The border around the display is now 50 percent thinner, with the actual enclosure being even skinnier. Just as important as the screen quality, the loss of the Air's signature bezels makes for a striking change. In situations like this, too, a higher brightness ceiling comes in handy it can help offset annoying screen reflections. I would add that the panel's glossy finish means you might have to play with the screen angle a bit to avoid glare, depending on the ambient light, but fortunately the color fidelity stays strong even if you dip the lid a bit. The difference is obvious in a side-by-side comparison, but even when I was sitting with just the Air, my sense was that the display was good enough but hardly the most brilliant screen I'd ever seen. As other reviewers have noted, the panel doesn't get as bright as the MacBook Pro's.
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I decided to watch Crazy Rich Asians, a movie with some very colorful sets indeed, and I thought it looked fine. The panel does movies justice too, as you might expect. I didn't mind staring at it for hours on end during long workdays, when I sometimes feel like I live in spreadsheets. In any case, for my purposes, the screen served me well. After years of reviewing various Macs, though, I really believe you won't miss these features until you do a side-by-side comparison, and even then you might be able to do without. That's one thing you'll get if you pay extra for a MacBook Pro: support for the professional-grade P3 color spectrum, along with Apple's auto-adjusting True Tone technology. If you've been holding off on upgrading from an older Air, you're in for a treat: The 13.3-inch, 2,560 x 1,600 panel here is brighter, sharper and more vibrant than the more washed-out 1,440 x 900 display it replaces.Įagle eyes will note that this is the same display tech used on the 12-inch MacBook, with the same color gamut: the common sRGB spec. What all of these similar-looking Macs have in common, though, is a Retina display. A headphone jack sits on the right edge, with speaker grilles flanking the keyboard. Also like the Pro, it has two USB-C-shaped Thunderbolt 3 ports on the user's left-hand side, either of which can be used for charging.
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Like the Pro, the Air has a Touch ID sensor in the upper right corner of the keyboard that doubles as the machine's power button. It shares DNA with the MacBook Pro, both above and under the hood (read: it has an actual cooling fan). I've also been relieved to find that it takes up less space in my commuter bag and weighs less heavily on my shoulder, too.īut, as my colleague Aaron has already argued, the Air is more than just an upsized MacBook. In my week with it, I've found it easier to carry one-handed between conference rooms in the office. That said, the new Air is noticeably thinner and lighter than its predecessor.
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The Air isn't as small or as light as the 12-inch MacBook, whose main selling point is that it's a featherweight two pounds. As it is, I feel chagrined at having already sullied a brand-new machine. If this were a machine I had bought for myself with my own money, I'd be pissed. I slid the machine across the table and - crrrrrrrrick - just like that, my Air had a scratch on the bottom. Three days after unboxing it, I set it down atop a table that, unbeknownst to me, had the tiniest of crumbs on it. Unfortunately, the Air is as scratch-prone as every other MacBook.
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It's also thinner: 0.61 inch this time, versus 0.68 inch on the last-gen model. All told, this new machine has a 17 percent smaller footprint than the one it replaces, and it is modestly lighter, at 2.75 pounds (down from 2.96).
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The Air shares a design language with the 12-inch MacBook and 13-inch MacBook Pro and falls in between them on the size-and-weight scale. I've already written about the MacBook Air's hardware twice - first in my hands-on piece the day the machine was unveiled and again in my preview earlier this week - so I'll keep my remarks here brief.