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2018 Macbook Air Review: No Risk!

2018-11-28
hey what's up guys into Bhd here so this is basically what I do on my laptop write a lot of email a lot of texts and research-based stuff a lot of Google Docs a lot of youtubing so that's watching videos commenting on them and then all the YouTube studio stuff then some light photo editing so I use Lightroom for that it's never more than one image at a time it's making adjustments and exporting pretty simple there and then a bunch of miscellaneous file management you know downloading a bunch of images editing documents signing PDFs things like that I actually stopped video editing on my laptop and it's nice to have Final Cut Pro and be able to toss something together once in a while in 1080p tops but for the videos you see on this channel that are 8k with all the transcoding and raw and everything I refuse to put myself through rendering on a laptop so I don't do that so basically for my use it's pretty non intensive which means I can get away with if I want to use Mac OS the cheapest laptop Apple makes so this new MacBook Air is the cheapest laptop Apple makes it is now more expensive than the last one at $1200 baseline classic but this is the one so this 2018 MacBook Air it isn't the absolute miles ahead game-changer that blew everyone's mind when the first gen came out but it's a good laptop still just with a couple small shortcomings so aesthetically it's still clearly an Apple laptop it looks just like their others full metal unibody build and great overall build quality and hinge weight and big generous trackpad all the things we know Apple does well to USB C ports on one side headphone jack on the other the keyboard doesn't have much travel but it's not the worst Apple keyboard which isn't saying much but I've already gotten so used to the mushy one on the new MacBook Pro so this one actually feels fine it's a little bit more clicky and it's still backlit which is good and the speakers next to the keyboard with the help of some magnet paper we can see they're actually much smaller than the grille might make them seem but they are good speakers so nothing wrong with that Apple does laptop speaker as well but just overall the whole thinness thing is kind of lost like it's not a thick laptop by any means but I've been using a 13-inch MacBook Pro for a little while now and this is not noticeably thinner or noticeably lighter than that laptop if you really want noticeably thin and light you got to go get the tiny one port 12-inch MacBook which is both less powerful and more expensive so it's kind of a hard sell fun fact back-to-back on a table the MacBook Air is thicker at its thickest point then the 13-inch MacBook Pro that I've already been using so the wedge shape can make it feel a little thinner but honestly it's not really noticeably thin so don't buy the MacBook Air this year for its thinness it's weird to say but it's true so beyond the build quality the display is important to me and that was the biggest downside of the original MacBook Air which they still sell by the way a low resolution with big thick silver bezels and everything so that was the biggest upgrade here in the new MacBook Air we asked for it they made it so it's now a 13-inch 2560 by 1440 IPS display thinner bezels black bezels big time upgrade the one thing is at max brightness it's not quite as bright as I want to or I'm used to from the MacBook Pro or even the surface laptop they all seem to get brighter but I find myself using the air at maxed out brightness all the time and that will naturally hit the battery life a bit it's a solid b-plus battery life in a laptop still I'm happy with it I'm getting the usual seven to eight hours I normally get but it's nothing too noteworthy but overall I just wish the display would get a bit brighter this FaceTime camera is technically upgraded although every time I look at one of these built-in webcams in a laptop I'm always wondering why doesn't anyone put a smartphone quality camera in a laptop no one is it too thin up here at the top of the laptop I mean you don't need the oh is just the sensors honestly this laptop should just have the iPhones front-facing camera and face ID of course nothing wrong with touch ID here it's fine it works it's consistent but wouldn't face ID be more futuristic like the iPad pro or even like Windows hello I really would have loved to have seen face ID here I want to turn this into some kind of rant but it's just super not a big risk in any way right the display it's a big upgrade but now it's it's fine the design it's not very different from any other Apple laptop it's fine the performance it's fine the battery life it's fine Apple didn't really take any risks with this one not that they have to it's actually really smart not to take any risks in fact this is probably the smartest no risk laptop they can make they had their fan favorite and MacBook Air start to pile up requests like hey why haven't you updated it with new internals and a Retina display so they did exactly that they tossed in touch ID and that's about it this is what you get the question becomes is that good enough and I'd say barely I mean it's 1,200 bucks and you can get more laptop for less money if you're willing to move to Windows we all know this but a lot of people for many reasons aren't about to switch to Windows and Apple will gladly sell this to those people I would have loved to have seen Apple make like it eight nine hundred to a thousand dollar laptop because that new lower price would have been something to get excited about but as of right now this isn't that this is the super safe incremental upgrade which it's weird that that kind of sounds like a bad thing it's not at all it's just kind of the curse that Apple gets because you can't live up to the hype of the incredibly revolutionary first gen MacBook Air so it's fine and you'll probably enjoy one if you're due for a new laptop and this one fits your budget and you want the cheapest Mac OS laptop this one is good but this all brings me back to why I love the iPad pro so much this new iPad pro which is eight hundred bucks feels like a real purposeful modern redesign because it is I enjoy using it for more things the thin bezels are awesome face ID is here and that's great the performance is incredible and it's an even higher resolution and higher refresh rate 120 Hertz display it's an amazing screen those are some real things to get excited about but when it comes to the iPad pro there's of course still just one of those things that I mentioned at the beginning miscellaneous file management being a big one that make it impossible for me to replace my laptop with the iPad even though I want to anyway for me I'm going to keep my current laptop and my current tablet I'm gonna keep my 13-inch MacBook Pro which has been handling everything fine and I'm gonna keep using my iPad pro every chance I get and I've also been trying the surface laptop to a lot more probably worth a video let me know if you guys want to see something on that but as far as the MacBook Air goes I'm gonna keep waiting for that big interesting upgrade maybe they inevitably switch to those armed ships maybe they have much thinner bezels and face ID maybe they actually take those risks maybe they do 120 Hertz display something to get excited about but for now this MacBook Air it's safe if it fits the budget then that'll do either way until the next one thanks for watching catch you guys later peace
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