2020 Apple MacBook Air Laptop: Apple M1 Chip, 13” Retina Display, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD Storage, Backlit Keyboard, FaceTime HD Camera, Touch ID; Silver

I should start by saying that the MacBook Air (M1) is the best computer I have ever used. Heck, it's probably the best piece of tech I've ever used, seriously. I've worked in software and systems engineering for 20+ years, so I have used a lot of computers. I know what goes on 'under the hood' and I'm familiar the challenges of designing personal (or any) technology / computers. Engineering and design is largely about compromise - a more powerful battery will be heavier, as will a tougher case, stronger higher security usually reduces user convenience etc. These challenges are universal. With this MacBook, Apple have done such a good job that it's easy to forget that such compromises are necessary. Of course, they are still there, but the quality of design and workmanship makes them seem insignificant. A laptop designer must overcome the fundamental challenges of creating a powerful device, ensuring that it runs efficiently, and fitting everything in as small a space as possible. Apple have hit the perfect spot on all of them. The MacBook Air lasts me 10-12 hours on a single charge, it's as light as a feather, it performs fantastically and NEVER gets hot (hence the good battery life). It's an absolute pleasure to use and I couldn't recommend it more, no other computer I have used comes close. For a work computer I have a high-end MacBook Pro with a 16" screen, Core i9 CPU, 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD. It's reckoned to be the best performing portable Mac, but it's also heavy, it gets super hot and is very noisy as a result. It certainly doesn't perform better than my MacBook Air and is often much slower. It's also more than twice the price of the Air, and given a choice I would always opt for the MacBook Air. The Air is very light and super fast; it's also super quiet, it never gets hot and the battery life is simply astounding. The people at Apple have worked miracles in improving MacBook technology and much of this success is due to the new M1 CPU - which is simply fantastic. From my perspective, there is nothing on the market which even approaches the quality of the McBook Air - it really is an amazing piece of technology. I'm never usually one to write gushing reviews, like this but in this case I feel the incredible quality of the product and the people who created it deserve recognition. If you fancy one and can afford it, my advice would be to go buy one, do not hesitate. Even if you were hoping to buy two laptops for the price of this one, don't. Just buy the MacBook Air - you will be completely thrilled and delighted with it. It really is an amazing piece of kit.

Own an Asus x502c for 10 or so years, which has fallen apart and a lot slower than most Sunday drivers, and then take the plunge and go all Apple and buy a MacBook Air with the mighty M1 chip. Of course the MacBook Air makes my old Asus look bad, it is bad, its an old laptop, but I could still edit images on it, as well as video, so it wasn't all bad, but this MacBook Air, omg!!! I am 47 and I found the transition from windows 10 to whatever it is the MacBook uses, almost effortless, there were a couple of teething problems, such as using the trackpad as I would on my old laptop by using touch to tap, not press to tap, so I was on the "select your country of origin" page for some time before I realised I had to actually press into the trackpad to make my selection, so that was that fixed, and the other problem? erm, actually, there were no further user errors with this, as it is very intuitive, and there are of course helpful YouTube videos that give you plenty of tips and tricks anyway. I chose the rose gold colour as I always wear rose gold jewellery and aesthetically, this is a pretty little thing, I love the backlit keys, can type in darkness now if need be. I also love how compact it all is, its tiny, but the screen more than makes up for it, crystal clear. The built in stereo speakers are amazing, full range acoustically, it means I can now create music via GarageBand or fruity loops studio without headphones or speakers if I so choose, the bass notes sound absolutely quality for the size of this laptop, cannot praise its sound enough. And yes, I have already connected my midi instruments to it via a OTG cable, and they all work as they should, no compatibility issues thus far. I am yet to download Lightroom, so I cannot say how this will perform for me, but I do have very high hopes indeed. This is clearly not a review, just a first impressions really as I only owned this for a few days now and I'm sure there is more to discover with this MacBook Air, and I honestly have no negatives to offer, no cons to my pros, I mean, even the price is very reasonable, 889 quid, that's all, what a steal!

I finally decided to upgrade from my 2013 MacBook Air and I'm very impressed with the M1 2020 replacement. TBH I can't really believe how good the old one is, but the trackpad got cracked, the battery was on its last legs and the screen doesn't quite measure up to modern standards. The M1 replacement is smaller, much faster, has a much wider soundstage (you'll notice the sounds difference immediately) and the screen is a beauty - not significantly brighter but far better definition. Everything is up and running within a day on the new machine - I don't push them hard but have started using a sailing simulator that only just worked on the old Air whereas its fast and snappy on the new one (admittedly it still got uncomfortably hot with all those electrons flowing). During the transfer of files I realised again how good the old one is, but I'm pleased I know have back up as well as the benefits of more speed and power. I was thinking about this for maybe two years but couldn't justify it to myself. Then the 2022 came along and the choice got harder so I put it off. There is about £250 or 25% price differential between the 2020 and the 2022 - not a huge amount, but then the key elements like memory size, weight, battery life, screen resolution are identical. There are differences, but they didn't excite me so I decided to take the budget route and I'm happy with that decision. There are very few things on Amazon that get 4.8 star average over high volumes of sails, and the M1 2020 deserves to be up there. Most people are delighted and so am I - most complaints are over cracked screens or refurbished replacements - take care and buy new with a warranty and we should be fine. Well done Apple for another great product - and a very reasonable price (it is 20% cheaper than what I paid back in 2013!).

