MacBook Air with M1 Review: Performance and User Experience

MacBook Air with M1 Review

Hi, I’m the most basic MacBook Air and will shake most older MacBooks with Intel chips. I did not put this anywhere and did not even imagine it before touching this new team with Apple Silicon M1, but the truth is that today I would not be surprised if a phrase of this style was added to its welcome screen. Here is my experience of using this equipment and everything it has given after testing it at the performance level.

No differences on an aesthetic level

The first thing you notice about the MacBook Air with M1 is that it is identical to its predecessor , an Intel model released just a few months earlier. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since this team already incorporated necessary improvements such as a renewal of the keyboard with a scissor mechanism identical to the Magic Keyboard of the iMac. Its light weight makes it extremely portable and comfortable to use in any situation, whether on a table or on your knees on the sofa, bed and even in public transport. The rest is already more subjective and it is that they already say that to taste the colors. I personally love the design of this team, probably being the most beautiful Mac for my taste, but as is evident respecting everyone who thinks otherwise in this regard.

MacBook Air 2020 M1

MacBook Air with M1 Specifications

More than ever the technical specifications of the MacBook Air are very relative. I am not going to say that they are not important, because they always are, but aspects like RAM are perhaps less important than with Intel chips, although I will explain this later. However, even as a mere curiosity, it is worth looking at the specification table of this computer.

specs MacBook Air (Late 2020)
Available colours Space gray, silver or gold
Dimensions -High: 0.41 cm closed and 1.61 cm open
-Width: 12 ”
-Depth: 21.24 cm
Weight 1.29 kg
screen 13.3-inch LED-backlit IPS panel
Resolution -1,680 x 1,050
-1,440 x 900
-1,024 x 640
Brightness 400 nits
Processor M1 chip with 7 or 8-core GPU
Internal memory 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB SSD
RAM 8GB or 16GB
Ports -3.5mm jack for audio
-Two Thunderbolt 3 – USB 4 compatible with charging, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt 3 up to 40 GB / s and USB 3.1 up to 10 GB / s
Biometric sensors Touch ID
Camera 720p HD front
Autonomy -15 hours of WiFi browsing
-18 hours of video playback
Connectivity -WiFi 802.11 ax 6th generation
-Bluetooth 5.0

Teclado MacBook Air 2020

Only 16GB of RAM, but it has an explanation

Apple surprised when it announced this MacBook with 16GB of RAM as the maximum cap. Perhaps being the ‘Air’ range, it can be sensed that its focus is on undemanding users, however the ‘Pro’ with M1 also have this maximum limitation. How is this possible? Well, despite not having an official explanation, we could understand it by looking at the precedent of the iPhone and iPad. The latter are computers with less RAM than the average Android in its price range and yet are capable of reaching higher performance figures.

The fact that this occurs in the iPhone and iPad is due to the fact that both the software and the main hardware component, the processor, have been designed by Apple itself, thinking about the equipment receiving these elements. With Macs, this same explanation could be given, since also in the tests carried out and that I will comment later I have been able to verify in first person that even with 8 GB of RAM this equipment surpasses others with Intel and up to 32 GB of RAM.

Nuevo MacBook Air M1

Why does one have 7 cores and another 8?

Basically it must be said that the manufacture of a chip like the M1 is not perfect. Such a sophisticated process on a chip of just 5 nanometers requires a high level of precision that is not always achieved. Manufacturers, in this case TSMC, design each chip with 8 cores and the reality is that even the MacBook Air that is listed as 7 cores on the Apple website have 8. What happens to that eighth then? It has simply been left inactive for reasons of preventing the slightest trace of contamination from entering it that eventually interferes with performance. For that reason in the end we end up seeing that these processors with a disabled core are sold at a lower price, although the truth is that for practical purposes it is really difficult to differentiate when a chip with 7 and 8 cores is being used.

Does not having a fan affect?

