Switching to the MacBook Air | 1 Week Later Review

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.

Yet 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 Gray has gone,

and there is no Space Black,

I think the Silver looks best.

And here's a shot comparing
the Space Black,

Space Gray, and Silver
for anyone interested.

What is surprising with this MacBook Pro

is that Apple have lowered the price.

Now 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 GB
of Unified Memory compared

to the 8 GB 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 feels great.

It always surprises me

how thin MacBook Airs are when I use them.

It makes it ideal for travelling.

Apple have completed nailed the design here.

I also much prefer the 13 inch size

over the 15 inch size,

and that's purely down
to personal preference.

I've always preferred smaller laptops.

I think to myself it would be even better

if we saw a 12 inch version.

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 GPU cores.

And if you really want that 15 inch,

maybe it might be worth it for you.

Alongside this MacBook Air,

I've also been using this new monitor from Asus,

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 Asus 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 Asus' ProArt lineup.

So they provide a bunch
of colour accuracy test shots in the box

to show that it's been thoroughly tested.

They specifically compare it

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 OLED monitors

due to how it's tuned.

It's designed for anyone who does content creation,

whether you're a filmmaker, photographer,

3D artist or a designer.

If you want super top notch
colour accuracy,

this is a monitor for it.

It's a 31.5 inch QD-OLED monitor

that's 4K in resolution,

and it also does up to 240 Hz.

And of course,

viewing any content on it is sublime.

OLEDs have always been amazing
in this area.

It has Thunderbolt 4 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 Hz
right out of the box

with the MacBook Air,

and it is buttery smooth.

It's perfect for anyone who's looking

for a high-quality OLED monitor

for their Mac,

which also has amazing colour accuracy.

So make sure to check it out.

I'll leave a link to it,
down in 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 tier M4 chip,

which has a 10-core CPU and a 8-core GPU.

I've been using this machine

just like how I'd use my MacBook Pro.

I've not hidden anything away from it.

And 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 GB,

if you have a heavy Figma files

with lots of different screens,

you shouldn't have an issue.

Lightroom 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,

copy and paste edits and stuff.

It's been very, very smooth.

So here I am editing a video,

this is for my sort of favourite Mac apps,

Mac apps I can't live without.

I have two clips here,

I have a screen recording

and I have the A-roll of myself.

So if we hover over, we can see,

A-roll 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 when I'm demoing the app,

you can see me in the corner.

And obviously, I'm taking up...

I had the screen recording
sort of main focus of the screen.

When I, for example--

Let's have a look at this one.

So right now I have a set it to

Better Performance.

And with Better Performance,

it does play

fairly smoothly.

It can jitter sometimes.

It's okay right now,

but that's at Better Performance.

If I go to Better Quality,

and I start playing...

it seems to be doing fine right now.

But what would happen is--

It's not 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 10-bit S-log footage,

quite heavy footage,

which is also compressed.

Thankfully, the Mac has,

the Media Engines and whatever else,

but it isn't Air.

It's not Pro,

so it 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.

I mean, 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.

This is actually one of my more complex videos.

My review videos
are technically a bit easier,

but for stuff like this,

we have multicams,

you have different cameras

and you're going in and out

with effects and you have overlays,

where you have two clips

on top of each other.

It has to show both the clips,

which means it's playing
both clips at the same time.

It can be a bit heavier on the chip,

but it works.

I think if you're someone

who's interested
in doing basic video editing.

Maybe you're shooting
stuff with an iPhone

or a sort of Insta360 or whatever it is,

one of those handheld gimbal cameras.

You are not gonna have any issues here

with the M4 chip.

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

in something like Final Cut Pro.

When I was rendering videos

the sort of same videos

that I would 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 rendering a lot of videos.

Especially for someone like me,

where I'm rendering multiple videos a week,

I'm sometimes having to re-render 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 odd video here and there,

maybe you're doing some 3D rendering,
some 3D editing,

whatever it might be, AI stuff.

I think this is gonna be completely fine

just to start out with,

maybe down the line

you can consider something like a Pro,

but for how much this can do,

the M4 chip can do,

I've genuinely been very impressed.

As expected, battery life is fantastic.

Apple have really nailed the battery life

when it comes to these laptops now.

I don't think most people need to worry,

unless they're doing
super, super heavy stuff.

Maybe you're spending
the whole day video editing,

then yeah, you might need to connect it

to a charger.

But for doing sort of admin work
and stuff like that,

web browsing, watching videos,

it 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 the MacBook Air.

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,

it's nice 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 USB-C 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 gotta make sure

they have enough length
on the cable or whatever.

It would have been nice

to have another
Thunderbolt port on this 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 an OLED, it isn't a Mini LED,

it's just 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.

Also, you're limited to 60 Hz.

Now the 60 Hz thing,

that I feel like a lot of people
do complain about.

But I really do think 60 Hz

for most people
who are buying this machine,

60 Hz, they probably don't even notice

the difference between 60 Hz and 120 Hz.

60 Hz is usually enough for them.

So that I don't think is as important,

it would just be nice
to have Mini LED or OLED.

And then finally, is the storage,

you have 256 GB 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 obviously I'm editing

lots of photos and videos off.

I need a hard drive to edit off.

It's just not gonna be enough storage.

But that's not even the issue, I think.

I think it'd be great

upgrading it to 512 or 1 TB.

The problem is the pricing for the upgrade.

It's $200 each time.

So to upgrade from 256 GB of storage

to 512 GB of storage,

where you're only adding

256 GB of storage here,

it's an extra $200.

I think that is ridiculous.

I think that is just so overpriced

for what it is.

I have it written down here, for $140,

you can get a Samsung T7

2 TB, external drive,

for $140.

To upgrade to 2 TB

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 that upgraded Unified Memory.

Going from 8 GB to 16 GB 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,

when I've had Final Cut Pro, Lightroom,

Arc, 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 MacBook

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 MacBooks 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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