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MacBook Air 2020 USER reviews
- Thread starter Untapped Potential
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Same here, my 2020 MBP 13" got me anxious at times with battery drain. I don't have that feeling with the 2020 MBA base model. Seems to squeeze about 30% more battery life out of it per day.
Dang!!! Definitely jealous! Hoping for a miracle on mine since I ordered it yesterday.
I wonder if there has perhaps been a running update to fix the heatsink.
The cooling issues are/would be trivial to fix without doing a major change (simply don't hollow out the bottom of the heat-sink. So wondering if maybe later build MBA 2020s have had this fix from factory.
Windows in a VM would make my fan scream with the stock cooling setup.
I think we can't even imagine how smart of a brains work in Apple. I believe in planned obsolescence from them. Lets say a butterfly keyboard - it is comfy and nice keyboard, but projected the way to die after year 1.
Also do you remember LCD cable, which worn out in 3-4 years? - that is just ideally created thing, which will break when planned.
This heatsinks are reduced on a purpose - to keep a big step behind base MBP. Otherwise, why pay more?
Nah. The machine is still power limited, all screwing the heatsink up really does is drop performance a little bit in typical use but more importantly make the thing super loud and annoying. Reviews will easily pick that up and result in poor reviews.
The keyboards have cost them money, as have the screens.
Don't attribute to malice what can just as easily be explained by incompetence.
Its a manufacturing (not so much design) defect and easily fixed. If they really wanted to cripple the machine to a similar performance level without the noise, they could do so in a far more effective way which would actually be cheaper and even give them a battery life benefit - just limit the power delivery in firmware to max of 7-8 watts.
No need to have a loud annoying user experience to create product segmentation - segmentation that already even exists due to the intel TDP ratings between the processors. The MBP processors are rated to 28 watts plus, not 9-12 like the iX-10X0 series.
The heatsink, if actually connected to the die properly is enough for the MBA processor. This is a manufacturing screwup IMHO, not deliberate. If deliberate there would be far less damaging ways to create segmentation.
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My experience too. I have the MBP 2020 but with the gen 8 processor and it's fairly disappointing battery life especially on an external 4k monitor.
The MBA i3 10 Gen has far better battery life and for large parts of my workload - sufficient. The keyboard is better than the 2020 MBP too which is odd as they both should be the same.
About the keyboard, I think the MBP just has a little more empty space underneath the keys - which makes it feel hollow when you type on it. Much prefer the sturdy experience on the MBA.
Sighhhh my Air is still processing and of course B&H has the model I want in stock. Can’t chance canceling Apple cause it’s take a few days for my money to be back to my card.
Have you checked the refurb section? It was faster to ship my i5 as a refurb rather than new. It was $170 cheaper as well. Anything you see on the refurb section is available to ship right away.
It will be there before you know it.
Been playing with mine getting it set up.
Great machine. I’m happy I got it.
Ahh that's good to know! I thought it was all in my head at first! But the MBA is definitely nicer to type on!
On battery life - I wouldn't say the 2020 MBP 13" 8th gen is terrible (like the 15" it replaced), but the MBA gives significantly more confidence to be an 'all day device'
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What model did you go for in the end?
Nice! Is that a standard spec or did you have to customise?
I went total base. Upped memory on MBP
Ah yeh that always takes longer. Think my MBA i3 was 4 days order to door, and MBP customised (upped the memory) was more like 2.5 weeks
I am hunting after Lenovo Laptop as of now... and i think i understood why Apple is doing fine. It is because Lenovo sometimes ships after 3 month, charges your card 3 times, and people are still patiently waiting.
There is still some convenience when you deal with Apple about order/delivery.
Chrome is awful for my MBA 2020 i5. I was playing Cities Skylines from Steam and the fans were less noisy than when I'm watching YouTube/Netflix with Chrome. Is there something I can change in the Chrome settings to fix this insane browser? Too bad Safari doesn't support many things...
I’ve had my base model 2020 MBA for over 2 months and it has been flawless. Rarely gets hot. Almost never hear the fan. I use it as an everyday home office computer/laptop:
email/messages
calendar/contacts
Preview
Safari
Notes
MS Office
iWork
Photos
Zoom and FaceTime
simple iMovies
Nothing too intensive or taxing. It’s a great computer for my needs. I think it helps that I almost exclusively use Apple native software and applications, so the computer runs pretty smoothly. The exception is that I occasionally use MS Office, which runs fine, but I prefer iWork and use it more often.
email/messages
calendar/contacts
Preview
Safari
Notes
MS Office
iWork
Photos
Zoom and FaceTime
simple iMovies
Nothing too intensive or taxing. It’s a great computer for my needs. I think it helps that I almost exclusively use Apple native software and applications, so the computer runs pretty smoothly. The exception is that I occasionally use MS Office, which runs fine, but I prefer iWork and use it more often.
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Unfortunately based on anecdotal reading of forum posts, it seems like those of us that upgraded to the i5 are experiencing this problem more than those on the i3.