So I've been using the new MacBook Air
over the past week now.
I purposely bought the base model,
primarily because that's the model
that most people are going to buy.
I wanted to see what it would be switching to this
over my MacBook Pro,
which is here,
the M4 Max MacBook Pro.
This MacBook Pro actually cost me $4,000--
over $4,000.
Yeah, this costs $1,000.
This has the M4 Max chip in it
and it also has a 36 GB of unified memory.
Big jump there between the two.
But I just wanted to see
what the M4 MacBook Air would be like
and whether it could handle
most of my workload.
Considering this MacBook Air is a fourth of the price,
it has been very interesting.
I also have the Silver version here,
now that the Space Grey has gone
and there is no space black.
I think the silver looks best.
And here's a shot
comparing the space, black space,
grey and silver for anyone interested.
What is surprising with this MacBook Pro
is that Apple have lowered the price.
Let me say that again.
Apple have lowered the price
of a product of a new product,
not something that Apple
are known for whatsoever.
And not only have they lowered the price,
they have also given
you more for the money.
You now have a 16
gigabytes of unified memory compared
to eight gigabytes in previous models.
The design itself is unchanged,
which I think is a good thing.
This form factor is the best.
It's super thin
light and fills grey always surprises me
how thin MacBook as all when I use them.
It makes it ideal for travelling.
Apple have completed now the design here.
I also much prefer the 13
inch size over the 15 inch size
and that is purely down
to personal preference.
I've always preferred smaller laptops.
I think to myself
it would be even better
if we saw 12 exposure.
But hey, 13 inches
I think is a great size.
The 15 inch model is also $200 more.
Now, I don't think it's worth $200 more,
but it does also have two more CPU cores.
And if you really want that 15 inch,
maybe it might be worth it for you.
Alongside
this MacBook have also been
using this new monitor from Oasis
who are also sponsoring this video.
When I first unboxed it,
I was actually really impressed
by the design of this thing.
It's not like other monitors.
You can tell.
I have spent time designing this monitor
and it looks fantastic.
The back in particular
just looks amazing.
It also comes with a great stand
that offers a ton of movement.
You have tilt height
and rotating options.
This is part of ISIS's pro art line up,
so they provide a bunch of colour
accuracy test shots in the box
to show that it's been thoroughly tested.
They specifically compared
to other much higher
end production monitors
which can be in the five figure
price range.
This isn't meant to be compared
to cheap monitors
due to how
it is designed for anyone who does
content creation, whether you're
a filmmaker, photographer,
3D artist or designer.
If you want super top notch
colour accuracy,
this is a monitor for it.
It's a 31.5 inch CUDA led monitor.
That's 4K and resolution,
and it also does up to 240 hugs.
And of course,
viewing any content on it is sublime.
Outlets have always been amazing
in this area.
It has Thunderbolt four built in
so you can connect a macbook
with one cable and daisy chain
other thunderbolt accessories
like another monitor.
The Thunderbolt Port also provides
up to 96 watts of power.
I was able to get 240 hours right
out of the box with the MacBook Air,
and it is buttery, smooth.
It's perfect for anyone
who is looking for a high quality
outlet monitor
for their Mac,
which also has amazing colour accuracy.
So make sure to check out a live link
to head down the description below.
This MacBook Air
also has the new M4 chip in it
and as most people will know,
the m-series of chips for Apple
have just been a revelation.
You get top notch performance
for a lot less power and a lot less heat,
so it's made
for some very powerful chips
that can go in very compact laptops.
This specifically has the base
here, AM4 chip, which has a ten core
CPU and a eight core CPU.
I've been using this machine
just like how I'd use my MacBook Pro.
I've not hidden anything away from it.
Let me tell you,
I have been a lot more impressed
than I thought I would be.
I wasn't expecting this
to be nearly as good
as my MacBook Pro
when it comes to a lot of things.
It handles
all of the standard stuff
extremely well as you'd expect.
I've been working away at apps like Figma
for all of my design work,
and I feel like this is quite basic now.
I think most people are going to be fine
using something like Figma,
especially if you have heavy Figma files
now that you have
the upgraded
unified memory of 16 gigabytes.
If you have a heavy figma files
with lots of different screens,
you shouldn't have an issue like room
editing as well has been no issues.
I've been editing
photos very, very fast and snappy.
Being able to go through my library
quickly, copying based edits and stuff.
It's been very, very smooth.
So here I am. Anything a video?
This is for my sole favourite
Mac jobs Mac apps I can't live without.
I have two clips,
I have a screen recording
and I have the AOL of myself.
So every half hour that we can see,
I will of myself.
And I also have
the screen recording
and I've got them set up
as a multicam clip
so that I can switch between the two so
that, you know what, I'm demoing the app.
You can see me in the corner
and I'll see how I'm taking up.
I had the screen recording solve main
focus of the screen
when I, for example,
let's have a good
let's have a look at this one.
So right now I have a set of two
better performance.
And with better performance,
it does play
fairly smoothly and
it can
jitter sometimes and
it's okay
right now,
but that's a better performance.
If I get a better quality
and I start playing,
I may be doing fine right now.
But what would happen
is I start showing right now
I think it's
because Final Cut Pro
has done the background rendering.
If you're in the middle of an edit
and you have two clips like this, two
heavy clips because I'm using ten,
there is log footage,
quite heavy footage,
which is also compressed.
Thankfully, the Mac has,
you know, the media engines
and whatever else, but it isn't air.
It's not pro
so doesn't have as many media engines
for doing edits like this.
