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.

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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