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Apple MacBook Air 13 (M1, 2020) Laptop Review
The Apple MacBook Air 13 (M1, 2020) is a laptop that features Apple's M1 SoC (System-on-Chip). It's very easy to carry around due to its compact size, and its battery easily lasts through a typical 8-hour workday. It has a good keyboard, an excellent touchpad, and a great webcam for video calls. It doesn't get overly hot, and it remains completely silent under load due to its fanless design. It can handle light workloads and even some heavy ones, but it does throttle due to thermal limitations, and its integrated GPU struggles in graphically intensive tasks. Unfortunately, there are only two USB-C ports, so you'll likely need to carry adapters.
There are two models of the Apple MacBook Air; they mainly differ in graphical performance. Our unit has the 7-core GPU M1 SoC, and you can upgrade to a model with 8 cores if you need more GPU processing power. Both variants start with 8GB of shared memory, which should be enough for most people. However, we recommend that people working with many browser tabs open simultaneously or running memory-intensive applications opt for 16GB. The storage is also configurable, from 256GB to 2TB.
The Apple MacBook Air is great for students. It's a thin and light laptop that's easy to carry around, with a battery that lasts through an entire day of light productivity. It has a good keyboard, an excellent touchpad, and a bright, sharp screen. Its M1 SoC is powerful enough to handle most student workloads, and it's completely silent thanks to its fanless design. It only has two USB-C ports, though, so you'll likely need to carry dongles.
- Exceptional build quality with a full aluminum body.
- Compact and lightweight.
- Battery can last through a full 8-hour day for light productivity.
- Keyboard feels good to type on and is easy to adapt to.
- Large and responsive touchpad.
- Only two USB-C ports.