The MacBook Air gets warm, but not excessively hot – it's noticeably cooler than almost any laptop we've tried, including the previous MacBook Air in particular. Fanless laptops have been few and far between, but they're really nice – no hot air slowly cooking your lap, and no noise, even when you do something that turns out to be surprisingly intensive, like open Slack or watch a YouTube video. The other design change is here is that there's no fan any more inside. Two more ports here (even if they were USB-C again) would be useful, since it'd mean you could plug the power in on both sides, and also just makes it possible to plug in more accessories. On the other side, you've got a 3.5mm headphone jack, and that's it. These adapters aren't too expensive, but it's just a little extra hassle. Not everyone will have a problem with it, since so much is done online these days, but it means you'll need to buy an adapter for uploading photos from a camera's SD card, say, or even to connect a standard USB plug on a printer or thumb drive. They're pretty overkill for the average user, though, and only having two ports can potentially be limiting. For connectivity, this makes them stunningly fast for hooking up external drives, and they can output video to external screens up to 6K resolution. On the left-hand side, you have two USB-C ports that actually pull triple duty: they're also Thunderbolt 4 ports and power ports. There's a fingerprint sensor that doubles as a power key, which works well and is convenient. The trackpad is large, easy to use and responds perfectly. The keyboard is the new Magic Keyboard Apple uses on all its machines, and it feels great – comfortable, with good feedback and a nice amount of travel. It's available in the same three colours that it has been recently: gold, space grey and silver. There are almost no joins, and it's totally sturdy. It has the tough aluminium build and impeccable fit and finish we expect from Apple's laptops. It has the iconic tapered design that makes it lower volume than the MacBook Pro, even though they're about the same depth at the thickest point. (Image credit: Future) Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020) review: Design & buildĪpple hasn't changed the design of the MacBook Air externally at all for this new version. The MacBook Air (M1 2020) was released on November 17th 2020, and starts from £999/$999/AU$1,599 for its base model, which gets you an eight-core Apple M1 processor, a seven-core Apple GPU, 8GB of integrated RAM and 256GB of storage. Best MacBook Air deals (including Intel models)Īpple MacBook Air (M1, 2020) review: Price and release date.
MacBook Air M1 vs MacBook Pro M1: the difference explained.There are some potential issues we'll come to, but if you just want a computer than can do every standard computer task without breaking a sweat (but could do much more if you ever need it to in the future), the MacBook Air is pretty much unmatched. We're so used to laptops having compromises that we have to work around or understand, but that rule doesn't apply here. This chip is as powerful as a 'pro' laptop, yet runs cool enough that the MacBook Air doesn't need any fans and is totally silent, while also delivering up to 50% more battery life than its predecessor… and somehow doesn't cost any more. The M1 chip has brought that suspicion to life, a massive step forward for computing- this is simply one of the best laptops available, and will definitely be the best lightweight laptop for most people.