MacBook Air
Apple’s thinnest and lightest laptop is also its cheapest, with prices starting at just £1,099. Even the step-up model costs just £1,299 – and both are £100 cheaper than they were before the Air’s latest refresh in July 2019.
Those low prices don’t mean the MacBook Air feels cheap, though, thanks to an aluminium unibody enclosure and a 13.3in LED-backlit Retina display, which has a display resolution of 2560x1600 (227ppi). New for 2019 is True Tone, which automatically adjusts the colour temperature of the display depending on the ambient light.
Inside the MacBook Air’s 1.56cm thin, 1.25kg body, you’ll find a 1.6GHz dual-core, eighth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of 2,133MHz LPDDR3 RAM (upgradeable to 16GB). The entry-level model comes with a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD), while the step-up is equipped with a 256GB SSD, although you can add up to 1TB of solid-state storage. The MacBook Air also includes Intel UHD 617 integrated graphics (although it also offers external GPU support), plus Touch ID for secure logins – and a Force Touch trackpad which can trigger different responses as you apply more pressure.
The MacBook Air is also equipped with two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports, has 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 onboard and is equipped with a 720p FaceTime camera for video chats.
One of the most compelling reasons to buy a MacBook Air is its legendarily long battery life, with Apple quoting a maximum runtime of up to 13 hours when watching an iTunes movie, or 12 hours of wireless web surfing, thanks to its 49.9Whr battery. Like all Mac laptops, the MacBook Air also comes with Apple’s third-generation butterfly keyboard, with backlit keys that help you see what you’re typing in low light. It also comes with decent-sounding stereo speakers (given the laptop’s tiny size) and a 3.5mm headphone jack for when you want to listen in private.
The MacBook Air, then, is a perfectly portable lightweight Mac – ideal for studying, everyday computing and entertainment. If you need more power on the go, though, we suggest you plump for the more capable, but more expensive, MacBook Pro instead.