Does The Redesigned MacBook Air Justify The Long Wait? Here's What The Reviews Are Saying

Apple's wedge-shaped workhorse laptop hasn't received a substantial redesign pass in quite some time. Will Air devotees who've been holding out feel like it was right to wait, or end up kicking themselves for not just biting the 12-inch MacBook or MacBook Pro bullet sooner (If you want to look at the stats, you might as well go to Apple's official comparison page)? Here's what the reviews say.​

The Long-Overdue Retina Upgrade, Combined With Nifty New Speakers, Will Make It Hard To Go Back To An Old Air

Surprise, surprise — the no-longer-revolutionary Retina display is a huge step up over the Air's aging screen. TechCrunch's Brian Heater notes that, combined with the new Air's keyboard-flanking speakers, the media-watching experience is vastly improved:

If you've spent any time with a Retina display, you know the deal. It's big and bright, with a nice color balance. In terms of sheer numbers, we're talking about a bump from 1440 x 900 to 2560 x 1600 pixels. That amounts to 227 PPI, compared to the old model's 128. It's an immediately apparent upgrade — there's a reason so many Air owners have been holding out for the addition. The multimedia experience is rounded out by upgraded speakers that are capable of getting LOUD, in spite of taking up very little real estate on either side of the keyboard.

[TechCrunch]

It's The Slimmest, Cheapest Apple Offering With Touch ID, And That Counts For Something

Forgoing the MacBook Pro's Touch Bar in favor of a small sensor where the power-on key used to live, the Air will let you log in with a quick tap of the finger — a nice feature that, frankly, comes at way too steep a bump in price on the MacBook Pro. Engadget's Dana Wollman breaks this down in her post-weekend impressions:

One of the reasons I've held off on buying a new MacBook for myself was that I wanted my next machine to include a fingerprint sensor, but until now the cheapest Mac offering that feature was the $1,799 13-inch MacBook Pro. Not only is that a lot of money for a machine I don't intend to push that hard, but on the Pro line, having Touch ID also means putting up with the controversial Touch Bar. Hey, maybe you like that touch strip, and if so, to each their own. But personally, my ideal setup is a conventional keyboard with a row of function buttons up top and a fingerprint sensor tucked away in one of the corners.

[Engadget]

Apple's Battery Claims Don't Live Up To Scrutiny

Rarely does a company undershoot its battery claims, and Apple's 12 hours of work/13 hours of movies claims earn their chunky footnote¹.

Lauren Goode gently let the air out of Apple's ballooned battery life estimates at Wired:

The MacBook Air has long been known for its "all-day" battery life. (On a recent five-hour flight from Atlanta to San Francisco, my 2017 MacBook Pro barely lasted through the time period in the middle of the flight when Wi-Fi was available.) Could the new MacBook Air maintain this nebulous claim?

If your work day is around eight-hours, then sure. I cycled through the laptop's battery life a few times. All of theses tests involved me shutting the laptop at some point to sleep, the waking it up and resuming, rather than running it down for many hours straight.

[Wired]

Edward C. Baig at USA Today notes that if you're watching movies at full brightness (reasonable) over streaming (c'mon, who really buys movies on iTunes?) then you'll likely get nowhere near 13 hours:

Apple claims up to 13 hours of iTunes movie playback, based on a test where the company set the brightness to around 75 percent. I only got around 4 hours of battery life, running an admittedly far harsher test: I cranked up the brightness to the max, and streamed a high-definition, full-screen movie on Netflix via Wi-Fi.

But I was also somewhat disappointed when I used the Air in a more typical fashion. With the brightness roughly at 50 percent, I started using a fully charged Air on and off around at 10 a.m.. The laptop pooped out a little past 7 p.m.. In between, I had used the computer to begin writing this column, play some music and surf the web.

[USA Today]

You're Likely To Experience Some Performance Hiccups…

At Mashable, reviewer Pete Pachal followed up the Air's Geekbench scores with a more relevant account of it's performance; as it should, the Air handles most normal workday use pretty well, but not without a hitch here or there:

I put the MacBook Air in point position in a typical workday, running my typical suite of apps: Slack, Trello, TweetDeck, Skype, a handful of Apple apps (Calendar, Reminders, Apple News, Messages, and Maps), and two Chrome profiles running 2-4 windows, each with ~12 tabs on average, with Amazon Music streaming music in the background.

That's almost never too heavy a lift for my quad-core MacBook Pro, but it was a definite workout for the dual-core Air[…] most of the time the MacBook Air managed to keep up with my actions, but here and there you could tell it was struggling: an extra second to switch between apps, a touch more confusion about the resolution of an external monitor, a spinning beach ball lasting longer than usual. Not deal-breakers, by any means, but as they add up, they get more noticeable.

[Mashable]

… Which Should Be No Surprise, Considering How It Stacks Up Against The 12-Inch MacBook And The Pro

If you're in the market for a new Apple laptop and you're not married to the Air's design, then CNET's Dan Ackerman can set you straight — the new Air is less portable than the 12-inch MacBook and less powerful than the Pro… which means there's a good chance it's just fine for you?

You can spend an extra $100, and get something more portable and less powerful (the 12-inch MacBook), or spend the same extra $100 and get something less portable and more powerful (the MacBook Pro). Where the new MacBook Air ends up is right between those other two options, which seems to be the lane it's supposed to be driving in[…] Those in the 4K video editing, professional high-end photography or advanced 3D modeling businesses should really be looking at a MacBook Pro anyway. For everyone else, the last-gen MacBook Air was generally more than fast enough, as is the latest version of the 12-inch MacBook. This new Air is faster than either of those, so I'm not particularly concerned about the specific CPU inside.

[CNET]

Ultimately, This Air Refresh Feels Like Apple Playing Catch-Up Instead Of Blazing New Trails

Yes, the body is recycled aluminum — but you won't notice that. And yes, the keyboard is an "upgraded" version of Apple's Butterfly design, but don't assume that because it received no major complaints in the fresh reviews listed here that it won't fail like its predecessors. At the end of the day though, there's nothing brand new about the refreshed MacBook Air.

The Verge's Dieter Bohn called out this lack of awe with its requisite counterpoint — it's still a Mac laptop though:

The real issue here is that you can get an iPad Pro or a Windows Laptop or even a Chromebook for less money that does almost everything this thing can do — almost everything. But there's one very important thing they can't do: run macOS.

And that's the deal. People like the Mac. It's great to have a computer that does all of the computer stuff you want in a way you're familiar with. Until recently, the best computer for most people was the MacBook Air, and Apple took way too long to update it.

[The Verge]

TL;DR

The review at Wired ended on an apt, big ol' Tired note:

Apple has heard the calls for a newer, better MacBook Air, and it has answered. Thank goodness for that. But one might get the sneaking suspicion, as she stares at the gorgeous, liquid-looking display of this new machine, that such a laptop could have arrived two years ago. Or more. The new MacBook Air is not pure innovation; it's an incantation composed to make you think it is.

[Wired]

For $1,200 (or more), you can join the Retina-loving, USB-C dongle-tolerating, Butterfly keyboard fretting-over life that other MacBook users have been living for the past few years. To reviewers, that might be too little too late to knock their socks off, but if you're in need of an upgrade… well, here's one more option to pick from.