Hi guys and welcome to 123myIT. In this video, we will show you everything you need to know about the Apple MacBook Air M1.
Before I start I already have done a video on the MacBook Pro M1 model and it you want to see that video I will put a link in the top of the video and the description below.
The Design of the MacBook Air M1
On the outside, the design of the Apple MacBook Air M1 has not changed from the previous model. And is also very simular the MacBook Pro M1 If you want to see that video I will put a link in the description. However, the biggest change is on the inside of the Mac. It’s the M1 chip that is custom designed by Apple. Previously a Mac needed multiple chips to deliver its features. Now all those chips are in one Soc. Basically making it faster and more efficient.
The new chip allows the MacBook Air to perform better and run longer on battery, than its Intel-based predecessors.
Pricing – MacBook Air M1
Pricing for the MacBook Air M1 starts around $999 USD for the 256 GB SSD model and goes up to $1999 USD for the 2TB model. In addition, it comes in three different colours Space Grey, Gold and Silver. After using the 256 GB model, I found the upgrade to 512 GB is probably worthwhile as I started having disk space issues after installing Fortnite game, which requires about 90 GB. I started to wish I had the extra space. So consider this when buying the MacBook Air.
Also in the box you will get Warranty and setup documentation. Along with Apple stickers. Included is a 30 watt USB C power adapter. The MacBook Air draws 30 watts of power when charging. And, you can expect to get around 15 hours of battery life. Which is less than the MacBook Pro, but still outstanding for a laptop.
Display – MacBook Air M1
In the box you will have the MacBook Air itself. The MacBook Air M1 comes with a 13.3-inch LED Backlit Retina Display with IPS technology. And it has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 and 227 pixel per inch with 400 nits of brightness. True Tone technology also adds a warmer more realistic colour to the display. In Terms of how heavy the MacBook Air is its 2.8 pounds, which is lighter than the MacBook Pro on 3 pounds. Its Dimensions are .16 inches high and 11.97 inches wide. hHow it has the same footprint as the MacBook Pro.
Connectivity
On the left side, you have two Thunderbolt, USB 4 ports. I would have like to see three as one could be taken up with a power adapter. There is No Ethernet, so this model is WIFI only. The USB 4 doubles as a display port so if you have a USB 4 to HDMI adapter you can plug in an external display.
On the right, you have a 3.5 Headphone Jack and there is no SD card reader so it does feel limited in terms of connectivity.
The MacBook Air M1 has Stereo speakers with wide stereo sound. They sit both side of the keyboard and are designed to point upwards towards your ears. The speakers have amazing sound and seem to be louder than the MacBook Pro. Take a listen. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Keyboard and Touch Bar
Above the keyboard, you have the Touch Bar. This allows you to control whatever apps is on the screen. So for example, I can fast forward or rewind the YouTube song. Alternatively, if I wanted to turn the volume up and down.
The Backlit Magic keyboard is a delight to type on and does not bend when pressing the keys. And there is very little flex on the keyboard too. Which is nice.
The Force Touch trackpad is nice and wide and I never find myself missing a click or having to click twice.
Another nice feature is the MacBook Pro has this always on feature when you open the lid. Just like your iPhone it’s on and ready to go. There is a tiny bit of flex in the lid but generally, it is pretty sturdy. Along the top, you will find an integrated 720p FaceTime HD camera with an indicator light. I would like to see a button to manually close the webcam. It is a nice to have feature for the security conscious.
The overall build is excellent quality but the display hinge does not fold all the way back 180 degrees, however other laptops go all the way to 180 degrees, so it does feels a bit awkward.
Fortnite
I was able to get FortNite to run really well giving up a solid 50 Frames per second on high settings. And when I dropped it back to low settings. I was getting 130 to 140 frames. So much better performance from the gaming side of things. Having said that FortNite did crash on my once. I am not sure if that was down the MacBook hardware being so new or a bug with the FortNite software itself. At any rate, a great result in terms of gaming performance.
Benchmarks
Cool, let us run the benchmarks. Starting the Cinebench software really works the MacBook Air hard. But you wont hear the fan spinning because there is no fan. So you will never have to listen to fan noise on this model it will be wisper quite. One thing to mention is the MacBook Pro does have a fan while the MacBook Air does not.
Heres the Cinebench multicore score which is 5676 which was not as good as the MacBook Pro score which was 7795 points.
Here is the Geekbench CPU score and the GPU score.
Let us run the GFXBench Metal tool. As you can see here the MacBook Air M1 scored and average of 50.9 frames. So not outstanding but a good result.
Should you buy ?
You should buy the MacBook Air M1 if you want an affordable Apple Mac computer. It’s a powerful thin light laptop that runs Mac OS Big Sur. It’s very portable and it has amazing battery life.
You should not buy it if you are looking for an budget laptop as its very expensive. You should also not buy it for gaming. Although it did run Fortnite fine it might struggle with triple A titles.
If you want to see the MacBook Air and Pro review and comparison then subscribe to my channel as I will have this video coming up after this one.
Guys don’t forget to check out my other videos such as MacBook Pro M1. And do me a favour if you know anyone who might need this video please share it will them, hit the subscribe button and smash the bell icon.