MacBook Air 2020 USER reviews

[throAU]

Seriously??? I understand what indexing does and how it works.

I asked about a FRESH install. How long on the MBA with NOTHING added that wasn't on the MBA straight out of the box. No data, no user files, no photos added.

Well, if you sign into iCloud, it will pull in your photos, emails, iCloud Drive, etc.

Most people buying a new Mac who are existing Mac owners do this. Mine is currently processing 6500 photos for example. And what is it doing to them? It is running AI on them to determine whether they are a cat, a dog, a person, a car, etc. so you can search your photos for that.

This process takes time.

If I had 1 photo? not long. If I have thousands - well, longer....

If you are not importing any data - probably doesn't take long at all. Maybe an hour or two? Not sure. I haven't done that in 10+ years. And I would doubt that 90%+ of MacBook owners are new to the Apple ecosystem. They probably have data on their iDevice that will be pulled in when they sign into iCloud.

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one of my concern about macbook air is its brightness. 400 nits vs 500 nits comparing to macbook pro.

It's "bright enough". I normally run my Macbooks on roughly 50% inside, and this one is no different in that respect.



edit:
For those curious: I do not have any software monitoring cpu temp or clock at the moment because I consider this to be irrelevant if it is performing the way I expect. If/when I run into issues with fan noise or it burning my leg (for example), then I'll look into that. In the meantime - don't know what temp it is running at and don't care. I fully expect apple will be letting the CPU get quite warm before turning the fan on in order to be mostly silent during normal use. Mine is still processing photos via photoanalysisd/photolibraryd in the background when the machine is idle (but is still silent).

How it performs is what I am concerned about and right now I have no complaints (coming from a 2015 13" MBP). Keyboard is great (prefer to my 2015 personally), trackpad is great, touchid is great, sidecar is great. Screen is bright enough and in general use (i.e., what I bought it for, not transcoding or ripping video - I have a desktop for that) - it is normally silent and responsive.

I do plan to load some games up on it later out of curiosity but they won't be AAA graphics extravaganzas (again, i have a desktop for that). More likely games that I feel are "reasonable" to run on a portable machine with integrated graphics. Maybe one of the Tropico games, for example. Might also give steam play a go, running things from remote on my desktop.

 

[KPOM]

me too. although not sure I need 512 since I store most in iCloud. Last night I played around with the education pricing page, and before I knew it I had built it i5, 16 GB, 512GB and I was pushing it to nearly double the intro price. I've always pushed options on computers (and cars...gotta love ventilated seats in AZ), but I think this time I'll go base model. I can save the cash and basically buy a new system whenever I feel this one has lost its zippiness.

You can get the i5 as a $100 upgrade to the base model. With your discount it is the same price as the MSRP of the base model. No need to double the RAM or SSD.

 

[997440]

@throAU
In another thread you spoke of “Volta” and its possibility of producing a power limit cap, have you discovered if it is possible, and if it is have you applied it yet? Early in the process, I know, but I’m curious.

Thanks in advance for any insight. Have fun with the new machine. : -)

 

[throAU]

@throAU
In another thread you spoke of “Volta” and its possibility of producing a power limit cap, have you discovered if it is possible, and if it is have you applied it yet? Early in the process, I know, but I’m curious.

Thanks in advance for any insight. Have fun with the new machine. : -)

Haven't tried yet, but it is the first thing I plan on trying if I find the noise vs. performance under load unacceptable.

For now though I'm trying to see how this is whilst kept relatively "clean" with no third party gadgets.

All I have installed in terms of apps that embed themselves into the system somewhat (vs. regular apps you can drag/drop/move wherever) is Office 365, Skype for Business, VMware Fusion (not used yet), 1password and 1blocker.

 

[Dhonk]

Apps are likely to use more ram than they actually need. For example, an app uses 12gb ram on 32gb computer, we cannot say that app won’t be fuctioning well on a machine with 8gb of ram. It gets easier to access memory cells when they are allocated. Therefore, the youtube videos that tell you “I have this computer with 32gb ram and Lightroom uses 22 gigs therefore you should get 32 ram” are garbage. OS optimization and other things are also important. (4gb ram might be enough for an Iphone but an android phone needs a lot more.)

