2019 Macbook Pro - 3.02 lbs. 2018 Macbook Air - 2.75 lbs. 2020 Macbook Air - 2.8 lbs. If you also look at the dimensions, it's also very similar except that the Macbook Air tapers in thickness where one side actually thicker than the Macbook Pros. I concluded that it's better to wait for the next Macbook.
Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. On the other hand, if you need to do these kinds of muscle tasks just once in a while, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is clearly a better choice for around the same money as the MacBook Air.
The base MacBook Pro 13″ 2020 and the MacBook Air 2020 overlap in quite a few areas, and it does make a decision quite difficult for people regarding which one to get. We tried the MacBook Air 2020 for a few weeks and we think that this is the one that you should go for instead. Let's look at why.
Starting with the design, it looks almost identical to the MacBook Air 2018 model but the 2020 model is much more impressive, and not just because of the new keyboard.
Granted, the moment you open the lid, it's the first thing that stands out. It has the new Magic Keyboard; we know there has been a lot of negative reactions to the old butterfly keyboard, and we can say there's a 20-30% difference in feel compared to the old one for sure.
The MacBook Air 2020 comes with the latest Intel 10th-gen processors, i3, i5 and i7. If you're getting this laptop for light web browsing and the likes, the i3 will be perfectly fine. Looking to do some photo editing or graphic work? The i5 is a good choice. The i7 is a bit of a weird choice on the MacBook Air, but there'll definitely be people who want that.
Instead of 128GB as the minimum storage, it's now bumped up to 256GB, which is a great move. We do think that 512GB is the sweet spot, but 1TB is always nice to have. The RAM is also a faster variant, but unfortunately, it's still stuck on 8GB for the default configuration.
You can choose to upgrade to 16GB and we recommend that, if only to just futureproof your laptop. We do wish that Apple had made 16GB as the base.
The speakers sound really good, with great dynamic sound in a small form factor. It's not the same as using the speakers on the MacBook Pro 16, but it's good enough.
Battery life is claimed to last all day, and if you just use the MacBook Air for web browsing and keep the brightness at around half, it will get you through most of the day. If you start editing photos and push the brightness up, the battery life will go down, obviously.
You get two Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports on the left with a single 3.5mm headphone jack on the right, as is pretty standard with MacBook Air laptops.
Aside from that, the Retina display is beautiful with great colours and there aren't any issues with the brightness. The screen can definitely be further calibrated for colour accuracy.
Usability-wise, we definitely wouldn't be editing 4K footage on this laptop, or photos out of a medium format camera because it's not what the laptop was designed to do. The MacBook Air is a great laptop to edit stuff shot on phones and the likes, just light editing on Lightroom and such.
Day to day usage is great on this laptop, thermals are good as long as you stick to doing things like web browsing and general media consumption. That being said, the 2020 model does perform better than the previous generation when used for photo editing and such due to the inclusion of the 10th generation Intel chips.
Our recommendations to get the best out of the MacBook Air 2020? Max out the RAM. The 8GB base is very limiting when using applications like Photoshop or Lightroom.
Also, upgrade the storage, because it's still a lot cheaper than the MacBook Pro 13-inch. We actually have the 2019 model of the MacBook Pro 13-inch and we ran the two laptops side by side, only to come to the conclusion that the MacBook Air 2020 is essentially performing on the same level.
Get an external monitor and pair it with the MacBook Air to have a nice home office, and when you need to work on the go, you've also got a great, lightweight laptop.
The MacBook Air 2020 (starting from S$1,449) is available on Apple's online store.
Pros
The keyboard is not terrible
Superb design Ads explorer software.
Great battery life
Cons
Path finder 7 1 – powerful award winning finder alternative. Upgrades are expensive
Keyboard is still a bit shallow
The headline just about writes itself: Apple's embarrassing odyssey with its so-thin-it-breaks 'butterfly' keyboards seems to be at an end, with a return to a classic 'scissor'-style Magic Keyboard in last year's 16-inch MacBook Pro and now the latest Air. The result is exactly what the Air has always been when Apple can stop mucking it up: the best MacBook for most people.
Though competition from Windows machines like the HP Spectre x360, Dell XPS 13, and Apple's own MacBook Pro is undeniable, for many people their laptop-buying search should begin and end with the Air once again.
