Thin. Light. Long lasting. Those are the words that come to mind when one thinks about the MacBook Air. The laptop was one of the first that arguably changed the face and form factor of modern laptops. Come the new decade, Apple is announcing a long awaited refresh to the popular MacBook Air.
The 2020 edition of the MacBook Air will be equipped with the latest quad-core processors from Intel. However, the 10th Generation Intel Core i7 which sports this configuration will only be available on the highest end MacBook Air. Two other options will be made available, one equipped with a dual core Intel Core i3 and another with the quad core Intel Core i5. Apple claims that the new MacBook Air has double the CPU performance and 80% more graphics performance with the new Intel IRIS Plus Graphics.
One of the pain points of the previous MacBook air was the keyboard which came with Apple’s butterfly switches. That being the case, Apple has turned back to the tried and true scissor switches. Their new Magic Keyboard comes with 1mm of travel for a more comfortable typing experience. The company has made the arrow keys easier to find with their “inverted T” design.
The MacBook Air comes with a 13.3-inch Retina display with over 4 million pixels. The Retina dispaly is an IPS Display with a QHD+ resolution of 2560×1600 pixels. This gives it a pixel density of 227 pixels per inch (ppi). It has a 16:10 aspect ratio and supports True Tone technology for better colour accuracy.
Storage and memory wise, the new MacBook air is equipped with at least 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM which can be upped to 16GB. At the minimum, it comes with 256GB of onboard PCIe SSD memory. This too is upgradable to a maximum of 2TB SSD. Speaking of the storage, Apple’s T2 Security Chip is also on the new MacBook Air. It will scan the software loaded during boot to ensure that nothing has been tampered and also provides on the fly data encryption. However, to simplify the user experience, TouchID has also been incorporated so users can stay secure while keeping things convenient.
The MacBook Air 2020 is also the first of its series to support up to 6K output for external displays. It also has a 3 mic array for clear voice performance over FaceTime and is equipped with the large, Force Touch trackpad. I will also come with Thunderbolt 3 ports for data, charging and video output.
Pricing & Availability
The new laptop is available for order on Apple’s website starting today. It will be available in Space Gray, Gold and Silver. Prices start from USD$999 or, if you are buying under their education programme, it will be USD$899.
In Malaysia, the Core i3 and Core i5 versions have been listed on the Apple online store. However, they are not available for order just yet. The i3 version of the MacBook Air is listed at MYR4,399 while the i5 version is listed at MYR5,599.