold/6366614.p?skuId=6366614
B&H - 17 five star review, 1 four star review - https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod..._mwtk2ll_a_13_3_macbook_air_with.html/reviews

Clearly most folks dislike it. LOL

 

[rba1989]

Anyone else with a Macbook Air want to prove him wrong? I literally sell these things. They cannot play back 4K 60FPS Youtube video. That’s it. End of discussion. You are blind and deaf if you cant hear the helicopter and see the dropped frames every few seconds on that video.

Here are my results watching 4k 60 fps youtube video for about a minute in firefox and chrome. Fans around 4000-5000 rpm (not audible to me).
Air 2020 i5/8/256.

I don’t know how mick2 could watch 4k video on youtube without dropping frames... Maybe 16 gb of ram?

 

[deeddawg]

You can find lots of posts from people other than me stating fans have ramped up on Zoom calls and other people have noticed.

... and this is an example of what is perplexing -- different folks are having different experiences doing ostensibly similar things.

I've had occasion to do two forty minute Zoom calls with five to seven participants and my i5 MBA remained silent and cool.

Why would mine be silent and yours noisy? I don't know.

I have no reason to justify my purchase - if I were unhappy with it I'd sell it and buy something else. I didn't buy the MBA due to affordability, I bought it to fit a particular set of preferences/requirements. You've seen my posts on the MBP forum and here; I freely recommend folks buy the MBP when it's the better choice for their needs.

 

[Billiejoe87]

Here are my results watching 4k 60 fps youtube video in firefox and chrome. Fans around 4000-5000 rpm (not audible to me).
Air 2020 i5/8/256.

I don’t know how mick2 could watch 4k video on youtube without dropping frames... Maybe 16 gb of ram?

View attachment 914394View attachment 914395

Thank you for actually confirming the one original point I was trying to make.

Your experience is normal. The 16GB Ram may make a difference which would be interesting.

 

[deeddawg]

Maybe just maybe DeeDawg, Bolanders and a few others aren’t being honest in here?

Food for thought for anyone considering a Macbook Air on the gang mentality of shouting down anyone who disagrees with their world view. Max Tech has struck a nerve clearly.

Food for thought for anyone considering @Billiejoe87's advice, the mentality of calling "LIAR!" anyone who claims to have had a different experience undermines any credibility he or she might've otherwise had.

 

[Bolanders]

Thank you for actually contributing Rather than trolling. Your experience is literally what EVERYONE who is honest and owns this Macbook Air is seeing.

Maybe just maybe DeeDawg, Bolanders and a few others aren’t being honest in here?

Food for thought for anyone considering a Macbook Air on the gang mentality of shouting down anyone who disagrees with their world view. Max Tech has struck a nerve clearly.

Why wouldn't I be honest?

1. I don't pay for they machine. I could get any machine I want as work pays for it. If I want or wanted a Pro they pay for it.

2. I would actually pay more for the Air 2020 than I would for the 2020 pro. Better shape, slightly lighter and I travel a ton.

3. I care if it gets me through my workload (which you claim it can't) and it does that with flying colors.

 

[mick2]

Here are my results watching 4k 60 fps youtube video in firefox and chrome. Fans around 4000-5000 rpm (not audible to me).
Air 2020 i5/8/256.

I don’t know how mick2 could watch 4k video on youtube without dropping frames... Maybe 16 gb of ram?

View attachment 914394View attachment 914395

fwiw I was using FF 76.01 - I don't use chrome as a daily driver. I ran todays test soon after starting up so probably not much else running in the b/g. I know having certain TSRs & app clients running in the background - looking at you, Slack - can slow things up somewhat? I doubt that RAM is a limiting factor here, provided that the GPU has enough (GPU uses system RAM of course).

As I said elsewhere, the whole 4k video thing is ridiculous anyway, and is just an artifical 'test' cooked up by YouTubers and the people that follow them. No-one in real life should be trying to watch a software decoded VP9 4k video on their 13" MBA; its a pointless exercise.

 

[Billiejoe87]

Food for thought for anyone considering @Billiejoe87's advice, the mentality of calling "LIAR!" anyone who claims to have had a different experience undermines any credibility he or she might've otherwise had.

Yawn. you keep mentioning credibility, while at the same time baiting me with facetious rubbish like claiming everyone dislikes their Macbook Air as a dig at me when you link some positive examples and then hammer me when I bite. I might be stupid for taking the bait, doesn’t mean I’m wrong on my overall point.

