and it is a very very good laptop.

Is it enough to make you switch from Windows?

Maybe not, but it is in my opinion

the best Mac they've made in years.

For a very very long time, when someone would ask me

which premium laptop they should buy,

the MacBook Air was the default answer for me.

And the reason this became the default

is actually really straightforward.

Apple absolutely killed it

with this second generation MacBook design.

Not only was the actual design itself

incredibly thin and light but it really nailed

the fundamentals of a laptop.

So the build quality, top-notch.

Battery life was some of the best

on any laptop you could get.

Keyboard was good, Trackpad was world class,

performance was decent, the SSDs were snappy.

I mean really even here in 2020,

this old MacBook Air really only falls flat

on the screen side and well it's a little slow now

but it's really not that bad especially considering

this is seven years old now.

So when Apple finally decided to put the old MacBook Air

out to pasture and instead replace it

with an all-new model in late 2018,

it was a big step forward,

but this laptop still has its fair share of issues.

So there's a lot of things I really like here.

The Retina display is an absolutely massive leap

over the last generation MacBook Air,

Retina, 2560 by 1600, 16:10, I mean there's a lot

that's good with this display.

Some of the things though, not so hot.

I will say given the fact that most Windows laptops

have definitely switched to touchscreens at this point,

that the lack of a touchscreen feels a little bit odd

on the MacBook Air these days, although to be fair

Apple's pretty much making the iPad Pro a computer now,

so I guess that's kind of irrelevant.

But there are actually some legitimate criticisms

of this 2018 MacBook Air.

First and foremost, the butterfly keyboard.

So I will freely admit that I am in the camp

that I actually don't think the butterfly keyboard

was that bad.

While yes, there's not a lot of travel,

and while yes, it was absolutely plagued

with many many reliability issues.

But for me, it wasn't the worst keyboard in the world.

Something that actually did bother me a lot more

than that however, was the performance.

This MacBook Air was, I don't wanna say slow

because it certainly wasn't,

but it was a little bit pokey, right,

you only had a single dual-core processor as low-wattage,

it just didn't give me a lot of confidence

in the performance.

But it was of course a very expensive laptop.

Which brings us to this, the 2020 MacBook Air

which claims to solve pretty much all of those

major downsides of the last gen model.

Here we go.

All right, so we have the MacBook Air.

Of course it only comes in 13-inch size.

I know that they used to sell the 11,

and that was always my favorite.

But I feel like the 13 is probably the better option

for most people.

So physically, especially on the outside,

this is basically completely identical

to the last generation model.

But, it smells fresh.

Oh, I forgot, the new MacBook is always

just immediately turn on the second you open the lid.

Wait, here comes the real test.

Oh, that's like a real keyboard.

So this does take advantage of the magic keyboard,

something we'll take a look at a little bit later.

But it's pretty much the same as on the 16 inch MacBook.

Feel like I haven't done like a legit unboxing

of a Mac in a long time.

You still get Apple stickers, right.

- [Ken] Yeah, you literally just dropped them.

- Where?

Oh, okay, you know put this

on your Samsung Galaxy S20 ultra.

- [Ken] Wait, they're silver.

- Oh, see, we would have completely missed this.

Normally, I just skip by the unboxing 'cause who cares.

We get Silver Apple stickers.

- [Voiceover] It's a built-in screen reader

called Voiceover.

If you know how to use Voiceover, press Command--

- Then we do still have the same

tiny 30 watt USB-C power adapter

as well as our USB-C cable.

Now of course, it should be no surprise

that this MacBook has exactly two ports.

Pair of Thunderbolt based USB-C port

or Thunderbolt 3 based USB-C ports.

We do still have the headphone jack but hardware-wise,

the MacBook Air is not really all that different

besides that sweet keyboard.

Isn't that cool?

Josh can you like when I do that,

can you like play a harp sound

like Mighty Car Mods.

(harp music)

Probably the most noticeable change with a 2020 MacBook Air

is the return of the magic keyboard.

Although return is not quite accurate,

and as you can see here,

I have all three of the most recent MacBook Airs.

The 2020 model with the magic keyboard,

the 2018 model with the butterfly switch

as well as the older school MacBook Air

with the much-loved old school keyboard.

What did they call the old one?

They just call it the keyboard.

- [Ken] Yeah, no, there was no name for them.

- I don't think they had a name for it.

Okay, cool, good, I'm not crazy (laughs).

So it's the original keyboard.