More ram is better, but we cannot make conclusions by using only that data.

Thanks, this is exactly what I was wondering. I figured a computer finds a way to balance its load based on what it has available. That would mean spreading the load out over more gigs of RAM, even if the RAM isn't being taxed

 

[throAU]

Thanks, this is exactly what I was wondering. I figured a computer finds a way to balance its load based on what it has available. That would mean spreading the load out over more gigs of RAM, even if the RAM isn't being taxed

That's not quite how it works, but it is true that the more memory you have the more macOS will "use" for things like cache.

"Free" memory is freeloading memory. Memory that is doing nothing to help your machine.

Any modern OS will attempt to store recent or frequently accessed stuff in memory even after you close it, so that if you need it again it is already loaded.

More RAM = it will keep more in RAM.


e.g., here is my mostly idle machine with a few programs loaded and sitting there in the background. On my previous machine with 8 GB of Ram it wouldn't have been using 12.4 GB

 

[ctjack]

Will the computers use the same amount of RAM for the processes? will they share the applications as a % over the total RAM?

So the main part is only 2 sections:
1) App. memory - is what currently opened apps consume in terms of RAM.
2) Wired memory - how much Ram eats Mac OS.
That is it. So Mac OS will use as much Ram, as you give. It basically stores all of the information about closed or minimized apps. So when you reopen, it will be a little bit faster to open.
So when you have more RAM, more "junk for later use" is being saved.
So the main point, you just need to maximize load on your computer by imitating your working routine, and see how much App. Memory is used. So basically calculate from this point, how much RAM will be sufficient for you.

 

[deeddawg]

That is it. So Mac OS will use as much Ram, as you give. It basically stores all of the information about closed or minimized apps. So when you reopen, it will be a little bit faster to open.

Back in the days of (relatively) slow spinning disc hard drives, this made a bunch more difference that it does with today's fast SSDs. Still makes a difference, but not nearly as much.

So the main point, you just need to maximize load on your computer by imitating your working routine, and see how much App. Memory is used. So basically calculate from this point, how much RAM will be sufficient for you.

Excellent advice. Go about your normal usage and watch the Memory Pressure in Activity Monitor. Green is good.

IMHO most folks need a lot less RAM than they think they do. There'll always be those who truly need the higher capacities, but (again IMHO) the general public is unlikely to notice the difference between 8GB and 16GB memory.

I'd even go so far as to suggest: few folks who have to ask if they need 16GB actually do - those who really do need it usually already know.

 

[llllllllll]

The laptop does seem very sensitive/temperamental about things

Just like some people posting in this thread 🙂

 

[ascender]

For what it’s worth, the fans haven’t kicked in at all today - I left the machine on overnight as I have a very large iCloud Photo Library.

 

[Saul Giordani]

After 2 days, I can say the fans have started only during downloads, around 2.5k-3k rpm, for around 5 minutes. The CPU was at around 75-80º. No noise at all.

I've surfed, saw 4k videos on yt, Udemy courses, used emails, whatsapp, visual studio code. Every time temp around 55-70º and no fans.

In the next days I'll run some local server like mongo and oracle, I'll see how it goes.

 

[HopelesslyConfused]

Post made in error.

 

[roncron]

Post made in error.

We’ve all done that before.

 

[Spinning Fan]

Received my SG i5/16/256 MBA few days ago, and I've finally had time to do some stuff on it after all the recoveries and software installs (and Spotlight Indexing).

I do not do anything heavy on this machine .. browser based SaaS (G-Apps, Business Intelligence tools, SFDC .. the usual), email, a small amount of MS Office, Acrobat Pro, Teleconferences .. all those white collar applications. The only thing that stresses the machine AFAIS is Powerpoint, when it tries to auto save a document .. with the fonts.