I can’t remember if it was you or not, but I’ve had replies in here claiming my Macbook Air must be made of water for me to equate it reaching 100 degrees with boiling point.

My initial argument was this Macbook Air could not play 4K 60FPS Youtube videos without stuttering. Others have confirmed this and some like you have either trolled me or tried to change my point entirely so it can be dismissed.

How about some food for thought. Instead of dismissing Max Tech and others experiencing issues, how about we try to find a common denominator? The poster above mentioned 16Gb Ram. Maybe that makes a difference, who knows right now?

 

[Bolanders]

Yawn. you keep mentioning credibility, while at the same time baiting me with facetious rubbish like claiming everyone dislikes their Macbook Air as a dig at me when you link some positive examples and then hammer me when I bite. I might be stupid for taking the bait, doesn’t mean I’m wrong on my overall point.

I can’t remember if it was you or not, but I’ve had replies in here claiming my Macbook Air must be made of water for me to equate it reaching 100 degrees with boiling point.

My initial argument was this Macbook Air could not play 4K 60FPS Youtube videos without stuttering. Others have confirmed this and some like you have either trolled me or tried to change my point entirely so it can be dismissed.

How about some food for thought. Instead of dismissing Max Tech and others experiencing issues, how about we try to find a common denominator? The poster above mentioned 16Gb Ram. Maybe that makes a difference, who knows right now?

There you go making stuff up. You claimed your Air got to a boiling point. Anyone who reads that infers that your Air was boiling literally.

You did say this to -

"Macbook Air could not play 4K 60FPS Youtube videos without stuttering"

mick showed that it could do that.

You also said you can't use it for work and yet many do.

On and on

 

[mick2]

My initial argument was this Macbook Air could not play 4K 60FPS Youtube videos without stuttering. Others have confirmed this and some like you have either trolled me or tried to change my point entirely so it can be dismissed.

Nope. You're doing it again. You're shifting the goalposts after the fact. Your initial argument is here:

I've seen you bang this point earlier. It's not helpful. When Apple advertises 10th Gen i5 Processors in a MacBook Air and 8th Gen i5 Processors in a MacBook Pro they aren't telling you that the newer processor isn't able to even watch a 4K Youtube video or run Chrome without heating up and the fans going crazy, while the older processor will be fine.

You keep wriggling around on the hook when pressed. Show some integrity and either own - or disown - your own comments.

 

[Billiejoe87]

There you go making stuff up. You claimed your Air got to a boiling point. Anyone who reads that infers that your Air was boiling literally.

You did say this to -

"Macbook Air could not play 4K 60FPS Youtube videos without stuttering"

mick showed that it could do that.

You also said you can't use it for work and yet many do.

On and on

Mick is not being honest. Sorry no other way to frame it. You’ve had two other posters post the same thing as me that the Macbook Air cant play these videos but you ignore them to focus on the one guy on the internet who can?

Sorry but you are full of BS and the fact you are back to your bait and switch of now suddenly claiming the Macbook Air can play those videos you earlier said you weren’t claiming it could just shows the trolling going on here. I’m not going to let you continue baiting me with rubbish with no evidence to back yourself up.

Welcome to my ignore list. The advantage for you is you can reply with whatever you want and I won’t fight back now. You can mislead away!

 

[Bolanders]

Mick is a liar. Sorry no other way to frame it. You’ve had two other posters post the same thing as me that the Macbook Air cant play these videos but you ignore them to focus on the one guy on the internet who can?

Sorry but you are full of BS and the fact you are back to your bait and switch of now suddenly claiming the Macbook Air can play those videos are you earlier said you never said that just shows you for the immature troll you are. I’m not going to let you continue baiting me with rubbish with no evidence to back yourself up.

Welcome to my ignore list.

LOL. EPIC MELTDOWN

 

[esphil]

I had the i5/16gb/512 Air and thought alot of the overheating and problems were overblown. After I connected it up to a external screen and had just Ableton open with nothing loaded into the project, the machine started to lag, and temps were staying at 90, safari started to lag with 2 tabs open switching between them. If you push this machine outside extremely basic things it will start to fall over. I'm coming from a 2010 imac i3, and in many cases the iMac performs better in multi tasking which is 10 years old, granted it has better cooling. I basically couldn't even run Chrome on the Macbook Air because after just a hand full of tabs it is unusable. To contrast with the iMac, I can have 3 windows, with about 50 tabs across them, safari open and multiple other programs with noticable lag. This iMac has a hybrid driev and 12gbs of ram, and in theory the Air should smoke it based on specs. I returned the Air and moved to the 16" i7 base and I'm extremely happy with it. Theres alot I liked about the Air, but theres stuff I didn't like. It felt way too limiting to me. The screen also always felt too small, and the screen doesn't get bright enough, you have to almost have it on full brightness. Yes you may be able to watch a single 4k video on the Air with nothing open, but the temp is going to accelerate quickly, and having any other program open is going to give you problems. Thats my take on owning it.

