New 2020 13.3″ Retina Apple MacBook Air, Intel i3 & 256GB SSD or i5 & 512GB SSD
New 2020 release space gray Apple MacBook Air (MWTJ2LL/A) comes with the tenth generation Intel i3-1000NG4 processor, a 13.3” non-touch Retina display, 256GB Solid State Drive storage, 8GB LPDDR4X memory at 3733MHz, backlit magic scissor switch keyboard, Force Touch trackpad, touch ID and up to 11 hours of battery life.
You can get it with the quad core Intel Core i5-1030NG7 processor (1.1GHz to 3.5GHz) and 512GB SSD by paying about 300 dollars extra now and your color options are gold, silver and space gray for both versions. You can not upgrade the MacBook Air’s storage later so you may be better off getting it now if you’ll need more storage space down the track. You also have the option to upgrade to the Intel i7 processor but judging by different performance scores, it may not be worth paying the additional 150 dollars or so.
The Y series Ice Lake architecture tenth generation quad core Intel i3-1000NG4 CPU (4MB L3 cache) has a base speed of 1.1Ghz that goes up to 3.2Ghz with the turbo boost function. The processor has a TDP of 10 watts that will help with a much longer battery life of up to 11 hours in regular use. The Ice Lake processors are much faster than previous years’ MacBook Air processors that struggled even with the moderately demanding tasks. The price is also about 100 dollars cheaper. It is still not very suited for intense and heavy workloads. And if you have the budget you may want to go for the Intel i5 version with 512GB SSD.
The new Apple MacBook Air comes with the much better backlit magic keyboard rather than the butterfly keyboard of the last year’s models. The new keyboard has a solid and comfy feel with the inverted-T arrow key layout. And the keys have 1mm of travel and are click enough without making any unwanted noise. For connectivity options you have the 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 5.0, two Thunderbolt 3 ports for charging, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt up to 40Gb/s and USB 3.1 gen 2 up to 10Gb/s, a USB-C charge. And it comes with a 30W USB-C power adapter, a 2m USB-C charge cable and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
This brand new release MacBook Air has the 13” Retina display with the Tru Tone technology, 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution and 16:10 image aspect ratio for amazing picture quality. Graphics card is the Intel Iris Plus (Ice Lake G4) with a similar performance level to the AMD Radeon RX Vega 8. With a benchmark score of 1891 it is adequate for playing the not so demanding games like Overwatch or Rocket League at the high settings and resolutions. You can certainly play some of the latest games at low to medium settings. The new MacBook Air has the support for Thunderbolt 3-enabled graphics processors.
You have the 720p FaceTime HD webcam and the stereo speakers with the wider stereo sound, three-mic array with the directional beam forming and support for Dolby Atmos playback. The webcam is fine but not as good as the webcams on iPhones. You can use a standard mouse with this as long as the mouse is Bluetooth enabled, or USB after you get the Thunderbolt to USB adapter. Force Touch trackpad is very big and nice and feel good to scroll and click on. It has a classic wedge shape, weighs only 2.8 pounds and measures (0.16-0.63)H x 11.97W x 8.36D inches. The bezels around the 13” screen are quite thin.
The new MacBook Air doesn’t have a flimsy feel like some other ultrabooks on the market and rather feels very robust. It is a fairly capable machine that can handle your daily and the more demanding graphics tasks easily. There may be a bit of thermal management with the processor moving up to the max speed and getting the fans working if you will be rendering 3D graphics and exporting videos all day long. You do need to get a MacBook Pro for a better performance in your heavy tasks by which you push the machine to the limit all day long. But if you are on the market for a Mac laptop for your day-to-day tasks you can just buy this MacBook Air and enjoy its reliable and competent performance. You’ll get a year of limited warranty with apple along with a 30-day return policy.