Yeah man, this thing absolutely holds up.

So it has just sort of good key travel, good feel,

that thing is solid.

I mean, I'm definitely biased here.

This one still feels okay to me

but again I never really mind these keys that much.

However, this is gonna be the real test.

I like this a lot.

You know what, I actually think I like

the 2020 MacBook Air keyboard most.

The magic keyboard feels good,

it feels like a nice blend honestly

of the old-school MacBook Air keyboard

and the butterfly switch.

It's kind of in the middle,

it's certainly a lot closer to the old school.

But you know what, let me give them a big thumbs up here.

This feels a lot better, I think everyone can agree,

even me was a little bit biased than the 2018 MacBook Air.

Yeah, I mean just, it's so much more travel.

And of course you have to keep in mind

that the 2020 MacBook Air does have Touch ID,

you also have the inverted T layout,

really, I think two things that most people appreciate.

And what you don't have is a touch bar.

I again, I think I'm a little bit biased here

'cause I don't really mind the touch bar

but I do feel like most people will prefer

the full-size Escape key and everything

being sort of as you remember it.

Especially if you're upgrading from an older MacBook Air,

this should feel right at home.

So when it comes to the webcam on the MacBook Air,

it is fine, I don't think anyone would consider this

to be high quality but it's good enough for a video call.

But what they have improved this year

are the actual microphones.

So the MacBook Air has three microphones built in.

And as you can hear, well, it might not sound amazing,

and actually is pretty significantly better

than most laptops.

I mean quite as good as the 16 inch MacBook Pro

but they're definitely doing some really good work here

on the audio front.

Speaking of audio, according to Apple,

these speakers are not only 25% louder

but deliver double the bass.

- [Austin] I'm Austin.

- [Myke] I'm Myke.

- [Austin] We are the Test Drivers.

- [Myke] And we put tech through its paces.

- [Austin] Myke, today I really wanna find out

if you ended up joining the Z Flip gang.

But first, we have a Test Drivers bonus exclusive

on the Xbox Series X.

- You know what, that's actually really impressive.

So while again, you can't really compare this

to something like the 16 inch MacBook

which obviously has much larger speakers,

but for a 13 inch laptop, this is about as good

as I've ever heard.

That's really impressive.

- [Ken] Are you gonna be covering the new MacBook Air

on the Test Drivers?

- Well, yes, yes I am.

If you'd like to follow the Test Drivers,

you can find it everywhere,

your ears can listen to beautiful podcast music.

- [Ken] On the radio?

- No, you can't listen to the Test Drivers on the radio.

We pop open the MacBook Air, we'll see,

this looks exactly like last year.

I mean, I'm not entirely sure what I expected (laughs).

So we do have our three battery cells,

the Trackpad which honestly takes up

a huge amount of space underneath here,

the two speakers which also are fairly large

and it does have a fan. So I know there are a lot of rumors

when the MacBook Air was refreshed, that it would be fanless.

However, it does have a fairly small fan

because it does have I believe a seven watt chip.

Yeah, there we go.

So we also have under this tiny little flap

the Apple T2 chip.

Now that actually does a lot,

so not only does it run like Touch ID

but it handles the SSD, it handles your audio.

And it also can actually help out the processor.

So this T2 chip can do things like offload,

like video processing specifically with like H.265,

this is a nice little setup,

very simple though, very simple.

Apple's really put all the main components like right here.

The rest is just like a fan and battery and speakers.

So the MacBook Air here has always been a battery life champ

but something that's kind of interesting

is that well yes it's still rated for the same

like roughly 11 hours of use,

it almost seems like they could have gone

a little bit bigger on the batteries.

So you can see there's a little bit of dead space here,

there's a little bit of dead space down here

especially when you pull up a little flap

which there's no actual battery in.

The same thing here and here.

I almost wonder, if maybe they just sort of hit

their battery life goals and they're not really pushing,

but it does seem like there's at least a little bit

of empty space that Apple could have extended

the size of the batteries a bit.

I guess they're just that confident.

I'm gonna put our T2 chip little thing back in place

before it catches on fire.

So after running some benchmarks

and spending a little bit of time

with this 2020 MacBook Air,

it's actually a pretty major upgrade.

So there's a couple of things to consider.

First of all, we're going up to 10th generation

Core processors which have obviously brought

a major wave of performance across the board

but especially when you compare this to the 2018 model,

it's not even close.

Do keep in mind I am taking advantage of the Core i5 model,

this is the quad core.