The new model is almost imperceptibly thicker than the 2019 Air, but its form is otherwise unchanged, and that's a great thing. Repairability is still not a strong suit of the MacBook Air, but it seems to be improving. They found that new wiring for the trackpad allows for easier access to both the trackpad and the battery without messing with the logic board, among other things. It's also slightly more repairable than it used to be, according to a recent teardown by the good people at iFixit.

From an industrial design point of view, it's one of the best things Apple has ever made. But buyers should know that the Air's display can't match the photographer-friendly color accuracy of the MacBook Pro.įurther Reading Apple’s new MacBook Air brings the price down and the specs up-plus a new keyboardThe Air is thin, it has the classic tapered shape, it looks and feels sturdy, and it wastes no space or material.

The Air's screen is above the threshold beyond which more pixels make for diminishing returns, though, so its resolution isn't much of a downside. Apple really made HiDPI displays take off when it first introduced Retina displays, but while the company is strong on things like color accuracy, competing products now offer much higher resolutions. It's a 13.3-inch IPS panel with a native resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels. The Air has the same Retina display as before. You can go up to 512GB for another $200, 1TB for another $400, or a beefy 2TB for an extra $800. 128GB was pretty tight even for light users, but 256GB is just right for those using this as a basic productivity computer. Apple has been doubling storage across its MacBook line, and that's very welcome. Storage starts at 256GB in the base config, up from 128GB in past Airs. In standard configurations, the Air comes with 8GB of 3733MHz LPDDR4X memory, but you can opt to upgrade to 16GB for an additional $200-which I'd recommend for a lot of people, especially if they use a bunch of non-Apple apps like, say, Google Chrome. For graphics, you're looking at Intel Iris Pro graphics matching whatever CPU you pick.

2017 mac air review