About the 2020 MacBook Air
How to reformat wd elements for mac. The MacBook Air is a premium, ultraportable laptop that can be customized in a number of ways. We purchased our test unit directly from Apple, opting for the base configuration (costing around $1,000). Here are the specs of our test unit, with potential upgrades noted in parentheses:
- Processor: 10th-gen dual core Intel Core i3 (quad core i5 and i7 available)
- Memory: 8GB LPDDR4X RAM (up to 16GB available)
- Storage: 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 2TB available)
- Display: 13.3-inch 2560x1600p Retina IPS display
- Ports: Thunderbolt 3 USB-C (x2), headphone jack
- Touchpad: Force Touch trackpad
- Graphics: Intel Iris Plus Graphics (integrated)
- Wireless: 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0
- Battery: 49.9WHr Lithium-polymer battery
- Charger: 30W AC Adapter, USB-C
- Weight: 2.8lbs
- Dimensions: 11.97 x 0.63 x 8.36 inches (W x H x D), 0.16 inches at slimmest point
- Warranty: 1-year limited warranty, 90 days tech support.
What We Like
Finally: a keyboard that isn't terrible
Before shoveling dirt onto the 'butterfly' keyboard's grave, it's important to at least acknowledge that Apple tried to innovate and make a keyboard that was more reliable and slimmer. It didn't work out and Apple took way too long to remedy the issues, but kudos for the attempt. That's worth. something.
Okay, onto the dirt-shoveling. Unlike its class-leading design work in the mobile and tablet space, Apple's laptop strategy has been baffling. Instead of improving on a winning formula in the Air, it seems like Apple just got bored. Even when it was clear the Air only needed a few minor tweaks—slimmer bezels, a better screen, faster processors—Apple let it rot on the vine.
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Instead, we got years of frustrating designs, a painfully slow 12-inch MacBook, and a disastrous redesign of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. When your most ardent supporters are stockpiling old laptops because they're terrified you're going to try to update it and screw it up in the process? It's time to re-evaluate.
The keyboard is hardly the only issue Apple has created for itself in that time, but it's arguably the worst. Apple always nails the basics, in all of its products. Using them should feel effortless. It's worth paying more for that kind of quality. Instead, we got the butterfly keyboard, which was awful and annoying before it started bricking laptops.
Path finder 7 1 – powerful award winning finder alternative. Upgrades are expensive
Keyboard is still a bit shallow
The headline just about writes itself: Apple's embarrassing odyssey with its so-thin-it-breaks 'butterfly' keyboards seems to be at an end, with a return to a classic 'scissor'-style Magic Keyboard in last year's 16-inch MacBook Pro and now the latest Air. The result is exactly what the Air has always been when Apple can stop mucking it up: the best MacBook for most people.
Though competition from Windows machines like the HP Spectre x360, Dell XPS 13, and Apple's own MacBook Pro is undeniable, for many people their laptop-buying search should begin and end with the Air once again.
About the 2020 MacBook Air
How to reformat wd elements for mac. The MacBook Air is a premium, ultraportable laptop that can be customized in a number of ways. We purchased our test unit directly from Apple, opting for the base configuration (costing around $1,000). Here are the specs of our test unit, with potential upgrades noted in parentheses:
- Processor: 10th-gen dual core Intel Core i3 (quad core i5 and i7 available)
- Memory: 8GB LPDDR4X RAM (up to 16GB available)
- Storage: 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 2TB available)
- Display: 13.3-inch 2560x1600p Retina IPS display
- Ports: Thunderbolt 3 USB-C (x2), headphone jack
- Touchpad: Force Touch trackpad
- Graphics: Intel Iris Plus Graphics (integrated)
- Wireless: 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0
- Battery: 49.9WHr Lithium-polymer battery
- Charger: 30W AC Adapter, USB-C
- Weight: 2.8lbs
- Dimensions: 11.97 x 0.63 x 8.36 inches (W x H x D), 0.16 inches at slimmest point
- Warranty: 1-year limited warranty, 90 days tech support.
What We Like
Finally: a keyboard that isn't terrible
Before shoveling dirt onto the 'butterfly' keyboard's grave, it's important to at least acknowledge that Apple tried to innovate and make a keyboard that was more reliable and slimmer. It didn't work out and Apple took way too long to remedy the issues, but kudos for the attempt. That's worth. something.
Okay, onto the dirt-shoveling. Unlike its class-leading design work in the mobile and tablet space, Apple's laptop strategy has been baffling. Instead of improving on a winning formula in the Air, it seems like Apple just got bored. Even when it was clear the Air only needed a few minor tweaks—slimmer bezels, a better screen, faster processors—Apple let it rot on the vine.
