2020 Apple MacBook Air Laptop: Apple M1 Chip, 13” Retina Display, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD Storage, Backlit Keyboard, FaceTime HD Camera, Touch ID; Gold

Before buying the M1 MacBook Air I'd tried a Surface Laptop Go and an Asus ROG Zephyrus 14 (both returned due to issues... been seeing a lot of that recently... strange!). Working from home had seen my computing requirements change and I've spent the last 20 months using a permanently 'docked' MSI GP66 gaming laptop. Exceptional performance when plugged in but absolutely useless as a tool to support an increasing requirement to visit the actual office.Having returned the two previous portable laptops I set out once again to research my options. Led by the fact that every search for a 13"-14" laptop on Amazon returned the MacBook Air as the top result I took myself off to YouTube to learn more. I think I would be understating things if I said that every review I came across was positive. With this knowledge in mind I took the plunge and purchased the entry-level MacBook Air and prepared myself to have my expectations of what a laptop can do exceeded...Things didn't start off so well... My MacBook Air arrived with Big Sur. Initially this didn't seem like a big deal. The update popped up after initial setup and I sat back to wait. The initial download completed and then the update failed. We started again and it appeared to complete as expected but after reboot the MacBook started in recovery 'mode' and I started to fear that I might have ended up with yet another faulty device. Eventually after managing my way into the now encrypted disk and allowing some form of image recovery to take place all seemed well!There have been some other mildly frustrating behaviours observed. iMessage occasionally unexpectedly closes with a nondescript error. A few other system apps infrequently do the same. It's possible that the image recovery has left some persistent issues/errors and a reset to factory default might clean things up... a job for another time!Much has been made of the performance of the M1 silicon and it is all very fluid in the most part. The apps that tend to take a while to load on a good windows PC still take a while to load on an M1 MacBook. Office is as slow and cumbersome as ever (despite running natively on M1) but using Safari and apps direct from the App Store see exceptional performance as does the native version of Adobe Lightroom (much better performance than my 16 thread i7 + 32Gb memory + RTX 3070 Windows machine).The hardware? Well it's an Apple product so the build is the closest thing to perfect I imagine it's possible to achieve. The screen is beautiful and the keyboard... the keyboard is the best I have ever used! I've made a point of using the MacBook Air exclusively over the last 2 days and it's been a pleasure to conference via Teams, chat over Slack and hammer out long emails all day long... which brings me to the single biggest reason to buy this over absolutely anything else in this price range...Battery life is spectacular. Totally redefining. I charged the device to 100% the day it was received and closed the lid (didn't shut it down). When I returned to it the following morning to start work I was greeted with 100%. I worked away from mains power for a full day, watched some YouTube in the evening and browsed around the web before bed. Day 1: complete. The following day the pattern was repeated. Full working day and some additional light activities. Two full days of work. A little time in the evenings doing what we all do and I closed the lid at the end of the second day with 14% remaining... possibly enough for another half days work the way things have been going! It's this that defines the M1 MacBook Air. I could never go back to a different way of disconnected, portable working.

I finally decided to upgrade from my 2013 MacBook Air and I'm very impressed with the M1 2020 replacement. TBH I can't really believe how good the old one is, but the trackpad got cracked, the battery was on its last legs and the screen doesn't quite measure up to modern standards. The M1 replacement is smaller, much faster, has a much wider soundstage (you'll notice the sounds difference immediately) and the screen is a beauty - not significantly brighter but far better definition. Everything is up and running within a day on the new machine - I don't push them hard but have started using a sailing simulator that only just worked on the old Air whereas its fast and snappy on the new one (admittedly it still got uncomfortably hot with all those electrons flowing). During the transfer of files I realised again how good the old one is, but I'm pleased I know have back up as well as the benefits of more speed and power.I was thinking about this for maybe two years but couldn't justify it to myself. Then the 2022 came along and the choice got harder so I put it off. There is about £250 or 25% price differential between the 2020 and the 2022 - not a huge amount, but then the key elements like memory size, weight, battery life, screen resolution are identical. There are differences, but they didn't excite me so I decided to take the budget route and I'm happy with that decision.There are very few things on Amazon that get 4.8 star average over high volumes of sails, and the M1 2020 deserves to be up there. Most people are delighted and so am I - most complaints are over cracked screens or refurbished replacements - take care and buy new with a warranty and we should be fine. Well done Apple for another great product - and a very reasonable price (it is 20% cheaper than what I paid back in 2013!).

Got this mac to learn mac os and see what it's like as a Windows user coming from custom 32 gb gaming laptop with a 1660ti this was the same price as the m1For everyday use like browsing, HD video making, beginner music production, beginner to intermediate programming, godot game development. The 256gb and 8gb is enough. Beats my gaming laptop hands down with that in efficiency as has no crashes and some slow down but I had many programs running before the average user would struggle. however I would say when I need a more graphical power my laptop has it beatI would advise people to get 16gb of Ram instead of 512gb sdd. If you want an upgrade, 8gb is a little low not an issue as of now. However I can see the cracks when I push the air. That's were I fault apple as if I had 32gb of upgraded ram this would be a monster. However my windows laptop wouldn't hold a candle to the mac with 8gb of ram that's why I upgraded to 32.Battery life is unbelievable Im not used to battery life this long as my laptop would normally last 4 hours before it quit or 2 hours after heavy use plus the charger is easy to carry and not having a bulky power supply trust me it adds up I'm getting 7-12 hours of use out it on average. But you can get 2 days out of it if you want it in sure.Value? Meh you get what you pay for I suppose but 256gb ssd for that price should be 512 however you can get around that with external ssd and cloud storage. My windows pc has 512 m2 as standard and can upgrade to 2tb plus an ssd slot.Oh and give us some USB slots and hdmi ports, at least one on the other side!Gaming... Do even bother buying a mac for that However I've played a few games it can handle what it can run. I have 180 steam games and I can only run 35 on mac.I would highly recommend this laptop for an everyday user and would advise getting this over the m2 if your new, the base m2 has a slower ssd and when you get the 512 ssd you're looking at MacBook Pro 14 Pro territory. Which I'd recommend for a power user on the mac.Really making consider what a MacBook Pro will be like as this is awesome