I've not seen the machine get hot or the fan spin much .. and I am pretty sensitive to fan noise as per my handle name..
Also of note, I have a "wrist rug" velvet sticker on my palm rests, and a "MOFT" foldable stand thing on the back of the machine. These things cannot be beneficial for heat dissipation (especially the "MOFT" in folded state), but no real problems so far.

YMMV, but I am pretty happy with the machine for now..

 

[TiT38]

Question to the MBA 2020 owners (i Will loin you Tuesday and do a review) :

I understood that the mba is behaving differently in the first 2 days cause of indexing

if I copy paste my photo library from my old MBP to the new MBA, will it reminded all the library content or not ? MBP is under Mojave

question 2 : may I still make it work under Mojave ? I had issue with photos, where the synchronization was bad with my other iToys

thank you

 

[robots3humans0]

Question to the MBA 2020 owners (i Will loin you Tuesday and do a review) :

I understood that the mba is behaving differently in the first 2 days cause of indexing

if I copy paste my photo library from my old MBP to the new MBA, will it reminded all the library content or not ? MBP is under Mojave

question 2 : may I still make it work under Mojave ? I had issue with photos, where the synchronization was bad with my other iToys

thank you

Yes it still has to process all of your photos even if you use a backup of an old library.

This laptop can only be used with Catalina as that’s what it shipped with. You cannot downgrade it.

 

[TiT38]

Thank you Robot for the double answer
And ...booh for Catalina I expected to play to my old 32 bits steam games : I’ll try to use parallel desktop Or probably a small boot camp partition

 

[Jt69yupper]

Received my SG i5/16/256 MBA few days ago, and I've finally had time to do some stuff on it after all the recoveries and software installs (and Spotlight Indexing).

I do not do anything heavy on this machine .. browser based SaaS (G-Apps, Business Intelligence tools, SFDC .. the usual), email, a small amount of MS Office, Acrobat Pro, Teleconferences .. all those white collar applications. The only thing that stresses the machine AFAIS is Powerpoint, when it tries to auto save a document .. with the fonts.

I've not seen the machine get hot or the fan spin much .. and I am pretty sensitive to fan noise as per my handle name..
Also of note, I have a "wrist rug" velvet sticker on my palm rests, and a "MOFT" foldable stand thing on the back of the machine. These things cannot be beneficial for heat dissipation (especially the "MOFT" in folded state), but no real problems so far.

YMMV, but I am pretty happy with the machine for now..

Curious....why you felt the need for 16g memory, Will this usage tap into it. I also got i5 but settled on 8g same type of usage.

 

[ascender]

Most people buying a new Mac who are existing Mac owners do this. Mine is currently processing 6500 photos for example. And what is it doing to them? It is running AI on them to determine whether they are a cat, a dog, a person, a car, etc. so you can search your photos for that.

This process takes time.

If I had 1 photo? not long. If I have thousands - well, longer....

For those curious: I do not have any software monitoring cpu temp or clock at the moment because I consider this to be irrelevant if it is performing the way I expect. If/when I run into issues with fan noise or it burning my leg (for example), then I'll look into that.

I've got 114,000 photos in iCloud, so I know when I setup a new Mac its going to be "indexing" and doing related stuff for a while.

Re your second bit, I think that's brilliant advice. So many posts on the forum are from people who seem to be worried that they may have a problem with their new purchase, or are seemingly intent on finding one because they've read a post which suggests if their battery or cpu or screen or hard disk are showing this particular temp/behaviour/statistic then they have a fault.

Just use your new MacBook Air/Pro/whatever and try not to obsess over it. If you're happy with it and it does everything you need without any issues, then you can be happy about your purchase.

 

[a0c]

I want to upgrade my late 2016 MBP to the new MBA, my only concern is the screen brightness at 400 nits vs 500 on the MBP. I usually have the brightness on my MBP turned up to one notch below max, not sure how many nits that is but it is quite a bit dimmer than the max so perhaps it is at around 400...