 

[rba1989]

fwiw I was using FF 76.01 - I don't use chrome as a daily driver. I ran todays test soon after starting up so probably not much else running in the b/g. I know having certain TSRs & app clients running in the background - looking at you, Slack - can slow things up somewhat? I doubt that RAM is a limiting factor here, provided that the GPU has enough (GPU uses system RAM of course).

As I said elsewhere, the whole 4k video thing is ridiculous anyway, and is just an artifical 'test' cooked up by YouTubers and the people that follow them. No-one in real life should be trying to watch a software decoded VP9 4k video on their 13" MBA; its a pointless exercise.

Ok, thanks for you comment.
I managed to repeat your result but only with fan at max 8000 rpm.
I've restarted laptop, closed all bg apps and left it rest for a while. Then I turned fan to max and start to play 4k video in firefox 76.0.1.

It turned out to play the 4k video for a minute without frame dropping. But after a minute video starts to struttle...
With automatic fan control I can only watch 4k video for about 20-30 secs without frame drop.

 

[mick2]

Ok, thanks for you comment.
I managed to repeat your result but only with fan at max 8000 rpm.
I've restarted laptop, closed all bg apps and left it rest for a while. Then I turned fan to max and start to play 4k video in firefox 76.0.1.

It turned out to play the 4k video for a minute without frame dropping. But after a minute video starts to struttle...
With automatic fan control I can only watch 4k video for about 20-30 secs without frame drop.
View attachment 914407

Having seen your post, I've run the same video once and then restarted it immediately again. I got frame drops starting approx 1.5mins into the 2nd run. Nothing major, but the occasional flicker every few secs.

I don't know the fan speed as I dont run that s/w, but was pretty much inaudible for run 1 and the very slightly audible for run 2. As in, could hear it vaguely from 18" away but by no means loud. Case is warm to touch but again nothing i'd consider worrying.

Could be differences in our thermal paste jobs maybe?? I also have nothing else major running in the b/g at the moment.

Regardless, we're a fairly long way away from the 'screaming fans using chome' and 'cannot even play a 4k video' that started all this.

 

[deeddawg]

I don't know the fan speed as I dont run that s/w

Not feeling like digging through prior posts, but there was a theory posted a while back that the Intel Power Gadget or other kernel-changing monitoring software might be having an effect. Speculation of course, but an interesting idea.

That said, one individual mentioned they'd installed that after experiencing high fan usage...

Perhaps some combination of build-quality variance and potential issue with certain kernel extensions?

*shrug* Dunno. I've not installed IPG or istat and my experiences are what they are. Be interesting to see folks results in a few weeks/months after a couple software updates.

I have no reason to claim anything other than that which I observe doing the things I do. Mine works fine for what I bought it to do - and if it didn't it'd be gone and replaced with something else that did.

 

[WindowsLaptop]

Not feeling like digging through prior posts, but there was a theory posted a while back that the Intel Power Gadget or other kernel-changing monitoring software might be having an effect. Speculation of course, but an interesting idea.

In also saw that and wondered if it could be a thing.

 

[throAU]

Good points. I think those who bought top spec Airs (such as i7/16/1000) either just like spending money to say they've bought the most expensive of something, or they would really be much happier with the Pro.

Or, I needed a replacement machine (and could write it off as a work from home expense) and the non-butterfly Pro did not exist (also I dislike the Touch Bar).

Yes, I'd be happier with a Pro, but when I ordered it was not out.

edit:
Also when I went i7 the knowledge was not there that the i5 was basically the same. I did consider that it might end up that way, but I wanted to make sure I got the 64 EU integrated graphics, and the only way to be sure of that was to get the i7 as Intel do not make i7s with the 48 EU part. i5s come with either 48 or 64 EU. As it happens, Apple decided on the 64 EU i5 but again, that was not known when I ordered.

Was I to order again (and this is what I would recommend to anyone ordering today), I would skip the i7 and get the i5, but at the time it was $150 (i.e., roughly 5% of total purchase cost, including AppleCare) insurance to get the better GPU.

