Poll: which model MacBook Air did you end up purchasing?

[edubfromktown]

Curious what everyone decided upon. I went with i7/16/512.

After a week of thrashing, testing and using for daily ops, it has done quite well and has no thermal issues.

 

[thadoggfather]

i5 is gonna be the winner

$100 more for a lot better compute performance, is a good deal in apple world. First Quad Core Air. that sounds nice.

if you're a casual user on a budget i3 is fine

I genuinely see no need for i7 this iteration imo other than extra money to spend and bragging rights. I'd rather up the storage or ram before that

 

[BoneHead001]

i5 is gonna be the winner

$100 more for a lot better compute performance, is a good deal in apple world. First Quad Core Air. that sounds nice.

if you're a casual user on a budget i3 is fine

I genuinely see no need for i7 this iteration imo other than extra money to spend and bragging rights. I'd rather up the storage or ram before that

I’m considering buying an i5/16/512 MBA. My usage would be web surfing, email, YouTube, iMessage and Photoshop. My main concern is overheating while using Photoshop. Should I be concerned?

 

[thadoggfather]

I doubt it.
Photoshop work is much less demanding than video encoding or 3D engineering stuffs.

laptops that are much slower from years ago handle PS fine

 

[BoneHead001]

I doubt it.
Photoshop work is much less demanding than video encoding or 3D engineering stuffs.

laptops that are much slower from years ago handle PS fine

Thank you for your reply. I’m on the cusp of ordering a MBA now. Part of me wants to wait to see what they do to the MBP 13" model that is in the same spec/price range.

 

[thadoggfather]

Thank you for your reply. I’m on the cusp of ordering a MBA now. Part of me wants to wait to see what they do to the MBP 13" model that is in the same spec/price range.

im a light user but I’ve been playing with the Air for almost three weeks now and I really like it.

 

[BoneHead001]

im a light user but I’ve been playing with the Air for almost three weeks now and I really like it.

So, you are saying in your usage, you are not experiencing any thermal problems?

 

[thadoggfather]

So, you are saying in your usage, you are not experiencing any thermal problems?

when charging and every once in a while the middle part of the frame between the top lid screen and function keys gets hot to the touch

but most often the fans never run and the thing runs lukewarm

I think it’s overblown. Like a lot of things lol

 

[BoneHead001]

when charging and every once in a while the middle part of the frame between the top lid screen and function keys gets hot to the touch

but most often the fans never run and the thing runs lukewarm

I think it’s overblown. Like a lot of things lol

That’s good to know.
What I gather from other threads is the i5 is in constant 100° C hot mode with the fan continually running.

 

[thadoggfather]

That’s good to know.
What I gather from other threads is the i5 is in constant 100° C hot mode with the fan continually running.

haha yeah has not been the case for me

I am a light user and don’t run stress test Benchmarks or 12 tabs in chrome which isn’t efficient streaming 4K YouTube simultaneously

I also guarantee if there is a real problem over time,like they’re melting by the hundreds of thousands, they will be forced, by hand, to have an extension program that eats the cost

 

[JPack]

i3. This is a media consumption device for me and with ARM MacBooks coming next year, I don't want to spend too much on x86.

 

[thadoggfather]

i3. This is a media consumption device for me and with ARM MacBooks coming next year, I don't want to spend too much on x86.

this perspective makes sense to me too... if you are certain you’re going to upgrade on sooner side

Still I think i5 will make your laptop sell faster, if not for a little more maybe $50 extra in resell

 

[deeddawg]

That’s good to know.
What I gather from other threads is the i5 is in constant 100° C hot mode with the fan continually running.

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

I don't doubt that some folks have had issues and are honestly sharing what they've experienced. Yet be cautious not to assume their experiences will be the same for everyone.

Here's my take:

Received my i5 MBA yesterday, took the afternoon to restore from TM backup to external spindle drive, spent the evening messing with it and today's it's still working through photos and such. I have email and Safari open, Activity Monitor, and it's doing a new Time Machine backup to an external spindle drive. Activity monitor showing ~10-25% cpu utilization, 75-90% idle.

I hear zero fan noise - the Seagate 2TB external 2.5" is the loudest thing in the room.

Infrared thermometer reading of the spot between 6-F6-7 keys shows 101F. 82F at the shift keys. Bottom of the case reads 95F.

I have no idea what the CPU temp is. I don't care. External case temp is what matters in terms of comfort. At least one person has proffered a hypothesis that the Intel Power Gadget may cause high cpu temp and fan spinup, but I've not seen it corroborated.

 

[Capeto]

I went with the i5 and the 16GB RAM upgrade. It’s mainly for work, and want to ensure it lasts 5+ years.

 

[IngerMan]

I ordered the i5/8/256, base model plus $100 upgrade to quad core seemed a good bang for the buck. I have a 2018 Mac Mini i7 with Vega 56 eGPU for any heavy lifting.

 

[JPack]

this perspective makes sense to me too... if you are certain you’re going to upgrade on sooner side

Still I think i5 will make your laptop sell faster, if not for a little more maybe $50 extra in resell

I suspect once the A14 MacBook news drops, it will be hard to sell an x86 MacBook regardless of the processor. The transition may take longer for the "Pro" family, but I would guesstimate 3 years max.