It works.
It's not perfect.
There are sometimes dropped frames.
It can be a bit slow
when it comes to playback Main Right
now, though, it's running smoothly.
I think, like I said, it's
because it's done
a lot of background rendering.
I'm editing this video right now
and there's a lot going on.
Like this is actually one
of my more complex videos,
and my review videos
are technically a bit easier,
but for stuff like this,
we have multi cams,
you have different cameras
and you're going in and out
with effects and you have overlays
where you have to collapse
on top of each other.
It has to show both the clips,
which means it's playing by clips
at the same time.
It can be a bit heavier on the chip,
but it works.
I think it has
someone who's interested in
doing basic video editing.
Maybe you're shooting stuff
with an iPhone
or a of insta360 or whatever it is.
You know, one of those
like handheld gimbal cameras.
You are not going to have any issues here
with the M4 chip,
like you will not have
any issues whatsoever.
And that's what's so impressive to me.
The only downside with a chip like this,
which is completely to be expected, by
the way,
is when it comes to rendering video
as something like Final Cut Pro.
When I was rendering videos
at the source, same video out
edit on my MacBook Pro,
the render times would be double,
sometimes triple the time.
So that can really add on a lot of time.
If you're wondering a lot of videos,
especially for someone like me where
I'm rendering multiple days a week,
I'm sometimes
having to weave on to things
because I'm
having to go back and edit something.
I'm sometimes having to render videos
for clients
and stuff very quickly as well.
Time for me is very, very valuable.
So that's really
one of the downsides of the M4 chip.
But again,
it wasn't really designed for that.
So it's still an amazing chip
for everything that it can do.
If you're someone who's
just getting started
with content creation,
maybe you're just making that all
video here and there, maybe doing some
3D rendering, some 3D editing,
whatever it might be I stuff.
I think this is going
to be completely fine just to start with
maybe down the line
you can consider something like a pro,
but for how much this can do
and what it can do.
I've genuinely been very impressed.
As expected, battery life is fantastic.
Apple have really nailed
this on battery life
when it comes to these laptops now.
And I think most people need to worry
unless they're doing
super, super heavy stuff.
Maybe you're spending the whole day
video editing
and yeah,
you might need to connect it
to a charger.
But for doing so,
I've been working inside that web.
Browsing, watching videos
is going to last you the whole day.
No problem.
Now let's go through
some downsize and improvements
that I think
could be made to a lot bigger.
First up is the connectivity.
I wish it had an extra thunderbolt port.
So we have two thunderbolt ports
and the charger,
which is nice,
is not having the Magsafe charger.
But we know with the Mac mini,
for example, that you can have an extra
thunderbolt port with the base M4 chip
and the Mac Mini also has two extra
SBC ports, so that's five ports in total.
It would have been nice to maybe
see an extra thunderbolt
port on this side
specifically
because everything is on this side.
I kind of feel like
it just makes it quite limiting
when you're connecting stuff
because you've got to make sure
they have enough length
and the cable or whatever.
It would have been nice
to have another Thunderbolt
port on their side or even a Usb-C port.
The display on this is, I think
actually that's a disservice.
I think actually it's better than okay.
It's actually a really good display.
However, it isn't all that isn't a mini.
It is a standard LCD display.
It would be nice to see Mini-Led
or LED at some point
because they are getting cheaper
and easier
to sort of put in machines like this.
So maybe in the future
we get something like that,
we'll say you're limited to 60 hertz,
another 60 hertz thing that I feel like
a lot of people do complain about.
But I really do think 60 years
for most people
who are buying this machine
60 hours, they probably even notice
the difference between 60 hours, 120
yards, 60 hours
is usually enough for them.
So that I don't think is as important.
It would just be nice
to have many LCD oil.
And then finally, as a storage,
you have 256 gigabytes of storage
with the base model.
So because of that,
I've been using it
with an external SSD connected up to it.
I'd say 80% of the time.
I feel like I'm an edge case though,
because mostly
I'm editing
lots of photos and videos and stuff.
I need a hard drive to edit off.
It's just not going to be enough storage.
But that's not even the issue, I think.
I think it'll be great
upgrading it to 512 or one terabyte.
The problem is the pricing for upgrade.
It's $200 each time.
So to upgrade from 256
gigabytes of storage to 512
gigabytes of storage,
where you're only adding
256 gigabytes of storage
here is an extra $200.
I think that is ridiculous.
I think that is just so overpriced
for what it is for.
I have it we don't have for $140,
you can get a Samsung T7
two terabyte personal drive
for $140
to upgrade to two terabytes
on the MacBook Air.
It's going to cost you $800.
How does that make any sense?
The two biggest changes, though,
and the two changes that I think make
the most significant amount of difference
is the M4 chip
and the upgraded unified memory
going from eight gigabytes to 16
gigabytes of unified memory
is going to make a world of a difference.
It's made a world of a difference for me
when I've been using apps,
when I've had so many different apps open
on this machine, but I've had fun.
I've got pro Lightroom or Slack notion
all open at the same time.
I've had no issues.
It's run so smoothly
because of that doubled memory.
I think that's where the MacBook Air
is really good value.
If you're willing to put up
with a few downside.
As I mentioned,
this is definitely the best value Mac,
but you can get right now.
Make sure to check out my other video
where I did a MacBook buying
guide where you can see
all of the Mac points compared
what I think is worth the money,
what I think isn't worth the money.
Make sure check that out.
And I also have a video on
the must have apps if you have a mac.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
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