 

[roncron]

Everyone should be reading the notebookcheck review. I've finally been able to sit down and check it out. When pushing the air to do office tasks continuously, it drops to the same performance level as the 2019 dual core i5 MBA. Save your money and get the i3 version. The Macbook pro is able to cool down and keep it's CPU under boost and while the 2020 MBA i5 Geekbench scores look good, it's sustained performance is pretty bad and it get's loud while doing it. Once again, the Macbook 12 at least is silent as a mouse for it's mediocre performance while this one gets loud...

Some other quotes:
"When you start to stress the processor or even the graphics card though, the fan will speed up to its maximum 8100 rpm and loud 45.8 dB(A) within a couple of minutes. In addition to a comparatively slow device, you also have to live with a loud device and a chip temperature of 100 °C. "

" The 2020 model with the Core i5 is on average not faster than the i5 model from 2019 – despite 2 additional cores, new 10nm process, and new architecture. There is still a difference to the MacBook Pro 13 and the Windows competition is much faster. Here we can clearly see the limitation of the cooling system and that Apple (intentionally) limits the performance of its entry-level series. "

You are right, this is an excellent review. Most of the reviews I've seen (The Verge, CNET, etc) are by people who are clearly excited that Apple released an updated MB Air with scissor keyboard and quad-core processor options. Their reviews don't tell us much that we can't learn from Apple's own product information page.

The notebookcheckreview is more dispassionate, and goes beyond telling us the great things about this new MBA that Apple has already told us.

You quoted the review as saying "The 2020 model with the Core i5 is on average not faster than the i5 model from 2019 – despite 2 additional cores, new 10nm process, and new architecture." That is actually my own experience now that I've had a 2020 i5 for 6 days and compared it to my 2018 MBA (which has the same processor as the 2019 model that notebookcheck referred to).

I tried a few processor-intensive tasks with both machines, such as ripping CDs. The 2020 quad-core i5 completed the tasks no faster than the 2018 with previous gen dual-core processor. This is because the 2020 i5 model, when pushed, heats up quickly to 100C, and after a couple minutes the machine throttles down to protect itself from heat damage. My 2018 MBA did not get hot enough to throttle down.

For non-intensive tasks, like email, MS Office, web browsing, the 2020 i5 doesn't get too hot (but tends to run 5-10 degrees warmer than the 2018 model) in my experience. But for these light-load tasks, the 2020 i5 is no faster than the 2018 MBA, it doesn't feel any "snappier" or more fluid or whatever.

So for me, the main difference between the 2018/2019 models and the 2020 MBA model, in terms of the impact on my daily workflow and my daily enjoyment and experience of using the machine, is the keyboard, which I really like. But that keyboard is costing me something like $1000, when you take the price I paid for the 2020 model and subtract off the trade-in value of my 2018 model. I just don't think I can justify the expense.

So I'm returning my 2020 MBA and going to hang on to my 2018 MBA for a while. Maybe in a month or two, Apple will announce a 13" MBP with scissor keyboard and 10th gen processors. If they drop the starting price $100 and increase the storage on the base model--as they did with the Air--then that will be worth a close look. Or maybe I'll wait until the 2020 Air gets a refresh in 2021.

My wife has a 2016 (pre-retina) MBA and wants to upgrade now. She's getting the i3, and I think that's probably the best option for most people who want an MBA at this time. She timed her purchases well - she completely missed the butterfly keyboard era.

 

[magbarn]

You are right, this is an excellent review. Most of the reviews I've seen (The Verge, CNET, etc) are by people who are clearly excited that Apple released an updated MB Air with scissor keyboard and quad-core processor options. Their reviews don't tell us much that we can't learn from Apple's own product information page.

The notebookcheckreview is more dispassionate, and goes beyond telling us the great things about this new MBA that Apple has already told us.

You quoted the review as saying "The 2020 model with the Core i5 is on average not faster than the i5 model from 2019 – despite 2 additional cores, new 10nm process, and new architecture." That is actually my own experience now that I've had a 2020 i5 for 6 days and compared it to my 2018 MBA (which has the same processor as the 2019 model that notebookcheck referred to).