A notable difference that Apple has managed to implement on this computer, unlike the Intel, is that it does not have any fan. In its place is a heat sink that helps keep the device’s temperature at a stable level even under heavy processes. The M1 chip is able to manage resources optimally enough so that the Mac does not burn out. And this is not only on paper, but I have been able to verify it in first person. Editing and rendering 4K videos with Final Cut the computer heats up, yes, but not to the point of burning or noticing that the heating is being excessive. What’s more, even for performance purposes you don’t notice any lag in your computer, even though the system is designed to lower the clock frequency.

Native app performance

Taking into account that macOS Big Sur is the first operating system compatible with the M1 and that we have also done the test only a few weeks after launch, it was expected to find a bug in native applications. I swear that I have tested each of the applications for some unexpected shutdown or something similar. I had to defect.

MacBook Air finales 2020

All native macOS apps work seamlessly with the M1 chip. I have even been able to notice differences in aspects as trivial as it is to open the lid of the MacBook and wait for it to appear on the desktop. Comparing it to the previous generation, there is a substantial difference of about 1 second. Ok, it is not something abysmal nor is it essential to talk about the performance of a processor, but it serves as a detail of how well the software is combined with the hardware.

And the applications that have not been adapted?

As the days have gone by, new third-party applications have been added that have been optimized to work with Apple Silicon and they have done really well and also noticing improvements regarding their operation in Intel. However, at the time of writing this review there are still many applications to adapt. However, it is possible to have them doing a kind of virtualization of them thanks to Rosetta 2 .

When you open an application not optimized for M1, Rosetta 2 works in the background, emulating the x86 architecture of Intel chips. Knowing if an application is emulating this architecture or is already running in ARM is as simple as opening Activity Monitor and checking in a new column (in the CPU tab) if it says “Intel” or “Apple”.

Monitor de Actividad Apple Silicon Intel

The performance of the apps in this emulation is really difficult to explain. Apple says that it is possible that some of them may occasionally crash and although it has happened to me with some applications, when comparing load times with an Intel Mac the difference is really intermittent. Sometimes it loads the preview earlier on the M1, but then the Intel loads the full interface beforehand and finally the M1 goes more smoothly in navigation. It is really random at times. In any case and in general terms, it can be said that it is a good system to alleviate the lack of compatibility of some of them.

As an addition to Rosetta 2, it must be said that you don’t have to install it. This opens in a pop-up when an Intel application is installed and then remains continuously in the background.

Rosetta

Then there is another really interesting possibility and that is to use iPhone and iPad apps on the Mac . A filter has been added to the Mac App Store to locate third-party apps that don’t have apps on macOS. Well, these can be downloaded and opened on the Mac as if they were running on one of those devices, with dimensions not adapted to the Mac but in small windows with all the functions available. It is not optimal, but believe me if I tell you that it is more useful than you think and it is something that with Intel chips you cannot do.

Comprehensive battery and performance testing

The performance tests carried out are similar to those carried out recently on our YouTube channel. We leave you the video below, in which we also compare it with a MacBook Pro with Intel. Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Geekbench, Cinebench, and more. The results are really mixed.

Boot Camp is there, but it is not possible to use it

One of the current shortcomings of ARM chips like the M1 is that Windows cannot be installed on a partition . In this case it is a Microsoft problem, since they have not yet optimized their operating system to this architecture. However, it seems that Apple hopes that this will change in the short term, since the Boot Camp application appears in the application menu that allows this action to be carried out. However, when you try to open the application, a message appears on the screen stating that it cannot be used on this Mac.

BootCamp M1

Is it worth buying now?

Review MacBook Air M1 Apple Silicon

Yes and no. This is a MacBook that, as you’ve already seen, has plenty of power for both basic users and those who are somewhat more demanding. In the future it will be an ideal team and for which we recommend betting seriously, since it is also expected to keep its software updated for at least 5 more years. However, it is risky to play the card that this is your main work team at the moment if you use a third-party app, since there is no total assurance that it works as efficiently as in an Intel. The transition is expected to last two years, but many developers are already rushing to optimize their applications.