I've been happy with much that the MacBook 2017 offers, but I'm not in love with the battery life (Zoom conferences really tank it), the webcam is poor, and the single USB C port is a bummer. I'm intrigued by the upgrades to the MacBook Air 2020. If they'd give me about $390 in trade-in for the MacBook, is it worth doing? or is that poor value? I'd probably go MacBook Air i5 256gb 8gb ram if I did (unless 16gb is totally the way to go... I mostly will be video conferencing for school and word processing). Eventually using it for therapy/life coaching practice.
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Own Macbook 2017... upgrade to MacBook Air 2020?
- Thread starter sidgriffey
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Would you sooner go 16gb of ram or go 512 on storage? to clarify, which configuration would you choose? 256 on storage with 16gb ram, or 512 storage with 8gb ram?
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i5/16/256
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8gb ram in 2020 is just pathetic
Yah, I’ve found that 8 GB RAM is fine for my i5 MBP.
Tried 16 GB for a while and for whatever reason it seemed a bit slower so went back to the original 8 GB (2x4) and redeployed the 16 GB (2x8) to another laptop.
I would also go for the quad core i5 option, (which is available with 256GB).
The base model is only a dual core which I feel will catch out some people who habitually get the base model, not realising that this time there is a significant difference which is only $100 more.
The base model is only a dual core which I feel will catch out some people who habitually get the base model, not realising that this time there is a significant difference which is only $100 more.
Storage is cheap. Unless you buy it from Apple. I can't be convinced to spend an extra A$300 on 256GB>512GB when I can buy an external drive with up to 4TB or more for around half the price. It pains me to spend A$270 on an extra 8MB of RAM, but we don't have much choice in the matter if we want it.
How much storage do you currently use?
Buy at least that much.
Don't wast a bunch of money on storage you won't use.
Question: is it fair to say that the MacBook 12" (2017) is less prone to overheating than the current gen MacBook Air on account of the thing not having fans? I keep reading about the 2020 MacBook Air having fans that go off like crazy. I'm not suggesting the MacBook 12" doesn't get warm, but does the absence of fans hold an advantage that maybe I should not so quickly discount?
That is a reasonable question. One interesting aspect about this machine is how hot Apple lets the CPU run.
For the 2020 MBA, Apple lets the CPU get up to about 100 degrees C for sustained loads.
For the 2015 MacBook (and I assume the 2017), Apple lets the CPU get up to about 80 degrees C for sustained loads.
Some activities in particular seem to push the CPU temperature of the 2020 MBA high, like playing video in Chrome or using an external monitor.
It’s personal. I would find the storage more immediately and persistently useful. But neither are replaceable and there are good workarounds for storage. So I would get extra ram.
I've got a MacBook 2017, 8gb, i5, considering going got the Macbook Air, i5/16gb, but little unsure it's worth the upgrade. Finding the Macbook's form factor to be pretty perfect, but the machine is a little on the slow side. Thoughts?
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My i7, after playing about 1 hour of civilisation via DOSBox, web browsing and watching a Motogp race and some YouTube (all on battery). Fan has not come on all day.
imho both 8 gb RAM and 256 GB storage in 2020 are pathetic. Which to upgrade depends on your workload, if you're mostly light docs and web, get the storage and make do with 8 GB; external drives suck to deal with on a machine that's meant to be an ultra portable. Lugging drives everywhere will kill the experience with the device more than being limited with 8 GB of RAM in my view. Unless you have a workload that can't be done with 8 GB.
But... If you need more RAM for heavier workloads, then well you need that and will have to either save more to upgrade storage as well, or deal with the storage shuffle and external media. I'd strongly suggest saving more money to get both if that's the case; because chances are if you need the RAM you're dealing with large project files and 256 GB will suck.
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