This is the cost of being a bleeding edge hardware enthusiast.

If I was willing to wait long enough, I'd skip intel altogether (going in, I knew ice lake would be a "meh" upgrade because intel aren't doing so well) and wait for ARM. That wouldn't suit everybody but I do not need Windows any more. But I did "need" a new machine.

Had I wanted for the Pro to be released, I'd still not have a machine (it would not have shipped to me yet) and I've finished work from home...

 

[adrianlondon]

Yes, I'd be happier with a Pro, but when I ordered it was not out.

I would have probably ordered the Pro too, but I'm the opposite. The Air has turned out to be good enough for my needs and I would have wasted money buying the 10th-gen Intel Pro. I wouldn't have bought the 8th gen, but there's no real logic as to why apart from the fact it sounds old

Did the Air struggle with what you needed it for, or is it that you feel the Pro is more future proof?

 

[throAU]

I would have probably ordered the Pro too, but I'm the opposite. The Air has turned out to be good enough for my needs and I would have wasted money buying the 10th-gen Intel Pro. I wouldn't have bought the 8th gen, but there's no real logic as to why apart from the fact it sounds old

Did the Air struggle with what you needed it for, or is it that you feel the Pro is more future proof?

The pro would give me more flexibility to do some of the things I am not likely to do on the air.

But those aren't essential to my job to run on the air; I have a desktop for that. The air is fine. And if I bought the Pro it probably would be crap for those things anyway (and as above, I have a desktop for that) - and it would have been a lot more money.

Meh. I'll stick with this thing for now, I see my processing needs on a local machine going DOWN in future rather than up, I don't do a lot of photo or videos and my need for virtual machines is getting less over time. And for the apple ecosystem specific needs I have it does just fine.

 

[Saul Giordani]

I'll try again tomorrow...

I've tried again, and same result: video call with 2 other people, 80° average and fans at 8000 rpm. Al CPU usage at 20-23%.

Honestly I'm quite disappointed with this particular thing.

Zoom seems to perform better, haven't tried teams yet.

 

[WhiteTemplar]

Hi people!

I do not speak English very well so I use google translation to help me, sorry if your eyes start to bleed, but I still wanted to give a little feedback.

For starters, I have no point of comparison because it is my first step in the world of Apple.

I am very happy with my purchase, I received mine 4 days ago, I7/16gb/512ssd.

For my use, internet browsing, watching movie/netflix with 2k external monitor, little Lightroom and QuarkXpress, it works perfectly!

It is fast, quiet, light, a superb screen, a good battery ... I am really satisfied.

Regarding the heating or fan problems which I have seen come back several times here (almost made me cancel my order) and well ...

No problem for me, really. The fan just spin like a F-35 reactor when I finished the first initialization, since a first reboot, not heard once.

Funny little anecdote, I do not remember the page, but a user spoke on this post that after installing the intel software, these fans started to run quickly and the processor heat went up to 100 ° and it suspected that the software was have bug.

EDIT (I found the post) :

I was curious why so many people were complaining about temps and thermal throttling, so I installed intel software to check temps and average clock speed. After installing it, my fans started spinning fast, and I could see temps at 99 degrees constant when copying 19gb file to my external drive. This was the only process I was running the whole time. I was suspecting intel's software could be buggy as it might be installing some kexts (kernel extensions) which is causing MBA to spin up and hit those temps while monitoring cpu cores.

Really happy with this machine. I would suggest users to stop installing intel's software to monitor and just enjoy using the machine. As others have suggested, this is not a pro laptop. So if you are expecting to play games or edit videos, buy a right laptop.

The same thing happened to me, so I decided to use TempMonitor instead of intel and the results are pretty good. I speak in degrees celsius, not fahrenheit.

I specify that I live in the south of France, so it starts to get hot in my living room, between 28 ° and 31 ° the day.

Idle : between 32° and 45°/0rpm

Safari open with 5-6 tabs, a 1080p@60fps youtube video that has been running for 30 min and 2 Excel pages: 40-55° /0rpm

Lightroom and QuarkXpress: for my small use and what I do, between 55° and 60°/0-3600rpm = silent

2 hours movie in 1080P connected to my external monitor 2k closed clamshell mode: 50-65°/2800rpm = silent

I can have my MBA on my knees, it has never gotten so hot as to be disturbing. It heats up very slightly from time to time, but that's nothing compared to my old laptops. (Dell, Asus and co)

Very happy with my machine!

see you soon and take care of yourself