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best-right-now
The Best Tablets for Kids of 2020
Instead, we got years of frustrating designs, a painfully slow 12-inch MacBook, and a disastrous redesign of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. When your most ardent supporters are stockpiling old laptops because they're terrified you're going to try to update it and screw it up in the process? It's time to re-evaluate.
The keyboard is hardly the only issue Apple has created for itself in that time, but it's arguably the worst. Apple always nails the basics, in all of its products. Using them should feel effortless. It's worth paying more for that kind of quality. Instead, we got the butterfly keyboard, which was awful and annoying before it started bricking laptops.
Why spend three paragraphs ranting about a feature that isn't even in the 2020 MacBook Air? Because it's finally gone. Dead. Finito. Expired. Honestly, I'm so happy that Apple finally listened on this issue that I don't even care that it tried to slyly brand this as its new 'Magic' keyboard when it's the same old thing.
Why? Because it's fine. Aggressively so! It's a bit too shallow for my tastes, and it's still louder than you expect. But there was one thing Apple had to fix on the 2020 MacBook Air and it's fixed. That's a win.
The battery life is still very good
Though years ago Apple's MacBook Air routinely torched the competition with all-day battery life despite its slim frame, more recent MacBooks have struggled. They're usually passable, but the 12-inch MacBook feels a bit slow and the MacBook Pro is more about power than endurance.
The new MacBook Air nicely resets that balance, with new 10th-gen Intel processors that can handle a remarkable amount of work without killing battery life. That's especially true if you prefer to use Apple's Safari browser, which does a much better job of navigating the web without eating into your battery life than Google's Chrome browser.
In our web browsing battery test, which scrolls through 50 web sites with the screen set to 200 nits brightness (about 60% on most laptops), the MacBook Air managed a healthy seven hours and 45 minutes. That's a bit below the best-in-class Dell XPS 13, but our test is run in Chrome so you can expect similar overall performance to Dell's model if you're happy with Safari.
The new processors are fast enough to handle most people's workload
The 2020 MacBook Air comes with three processor choices, all of which are 10th-gen Intel processors which started shipping late last year. The base model (our test unit) is a dual core i3 processor, though you can upgrade to a quad core i5 or i7 if you need something that can handle a heftier workload.
For most people, the i5 is the best balance of speed and power, though I never felt like I was overly taxing the i3 processor—other than the internal fans spinning up during video calls.
Our benchmark results bear this out, with the i3 returning scores only about 10-15% behind the faster i5 and i7 processors we've tested in some of its contemporaries. Our tests specifically try to answer how well a machine can handle tasks on single cores and multiple cores at once, and it's the multi-core workloads where the Air mostly falls behind.
That's not surprising (again, it's a dual core i3 vs mostly quad core processors), but it's worth noting if you plan to do a significant amount of work in an app like Photoshop, Lightroom, or anything else that can spread workloads across multiple cores. Though some browser-based tasks can spin out into multiple cores, if you're mostly using the machine for web browsing, writing papers/emails, and watching Netflix than the i3 should be sufficient.
The Air design is no longer cutting edge, but it is classic
Whether consciously or not, just about every laptop reviewer has an ideal laptop in their mind that looks something like the Apple MacBook Air. Though Apple didn't invent the tapered aluminum body, chiclet/island-style keys, and massive trackpad, the MacBook Air has set the tone for the premium laptop space for a decade.
The 2020 model makes few changes to the blueprint, other than the aforementioned keyboard improvements. It's an extremely slim laptop that is aluminum from stem to stern. Like most modern MacBooks it offers very limited ports, opting for just two USB-C ports on the left-hand side and a headphone jack on the right.
Though I'd badly prefer a return to at least one standard USB-A port and a full-size SD card slot again, credit where credit's due: this laptop is slick. Unlike some other laptops I've tested recently, if you plunk down a grand on this laptop you won't be wondering where your money went.
What We Don't Like
The i3 processor in the base model can feel pokey
Though it's more than 'good enough' for most tasks, you can get much, much faster laptops for the same money you'll spend on a MacBook Air or most of its $1,000-and-up competition. Even though it's Apple's entry-level model, you're paying quite the premium for design.
Again, for most people this won't matter. But if you've got a hard $1,000 budget, you can barely squeak into the entry-level MacBook Air and deal with an entry-level loadout, with the i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD.