The M1 Macbook Air provides an optimal laptop experience. In terms of hardware, it has: - a battery that lasts all day (or all week if you only use it for a few hours a day!) - performance that beats the majority of X86-64 (Intel, AMD) based laptops - no noise or heat, since the M1's thermal efficiency enables a fanless design without sacrificing performance. The device remains perfectly cold. - fantastic build quality: it feels solid, dense, and premium. The smooth Macbook trackpads with haptic feedback are the best on the market - a beautiful, vibrant Retina display - great speakers - an M1 chip that is more secure than X86-64 chips (for example, due to Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities) In terms of software, it trumps Windows in the following ways: - as a desktop operating system, in terms of interface and experience, macOS and Apple software is more polished and refined than Windows 10 - macOS includes Apple's office suite (like Pages, Sheets) by default, which makes for a full-featured desktop experience out of the box. Whereas Microsoft requires Windows users to pay extra for Word, Excel(!) - macOS is the most secure desktop operating system - more secure than Windows, Linux-based desktop operating systems, and Chrome OS - because it has a proper implementation of full verified boot, and macOS requires that all applications are sandboxed (Windows only sandboxes UWP apps from Microsoft Store, Linux sandboxing is completely broken except for Android and Chromium-based desktop operating systems). macOS on the M1 architecture also has Pointer Authentication Codes (PAC) for forward and backward-edge protection, Hardened Runtime for user space code, and Kernel Integrity Protection (KIP) for kernel code. The Secure Enclave secures the keys for FileVault disk encryption (which everyone should enable!), providing mitigation for brute-force attacks. - seamless integration with the other products in the Apple ecosystem, such as iPhone - the ability to install and run iPhone and iPad apps (although this is still a work in progress, it will improve with time) Some factors to consider: - 13 inches is not the best size for some people, especially bigger individuals. If this is the case for you, consider waiting for Apple to release their M1 Macbook Pro 14 and 16 inch versions, due later this year. - M1 Macbook Air does not have a wide range of ports. Future M1 Macbook Pros are due to feature HDMI and SD card slots, and ditch the touchbar.

Before buying the M1 MacBook Air I'd tried a Surface Laptop Go and an Asus ROG Zephyrus 14 (both returned due to issues... been seeing a lot of that recently... strange!). Working from home had seen my computing requirements change and I've spent the last 20 months using a permanently 'docked' MSI GP66 gaming laptop. Exceptional performance when plugged in but absolutely useless as a tool to support an increasing requirement to visit the actual office. Having returned the two previous portable laptops I set out once again to research my options. Led by the fact that every search for a 13"-14" laptop on Amazon returned the MacBook Air as the top result I took myself off to YouTube to learn more. I think I would be understating things if I said that every review I came across was positive. With this knowledge in mind I took the plunge and purchased the entry-level MacBook Air and prepared myself to have my expectations of what a laptop can do exceeded... Things didn't start off so well... My MacBook Air arrived with Big Sur. Initially this didn't seem like a big deal. The update popped up after initial setup and I sat back to wait. The initial download completed and then the update failed. We started again and it appeared to complete as expected but after reboot the MacBook started in recovery 'mode' and I started to fear that I might have ended up with yet another faulty device. Eventually after managing my way into the now encrypted disk and allowing some form of image recovery to take place all seemed well! There have been some other mildly frustrating behaviours observed. iMessage occasionally unexpectedly closes with a nondescript error. A few other system apps infrequently do the same. It's possible that the image recovery has left some persistent issues/errors and a reset to factory default might clean things up... a job for another time! Much has been made of the performance of the M1 silicon and it is all very fluid in the most part. The apps that tend to take a while to load on a good windows PC still take a while to load on an M1 MacBook. Office is as slow and cumbersome as ever (despite running natively on M1) but using Safari and apps direct from the App Store see exceptional performance as does the native version of Adobe Lightroom (much better performance than my 16 thread i7 + 32Gb memory + RTX 3070 Windows machine). The hardware? Well it's an Apple product so the build is the closest thing to perfect I imagine it's possible to achieve. The screen is beautiful and the keyboard... the keyboard is the best I have ever used! I've made a point of using the MacBook Air exclusively over the last 2 days and it's been a pleasure to conference via Teams, chat over Slack and hammer out long emails all day long... which brings me to the single biggest reason to buy this over absolutely anything else in this price range... Battery life is spectacular. Totally redefining. I charged the device to 100% the day it was received and closed the lid (didn't shut it down). When I returned to it the following morning to start work I was greeted with 100%. I worked away from mains power for a full day, watched some YouTube in the evening and browsed around the web before bed. Day 1: complete. The following day the pattern was repeated. Full working day and some additional light activities. Two full days of work. A little time in the evenings doing what we all do and I closed the lid at the end of the second day with 14% remaining... possibly enough for another half days work the way things have been going! It's this that defines the M1 MacBook Air. I could never go back to a different way of disconnected, portable working.

