2018 MacBook Air vs 13" MacBook Pro & Old MacBook Air By AppleInsider

Hey guys its max with Apple Insider, and today we're taking a look at the brand-new 2018 MacBook Air. This is a laptop that we've been waiting for a very long time, Apple, finally unveiled it at their October event, we're going to do a quick, unboxing, and we're gonna, give you guys our first impressions on this new MacBook Air, and then we're gonna, compare it to the previous one. The 2017 version of Apple is still selling and also the 13-inch MacBook Pro. That is just a little more expensive. So we have the gold model here. Okay, always have some nice packaging.

This reminds me of the retina MacBook in this gold color. Let's open her up nice I, really like that. Color seems like I'm going all gold with the Apple Watch, the iPhone 10s Macs, and here we go we're up and running while that loads I'll show you guys the new charger. That's included with this. So this is actually the same charger.

That's included with the 12-inch retina MacBook, it's a 30 watt charger used to include a 29. They slightly updated it. It does have USB see and then, of course, we have our USB type-c cable to charge the new MacBook Air. So how does that compare to the previous MacBook Air in the 13-inch MacBook Pro? Well, the previous MacBook Air actually came with a 45 watt charger that also had MagSafe, which was nice and convenient, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro that comes with a 61 watt charger. So the charger is more than twice as fast if you're going to get the MacBook Pro.

Now the new MacBook Air is a forty-nine point: nine watt hour battery compared to 54 and 54 on these two devices here and if you compare it to the 12-inch retina MacBook, that comes with the same charger that has a 41 watt hour battery. So here are basically getting a 20% larger battery than the twelve and train a MacBook buy a charger. That is the same speed, and this guy has a 10% larger battery, but a charge that's twice as fast, so that it's going to be a limitation with the new MacBook Air. So, as this finishes up, I want to quickly compare the pricing. Apple is still selling the previous MacBook Air for 999 dollars as a starting price.

The new MacBook Air is $1,200 and the 13-inch base model book pro comes in at $1,300, but with that said, you can get this for a much better deal on B&H it's about fifty dollars more than the MacBook Air, which makes it really enticing, but I will leave a link in the video description to our price guy. That's going to help you find the best price available for any of these models. As you see, one standout feature with the new MacBook Air is having a touch ID sensor, which I'm setting up right now. Neither the other MacBook Air nor the base model MacBook Pro, offers that, and you have to step up to the touch bar model in order to get touch ID. So that is very nice and convenient.

So now that the setup is done, let's go ahead and close this and take a quick look at the exteriors and kind of compare all three of these laptops. As you can see on the older MacBook Air, we have an abundance of ports. We have an SD card slot, a USB port and a thunderbolt port here, we're on the two new machines. All we have on this end is just a headphone jack, and thankfully we have it in there and then, if we flip it around. On the other side, both of these machines have two full-speed Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Where the previous MacBook Air, we have the MagSafe charger, we have a USB port and then the headphone jack was on this side. We also had a little LED indicator. As you can see. The new MacBook Air is much closer in design, language and styling to the MacBook Pro than the previous MacBook Air, but Apple did leave a few different things to kind of remind you that it's a MacBook Air. So the first thing is: we have this kind of wedge-shaped design where it's not just like a full slates like the MacBook Air, but it kind of tapers down and tapers over here and the next thing that I really like they included, is this little cutout here to open up the display.

It is a full cutout. Instead of being a little groove or cutout to get your finger in there, so it really kind of reminds me of the previous MacBook Air, but other than those few things. It does look a lot more like the new MacBook Pros. If you take a look at the keyboard, the speakers, the full aluminum design without the kind of plastic insert on the back on the hinge here, the trackpad is also much larger and includes forced touch and then on the back. We no longer have a glowing Apple logo now before we get into the displays, and that's definitely something that we need to talk about.

I want to do a quick overview on the size and the weight. So comparing it to the previous MacBook Air. You guys can see that this thing is quite a bit smaller and as far as the weight, the previous Mac, okay is three pounds, and this one is 2.75 pounds, but we do see a noticeable reduction in kind of volume now setting them side by side. The new MacBook Air is thinner at their thickest points here kind of like if we didn't have the display on the old MacBook Air and where the new MacBook Air ends. The thickness is about the same between both and since the older MacBook Air is larger.

It actually tapers down thinner at the very edge. Now, let's compare it to the 13-inch MacBook Pro and size-wise I'll stack them up here. They are basically identical. The new MacBook Air might be a little shorter, but I, don't think so. I really can't tell stacking them.

You could tell the MacBook. Air has the wedge shape, and it's tapers a little more down here, but the actual size is basically the same, and let's set these guys side-by-side and take a look here. It's actually very interesting. The MacBook Air is taller higher off of the desk than the MacBook Pro. So it's actually a little larger here and then, of course, it tapers down and gets thinner at the edge a little thinner, including the display than just the main body of the MacBook Pro.

