The MacBook could use an upgrade and with the arrival of the MacBook Air 2018, Apple is meeting the people who have been asking for this for years. What has changed in three years?
A first look at the new MacBook and you'd swear it's an older model. Apple has made little changes to the design, but has made major changes to the screen and processor. And that is immediately reflected in the price of what was once an affordable laptop from Apple.
design
Let's face it: the MacBook Air 2015, as well as older models, are quite timeless products. Especially if you look at the design, which is still used as an example by competitors after years. The sleek design may have led to the successful emergence of luxury laptops, which run on Windows. Even by today's standards, the Macbook Air is still one of the thinnest, lightest and most stylish laptops on the market.
It's not that there have been no changes at all to the appearance: Apple's new laptop is 10% thinner and lighter, and the edges on the outside of the screen are no longer as wide.
The new laptop supports Touch ID (fingerprint scanner in the keyboard) and has a 3.5mm headphone port and two USB-C connections with Thunderbolt support. The ports can drive a 5K display.
According to Apple, the MacBook Air's stereo speakers produce 25 percent more sound than the previous model, and the bass has also been improved.
With that said, the new design improves on flexibility and portability, but leaves little room for revolutionary innovation, as the MacBook Air in 2015 actually showed against competitors.
It is worrisome that the Macbook Air 2018 has a Butterfly keyboard, which benefits the design. But the wrong crumb leads to hundreds of euros in repair costs, as can be seen in the video below. Talk about repair costs. The T2 chip is also present, which, under the disguise of security, sidelines repairmen.
Display
The higher resolution is by far the biggest change in the 2018 version of the MacBook Air. The resolution is called Retina Display thanks to Apple's marketing team and has 2880 by 1800 pixels, which is four times sharper than the 2015 model. In addition, the screen would show 48% more color.
At the time of the MacBook Air's launch in 2015, the laptop's screen with a resolution of 1,440 by 900 pixels was nowhere near as sharp as competitors in the same price segment. Most of the more expensive laptops already supported 1080p back then.
Still, the MacBook Air's legendary long battery life in 2015 wasn't possible without making these compromises on the screen. And for those who only used the laptop for text editing or sending e-mails, there was no need to complain. It remains to be seen whether the battery of the MacBook Air 2018 will last as long with the sharper screen as the 2015 model.
Performance and price
Where the MacBook Air 2018 falls short is in the area of the processor. Unfortunately, you will not find a very heavy Intel Core processor in Apple laptops. Some hoped for a quad-core processor, but unfortunately they have to make do with the Intel Core i5 dual-core processor. Also in terms of the memory of DDR3 2133MHz, the new device does not score highly, since the model from 2015 also had a (albeit somewhat slower) version of this memory. Many laptops already have DDR4, which supports larger capacities. The memory capacity of the MacBook Air has increased from 8 to 16 GB.
Price
The cheapest version (8GB/128GB) costs 1349 euros. The model with more storage memory (8GB/256GB) will cost 1599 euros. The first MacBook Air was still embraced as the most affordable Mac out there, but that is no longer there. A trend we see for all Apple products.
What it comes down to
Yes, the MacBook Air 2018 is undeniably better than its predecessor three years older, with a higher-resolution screen and a new processor. At the same time, not all users of the MacBook Air 2015 will welcome some new changes, such as the more pressure-sensitive trackpad Force Touch and the higher price.
For some, the MacBook Air 2018 may not be a successful successor to Apple's affordable laptop, but rather a refreshed version of the 12-inch MacBook.