I tried a few processor-intensive tasks with both machines, such as ripping CDs. The 2020 quad-core i5 completed the tasks no faster than the 2018 with previous gen dual-core processor. This is because the 2020 i5 model, when pushed, heats up quickly to 100C, and after a couple minutes the machine throttles down to protect itself from heat damage. My 2018 MBA did not get hot enough to throttle down.

For non-intensive tasks, like email, MS Office, web browsing, the 2020 i5 doesn't get too hot (but tends to run 5-10 degrees warmer than the 2018 model) in my experience. But for these light-load tasks, the 2020 i5 is no faster than the 2018 MBA, it doesn't feel any "snappier" or more fluid or whatever.

So for me, the main difference between the 2018/2019 models and the 2020 MBA model, in terms of the impact on my daily workflow and my daily enjoyment and experience of using the machine, is the keyboard, which I really like. But that keyboard is costing me something like $1000, when you take the price I paid for the 2020 model and subtract off the trade-in value of my 2018 model. I just don't think I can justify the expense.

So I'm returning my 2020 MBA and going to hang on to my 2018 MBA for a while. Maybe in a month or two, Apple will announce a 13" MBP with scissor keyboard and 10th gen processors. If they drop the starting price $100 and increase the storage on the base model--as they did with the Air--then that will be worth a close look. Or maybe I'll wait until the 2020 Air gets a refresh in 2021.

My wife has a 2016 (pre-retina) MBA and wants to upgrade now. She's getting the i3, and I think that's probably the best option for most people who want an MBA at this time. She timed her purchases well - she completely missed the butterfly keyboard era.

Honestly the i3 is looking more like the value proposition as anything that is requiring all 4 cores on the i5/i7 for a prolonged period of time means performance drops to the i3 level anyway.
I'm trying to get my 2020 MBA and put it through its paces, but it looks like I'll be getting it about the time the MBP 13/14 2020 is going to be released.

I want to upgrade my late 2016 MBP to the new MBA, my only concern is the screen brightness at 400 nits vs 500 on the MBP. I usually have the brightness on my MBP turned up to one notch below max, not sure how many nits that is but it is quite a bit dimmer than the max so perhaps it is at around 400...

If you're needing your screen that bright on a MBP, then you're going to be disappointed with the MBA screen as it is noticeably dimmer when placed side by side with the MBP. I noticed this several months ago comparing a 2019 MBA/2019 MBP 13 a few months ago. I don't run my screen on torch mode like you do so it wouldn't bother me much. I also edit pics for sRGB so the added color gamut on the MBP is not really a necessary thing for me.

 

[Dhonk]

I want to upgrade my late 2016 MBP to the new MBA, my only concern is the screen brightness at 400 nits vs 500 on the MBP. I usually have the brightness on my MBP turned up to one notch below max, not sure how many nits that is but it is quite a bit dimmer than the max so perhaps it is at around 400..

And I'm the opposite. I pretty much never have my 2014 MBP 13" above 6 bars (of 16). I'm generally between 4 and 6, occasionally 7. So I anticipate this will be just fine on the new screen for me

 

[ctjack]

I know it's a stupid question, but can I open and use the MacBook for 14 days before returning it? I'll receive my i7/16/512 in 1 week and I think I'll try it a bit before deciding to return it or not.

I just want to make sure how the return policy actually works. Thanks

As People in Netherlands say: "There is no such a thing as stupid questions. Only answers that don't satisfy you".
So no, it is not stupid at all.
Could you specify your question a little bit further? Do you have currently unopened Macbook and you are waiting for another one? Both of them are Airs?

 

[Spinning Fan]

Curious....why you felt the need for 16g memory, Will this usage tap into it. I also got i5 but settled on 8g same type of usage.

I am pretty sure 8 gigs would do fine, as it did fine for the things I did on my old MBA (2015 11 inch with 8 gigs of RAM). The reason I went for 16 is .. I am admittedly an amateur in understanding the innards of a computer and as such, wanted to have the max memory available for things such as MS Office.. which has given me some trouble (and a bit of buyer's remorse) in the past when issues were diagnosed as "oh, you need more memory".

So, more for peace of mind than anything as I know that you can't add memory post-purchase.