 

[deeddawg]

I suspect once the A14 MacBook news drops, it will be hard to sell an x86 MacBook regardless of the processor. The transition may take longer for the "Pro" family, but I would guesstimate 3 years max.

You have greater faith in a smooth software transition than I do.

 

[thadoggfather]

I suspect once the A14 MacBook news drops, it will be hard to sell an x86 MacBook regardless of the processor. The transition may take longer for the "Pro" family, but I would guesstimate 3 years max.

i doubt that very much. Average person is not gonna even know what “x86 vs ARM” means let alone the added value of switching

macs hold onto their value

a top end SKU will probably see much less return but

 

[SaranshRolex]

Got the I3 and the single core score is really good just what I needed. I only game on my playstation that's all and I use my laptop just for the necessary things mails, word, desktop webpages. movies Coinbase etc low power stuff and also a bit of ps. running like a champ and I think it will run at least. 4 years . if it doesn't I won't mind but id just think that laptops are beginning to fall in the planned obsolescence category some thing we consumers will never be able to prevent.
plus like everything pro this is not a pro not at all. but its just perfect for what it does. if you want performance don't even get the i5 just buy a pro. what's power if you cant use it all.

 

[Pugly]

I set a requirement that I would upgrade my 2015 MBA i7 for twice the performance. The 13" MBP achieved that, but they just were too dang expensive... especially when you upgraded the ram.

The quad core Air looks to be almost exactly twice the 2015 MBA... at least in Geekbench. I'll have to see how it performs for me.

The i7 before seemed sensible, if you needed more performance... it was an okay upgrade for the money and pushed the Air closer to the MBP in performance. The 2020 i7 just seems like a waste of $150... it's still going to be a considerable drop in performance to the MBP.

I also went with 16GB... I never really had ram problems with 8GB... but I was able to push it beyond 8GB with enough large sample libraries... it was more of a test. It was possible though, and it wasn't pretty... it basically froze completely.

I think retina screens use more memory, and I sometimes do light gaming on it.

I chose that instead of upgrading the ssd... I'll see how I manage with 256. There are workarounds for a small ssd... not so for not enough ram.

 

[Patrice L. Becker]

So I ordered the i5/16GB/1TB but they delivered it with an i3 instead of i5 (ordered from a reseller, not Apple directly). Now I get to keep this until the right configuration arrives.
At first I thought that I'll have trouble compiling code and running lots of apps concurrently but I am very, very impressed with this machine.
I don't do video editing but usually have several IDEs opened writing code and this machine, even with the i3, is handling it really well. I don't feel any difference to my late 2016 MacBook Pro 15" with its quad-core i7. Hats off to Apple for this!

 

[KPOM]

I’m considering buying an i5/16/512 MBA. My usage would be web surfing, email, YouTube, iMessage and Photoshop. My main concern is overheating while using Photoshop. Should I be concerned?

It isn’t going to overheat. It will max out the Turbo Boost around 1.5 GHz for CPU-intensive tasks (it will hit the max of 3.2/3.5 for short bursts). But that’s just things like encoding or exporting video editing.
YouTube will be fine for 1080P content. It might stutter for 4K content, particularly in Chrome, but if you run Safari it will optimize the resolution for the CPU.
[automerge]1588123061[/automerge]
I originally bought the i7/16/512, but then decided to try the i5/8/512. After some testing, I’m leaning toward keeping the i5. Sure, the i7 is about 10-15% faster on CPU-intensive tasks, but I’m noticing that with my activities (Safari, Quicken for Windows using Wine, Photos, PDF editors) 8GB is fine, and so is the i5. I’ll just keep the $350, which I’ve already used to buy the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard.

That said, a 10-15% faster CPU is nothing to sneeze at. Those who elect for the i7 will benefit.

 

[AirBud]

PSA: If any of you haven’t been watching the heat pipe thread, people have discovered a quick, easy, $20 heatsink mod for the 2020 Air that not only reduces heat (therefore less fan usage) but is also increasing the performance 10-15%.

 

[BoneHead001]

PSA: If any of you haven’t been watching the heat pipe thread, people have discovered a quick, easy, $20 heatsink mod for the 2020 Air that not only reduces heat (therefore less fan usage) but is also increasing the performance 10-15%.

Yes, but that involves opening up the case and voiding the warranty. No one should have to do that on a $1000+ new laptop.

 

[KPOM]

Yes, but that involves opening up the case and voiding the warranty. No one should have to do that on a $1000+ new laptop.

That, and we don’t know the long-term effects. A 10-15% increase doesn’t justify voiding the warranty, and their “solution” might just divert more heat to the case. Even if the CPU is at 100 degrees Celsius the case is fine with the stock setup. And a 10-15% boost still doesn’t put the Air in MacBook Pro territory.

And, yes, I get that I did say 10-15% is nothing to sneeze at. If you get the i7 you basically get the performance boost of the rigged solutions for the cooling system. But you void the warranty and make it ineligible for AppleCare or a third party warranty. I wouldn’t go through all the trouble and risk of a homemade solution.