Solid review. Be sure to watch the video towards the top of the post, Lauren Goode comparing the 2016 MacBook to the MacBook Air. Lauren is back to her “twinning” tricks. Keep your eye on the version of Lauren not speaking. Very entertaining.
One recurring point:
You can buy a more powerful, 13-inch MacBook Air with a 2.2ghz dual-core Intel Core i7 and TurboBoost up to 3.2ghz for $1,149 — less than the starting price of the MacBook.
As to battery life:
The new MacBook is said to have one more hour of battery life than last year’s MacBook. In an official Verge test, which involves turning off all power-saving settings, setting the display to around 65 percent brightness, and running a loop of web pages, the new MacBook lasted me exactly 10 hours.
While this is much better than my three-and-a-half-year-old MacBook Pro, it’s still not as impressive as the battery life on a 13-inch MacBook Air.
And you’ll likely end up spending a bit more for adapters, since the MacBook only comes with a single port. The price of thin and, if it’s your thing, the price of pink.
And retina. Surely that deserves a mention.
Like the last twin review, I didn’t hear/process any of the words. I get totally lost in how well she performs against herself.
That was a fun review for otherwise very boring update.
It is worth noting that MacBook costs only $100 more than either 11- or 13-inch MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and same flash storage capacity.
As for the devices themselves, 2016 MacBook has essentially closed the performance gap. So it mostly boils down to awesome portability vs. very good portability, single port vs. several ports, and IPS retina display vs. TN non-retina display.
Of course the Air has better battery life it doesn’t have a Retina display!
Logged in just to say that. It’s 2016 and my eyes are already used to Retina. Looking at a MacBook Air display irritates me a lot.
Good back-and-forth, satirizing the tendency of way too many people who belittle anyone else’s use-case or personal taste.