Got this mac to learn mac os and see what it's like as a Windows user coming from custom 32 gb gaming laptop with a 1660ti this was the same price as the m1 For everyday use like browsing, HD video making, beginner music production, beginner to intermediate programming, godot game development. The 256gb and 8gb is enough. Beats my gaming laptop hands down with that in efficiency as has no crashes and some slow down but I had many programs running before the average user would struggle. however I would say when I need a more graphical power my laptop has it beat I would advise people to get 16gb of Ram instead of 512gb sdd. If you want an upgrade, 8gb is a little low not an issue as of now. However I can see the cracks when I push the air. That's were I fault apple as if I had 32gb of upgraded ram this would be a monster. However my windows laptop wouldn't hold a candle to the mac with 8gb of ram that's why I upgraded to 32. Battery life is unbelievable Im not used to battery life this long as my laptop would normally last 4 hours before it quit or 2 hours after heavy use plus the charger is easy to carry and not having a bulky power supply trust me it adds up I'm getting 7-12 hours of use out it on average. But you can get 2 days out of it if you want it in sure. Value? Meh you get what you pay for I suppose but 256gb ssd for that price should be 512 however you can get around that with external ssd and cloud storage. My windows pc has 512 m2 as standard and can upgrade to 2tb plus an ssd slot. Oh and give us some USB slots and hdmi ports, at least one on the other side! Gaming... Do even bother buying a mac for that However I've played a few games it can handle what it can run. I have 180 steam games and I can only run 35 on mac. I would highly recommend this laptop for an everyday user and would advise getting this over the m2 if your new, the base m2 has a slower ssd and when you get the 512 ssd you're looking at MacBook Pro 14 Pro territory. Which I'd recommend for a power user on the mac. Really making consider what a MacBook Pro will be like as this is awesome

This is my very first MacBook. As an exclusive PC user my entire life, I was very reluctant to get into the Apple ecosystem after getting out since the iPhone 4S. But I got back into it after receiving AirPods Pro as a gift... As a photography enthusiast, and becoming more and more disappointed with the quality of Samsung phones since the Note 9, I then looked into the iPhone 13 Pro and was convinced the iPhone would be a better match for my use case. I also upgraded my old iPad mini around that time, and was still super pleased with the user experience. A short time after, my old windows laptop started to act slow and couldn't edit holiday videos... I then had discussions with a few friends who have kept their MacBook for years and have only been happy with them, except for a friend who is a web developer and had some issues in recent years with recent models before this one (keyboards issues, bad customer service and repair policies...). After watching a ton of Youtube reviews, I was convinced to make the plunge and give it a try though. Couldn't be happier ! The laptop is very light, silent, and fast. Video editing, Photo editing is super easy. The integration with my other devices is unbelievably convenient and fast. Contacts, Calendar, Safari, Airdrop, Notes, connection to the AirPods, the battery life is unbelievable, especially compared to other PC laptops. For the price there's pretty much nothing that comes close in terms of performance and features. Hopefully MacOS continues with its long term reliability and stability compared to Windows, so I won't have to upgrade before a few years. Since I got the MacBook, I barely boot my old desktop PC I built 6 years ago. It covers pretty much all of my normal daily usage. The only reason why it's not 5 stars for me is the small disk space. I got the 256gb, thinking I can simply use my convenient 2TB small Samsung external drive, and for full storage and backup solution for my media (photos, videos) and other docs, I already have my Synology. But it is inconvenient to have the external drive always plugged in and attached at the back of the laptop. My other little annoyance is the lack of at least 1 regular USB port to avoid having to use a hub... All in all I still absolutely love this device. Especially based on the core reasons why I got it in the 1st place: - convenient quality light laptop I can bring with me on trips (or anywhere around the house) - powerful enough to edit 4K videos - convenient workflow to transfer and edit photos (Airdrop between phone/tablet and the MacBook is a real cheat code) - incredible battery life - (hopefully great long term purchase preventing upgrades every 2 years) - and the cherry on top that came as a surprise as a novice Apple user: the seamless integration of all Apple devices together If you have a budget of only £1000 for a laptop, don't hesitate, just get a MacBook Air.

This was my first macbook, purchased after my 7 year old acer swift gave up on me. It is so incredibly fast, great fingerprint recognition and pairs seamlessly with other apple products. I can quickly air drop items from my iphone or ipad, and can copy and paste things across devices with ease. Does not get hot with everyday tasks, general browsing + heavier use for assignments and research papers but have noticed it gets quite hot and battery drains quicker when playing Sims 4. I've played this a handful of times to try it out so its not been an issue for me at all. Charges super fast, perfect size and weight to carry in a backpack for work/uni. Beautiful colour as well, hopefully it lasts me years!