MacBook Air (Mid-2019)
Cheaper, littlest MacBook
Aside from the price drop, the 2019 Air now has a True Tone display
From £1,099 FROM Apple, apple.com/uk FeatuRes 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB 2,133MHz memory, 128GB storage (256GB tested), Intel UHD Graphics 617
The MacBook Air is still one of the most popular models in Apple’s laptop line-up – partly because it’s always been the cheapest way to get a portable Mac, but also because its compact size and light weight (1.25kg) make it so easy to carry around. It’s long been a favourite with students, then, with this 2019 entry-level model being £100 cheaper than last year’s.
Of course, 2018 finally saw Apple give the Air a much-needed makeover after years of neglect – in came with eighth-generation, dual-core Intel Core i5 processors, a 13.3in Retina display and Touch ID with T2 Security Chip. It also had a 20% larger trackpad than its predecessor and retained the Airs’ famously long battery life.
Other changes to the 2018 Air included the addition of Apple’s third-generation butterfly keyboard, plus two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports on the left-hand side and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the right. Build-toorder options enabled you to double the amount of RAM from 8GB to 16GB (an extra £180) and even max out the storage to 1TB (for £400) if the default 128GB and 256GB SSD options weren’t enough for you.
So what’s new? Aside from the price drop, the 2019 Air now has a True Tone display, which measures the ambient light around you and adjusts its white balance accordingly.
the light way
Being Apple’s smallest, lightest and cheapest laptop, the Air is built for more convenience than speed – use it for web surfing, emailing, making notes, playing your music library and watching movies and it performs perfectly well. However, as soon as you make more exacting demands on it, its limitations become all too evident.
In our benchmark tests, the 2019 Air scored virtually identical results to last year’s model (see p80), which isn’t surprising as there have been no major changes this time around. It scored 4,334 points in our singlecore Geekbench 4 test (contrast that with the 4,776 of the 13in MacBook Pro), and took 59 minutes to convert our 30-minute Blu-ray quality video using Handbrake.
The Air took over two hours to render our effects-laden DaVinci Resolve project (40 minutes slower than the 13in Pro) and delivered a woeful 6fps in our Rise of the Tomb Raider test at 1920x1200 resolution and the graphics quality set to High. It’s only when we dropped the gameplay settings to 800x600 resolution with the graphics quality set to Low that we achieved a passable 25fps.
Luckily, the 2019 Air’s virtues more than make up for its leisurely performance. We also like that it retains a physical Function key row instead of a Touch Bar (the only portable Mac now to do so), its dinky dimensions, build quality and the fact it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is: a light delight. ROb Mead-gReen