The Apple Macbook Air could possibly be the best laptop for students for its high performance, the best travel laptop for being lightweight, or is at least a good laptop for kids due to how much entertainment it has. It’s essentially Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s Surface Pro in terms of versatility. For more product recommendations, check out our best laptops list.
Why We Like It – The Apple Macbook Air
The Apple Macbook Air is available with either intel based processors and M1 processors, has security features such as Touch ID, and other features such as Force Touch trackpad for mouse accuracy, and Apple Pay. Macbook Air is also available with Apple silicon in the form of M1 processor chips.
- Intel Iris Plus graphics
- Comfortable keyboard
- Available with different processors
- Outdated web camera quality
Power/Performance
This Macbook is available with an Intel core i3, an Apple M1 chip, a single core Intel processor, and more, but the laptop itself also has a new M1 Macbook Air model. Both the M1 chip and M1 model can compete with processors such as the Intel Core i5, and even the Intel Core i7. Because of this and the Retina display, it can be used for tasks such as video editing and Apple TV. Get a laptop with a larger screen after reading our Apple Macbook 16-inch review.
Battery
The battery life of this laptop is about 12 hours before it has to be recharged, similarly to the Dell Latitude 7490 laptop. There are ways that the user can adjust their settings to ensure that the battery can last that long. Turning off the backlight keyboard function, not letting the screen get too bright, and making sure that you avoid opening too many programs at once are some of the more effective ways to achieve this.
Ports/expandability
This assortment of ports consists of only two Thunderbolt ports. While there’s not much variation, these ports are up-to-date at the time of this review and offer the fastest file transfer and device charging speeds available for those ports. In comparison, the Dell XPS 13 7390 has 3 different ports: Thunderbolt, SD card reader, and audio/microphone combo jack. However, both laptops have gigabit wireless connection speed, offer fast file transfer speeds and device charging speed as well as wide-ranged device compatibility. If you need a good laptop with a long battery life, then check out our Apple Macbook Air 13.
Build Quality
This slim, space gray laptop has very little room for loose components to travel within the chassis. It’s as slim as it is due to having a solid state drive instead of a traditional hard drive, and it only has Thunderbolt ports. It also weighs 2.8 Lbs., making it much lighter than the Dell G5 15 5590, which weighs 6.13 Lbs. Also, unlike the Dell laptop’s chassis, which is made of plastic, this chassis is made of aluminum.
Value
Since it’s a new Macbook Air, it can be quite pricey, with features such as the solid state drive, built-in webcam, and the Intel Iris Plus graphics processor that can mainly contribute to the price. However, free upgrades such as the Big Sur OS are available if you want to customize and possibly even improve your laptop. Both this and the Macbook Air M1 model are available to buy from sellers such as Best Buy.
Apple Macbook Air Wrap Up
Customer reviews have mostly been positive, with customers praising the laptop for its performance and the image quality of the screen. However, more than one reviewer has addressed that the webcam is outdated with how grainy the picture quality is despite having a fluid frame rate.