So, let's open this guy up here and here we could definitely tell the difference in the wedge shape compared to kind of like the slate shape of the MacBook Pro. Now one thing I've noticed using the new MacBook Pro, since their redesign in 2016 is that without the wedge shape, and we have kind of the sharp edge here if you're typing for a while and sitting down, you kind of feel like biting into your wrists now with the slate design of the previous MacBook Air, and this new one, because that wedge, you don't really feel the edge, and it's a lot more comfortable if you're going to be sitting and typing for a while now, just standing here and kind of typing to show off the ergonomics, um I could definitely feel that the keyboard is upgraded. This is using the third-generation Butterfly keyboard. It has a silicon membrane, so we won't get any dust or any debris in there and that should reduce the risk of having keyboard problems with the new MacBook Air, like some people did have with the previous generation butterfly keys. Now, if we open up the previous MacBook Air, we have the traditional Apple chicle style keyboard, which some people have really loved.

I like it, but to be honest, I am a fan of this new third-generation butterfly keys, which, once you get used to these new force touch trackpad sits hard to go back to traditional design. Another thing you may see is that the trackpad sizes are different, so what the new MacBook Air we do have a larger size than the previous one, but it's still not as large as the MacBook Pros trackpad. So finally, let's talk about the displays the biggest complaint about the previous generation. MacBook Air was its display. It's really low in resolution.

It's a TN panel, meaning that if I just move over just a bit to the side, the off axis shift is really noticeable. The colors start getting washed out. The contrast starts getting washed out. It really does not look great, and on top of that, the color accuracy was very low and just spending a little of time right now playing with this device. It's almost like my eyes, are getting a little of a strain trying to look at it.

You see all these individual pixels now the latest base model 13-inch MacBook Pro has a p3 wide color gamut display, meaning it supports much more colors. Now I didn't think it was gonna, be that big of a difference not having that on the MacBook Air, because it is a Retina display, but now singing them side-by-side. I definitely could tell that. We have more contrast here and the display is showing us more colors like in the sky. We see a different kind of hue of blue compared to the MacBook Air.

So if you're going to be doing photo, editing, manipulating colors, you definitely want to go with the MacBook Pro. Now, that's not the only difference. We also have a difference in display brightness, so the 30-inch base model MacBook Pro, is rated at 500 nits and the new MacBook Air is rated at 300 nits. But taking a look at laptop mags analysis of the displays, they actually got a whole screen average of 439 on the MacBook Pro and 234, with the new MacBook Air. So how does that compare to the previous generation MacBook Air? They actually rated this MacBook Air at 336 over a hundred nits brighter, and if we take a look at the 12 inch, retina MacBook, that's rated at 340, so we compare apples full the latest lineup of laptops to new 2018 MacBook Air still has the worst display now with that said, if you're a casual user you'll likely be very happy with the display in this new MacBook Air, but if you're somebody that often uses your laptop outside, or you do color it grading or editing I would suggest going with the MacBook Pro now before we test out and compare the performance.

Let's talk about speakers, so the new MacBook Air is very similar to the MacBook Pro and its speaker, grilles in the speaker setup where the previous MacBook Air had speakers underneath a keyboard. So let's run a quick test and see how they compare in sound quality and loudness now, I'm, not sure what kind of difference you could hear, because it really matters depending on your device and your speakers. But let us know your thoughts in the comments section below personally. I could tell a huge difference with the new MacBook Air. Not only is it louder and has better highs, but has much better bass and kind of those low notes.

It's a noticeable difference, a huge upgrade now, comparing it to the 13-inch base model MacBook Pro the MacBook Pro is surprisingly even louder and the high notes are noticeably brighter. So if you're looking for sound performance, the MacBook Pro is definitely the winner. So now, finally, let's get into performance I'm running the latest version of Geek bench for the CPU test and I want to mention that both of these machines run 15 watt processors, where the new MacBook Air is using the newest eighth generation Intel processor, but it is a 7 watt processor. So we're going to see the performance difference, they're all dual cores with 4 threads and the results are in. If we take a look at the single core performance, the MacBook Air is much closer to the MacBook Pro.

But if we take a look at multi-core, the new MacBook Air is right smack in the middle. As far as scores between the previous MacBook Air and the 2017 13-inch base MacBook Pro, and now we have the graphics chip results using metal and the new MacBook Air has a 20% higher score than the previous MacBook Air. But the MacBook Pro has a 40% higher score than the MacBook Air. So if you're going to be doing graphics intensive tasks, the MacBook Pro is a better choice. So thank you guys for checking out our hands-on first impressions and comparison between the previous MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro.

We're going to have separate videos. They're going to go much more in depth, so if you guys want to check that out, make sure you guys subscribe. This is the max, and I'll see you and the next video. If you enjoyed this video like it and hit that subscribe, button also check out a price guide which makes it extremely easy to find the best deals and Apple products updated daily, be sure to follow us on social media, and we'll see you in the next video.

Source : AppleInsider