That's not a bad deal, but there are a ton of excellent mid-range laptops like Dell's Inspiron 7000, the Lenovo Yoga C740, and the HP Envy series that offer premium-feeling designs. These mid-range models have been cribbing design flourishes from flagship laptops for years, and they usually start around $800 now, leaving a lot of extra room for upgrades to RAM, storage, and faster processors.
For example, you can get a Dell Inspiron 7000 with a 10th-gen i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD for a hair over $1,000. The same MacBook Air will run you about $1,650 and there isn't that much difference in the design.
The screen is high resolution, but the bezels are huge
The best thing about the MacBook Air's screen is that it's tall. It gives you a load of room to get work done on, eschewing the wider 16:10 screens found on a lot of competing laptops. That makes the Air a little bit bigger than some 13-inch ultraportables, but it doesn't weigh significantly more.
Otherwise, we found the screen was bright, detailed, and just barely visible outdoors at full brightness. As with all MacBooks, it doesn't offer any kind of touchscreen support—you'll need to jump to the iPad Pro if you want a work-ready device that is touch-friendly.
It only has ports on one side
I am very sure that this design decision was made by someone way above my pay grade, but putting all the USB-C ports on the same side is just annoying. The first 30 times I tried to plug in the MacBook Air I tried to plug it into the right side, which only has a headphone jack.
At this point I'm willing to file this under 'could be worse, I guess?' which has been a troublingly common refrain when reviewing MacBooks.
Nothing is upgradeable, and RAM is way too expensive
Though our test unit is the $999 entry-level model, I'd definitely recommend opting for the upgraded model for $1,299. That gets you a 512GB SSD for storing files and a quad core i5 processor.
Unfortunately, further upgrades really bump the price aggressively. Going to a faster quad core i7 processor is $150. That's not terrible, but jumping to 16GB of RAM costs an eye-watering $200 extra. The MacBook Air uses newer, faster LPDDR4X memory, but it's a huge premium.
None of these upgrades can be done after the fact (which is the case with pretty much every Apple device these days, as well as the Air's closest competitor, the Dell XPS 13). And because there's no SD card slot, you can't even add extra removable storage without lugging around a dongle or an external drive.
Should You Buy It?
Lightroom For Macbook
Absolutely, it's the best Apple laptop right now
Jcb 214s manual. Simply put, most people shopping for an Apple laptop right now should do one of two things: get the 2020 MacBook Air, or wait.
Lightroom For Macbook Pro
Though the late-2019 16-inch MacBook Pro is a reasonable alternative for creative professionals, it's way too bulky and heavy for anyone that doesn't need that kind of power. For everyone else, it's the Air or bust.
I don't even really like the keyboard on the 2020 Air, and it's still so much better than the one that has plagued every other Apple laptop for the last few years. If Apple did nothing else but fix the keyboard, the 2020 Air would be a smashing success.
Luckily, Apple did quite a bit more than that. The new Air features upgraded 10th-gen processors that handle even complex workloads with ease. Noteburner m4v converter plus 4 3 88. The $999 test unit we purchased was able to handle anything I needed it to, from photo editing to video chatting, to browsing the web, with plenty of battery life left at the end of a workday.
If you do a lot of creative work, particularly photo or video editing, then I'd caution to wait for the next 13-inch MacBook Pro. The new keyboard seems to be here to stay, and it's only a matter of time before it rolls out to a 13-inch Pro that is both powerful and portable. For everyone else that wants a MacBook, this is the one to get—now, and likely for years to come.
If you're willing to look at Windows alternatives—and you absolutely should be—then there is fierce competition. In this price bracket, you should also look at the Dell XPS 13, the HP Spectre x360, and the Lenovo Yoga C940. They all have awesome, premium designs with more ports and faster processors for around the same price.
That said, for people that can upgrade a bit, the 2020 MacBook Air with a quad-core i5, 8GB RAM, and 512GB SSD is a fantastic option for its $1,300 street price. It'd be even better if doubling the RAM didn't add another $200 to the price, but it's the one I'd buy.
Meet the tester
TJ is the Executive Editor of Reviewed.com. He is a Massachusetts native and has covered electronics, cameras, TVs, smartphones, parenting, and more for Reviewed. He is from the self-styled 'Cranberry Capitol of the World,' which is, in fact, a real thing.
Checking our work.
We use standardized and scientific testing methods to scrutinize every product and provide you with objectively accurate results. If you've found different results in your own research, email us and we'll compare notes. If it looks substantial, we'll gladly re-test a product to try and reproduce these results. After all, peer reviews are a critical part of any scientific process.
Does Lightroom Work On Macbook Air 13.3
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