Apple MacBook Air 2020 Core i5 Review – The best MacBook you can get? – No

[Redaktion]

The new 2020 MacBook Air is better thanks to an improved keyboard as well as more powerful CPUs. Many reviews even say it is the best MacBook you can get right now. If you have a closer look, however, you will still see the big problem with the performance and the cooling solution. Apple definitely missed an opportunity here.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2020-Core-i5-Review-The-best-MacBook-you-can-get-No.460229.0.html

[william blake]

a new standard for the damn laptop industry
30w total consumption=45 decibel noise
look like impossible task for the engineers, but they did it!!!

[Jeff K]

Curious about the i3 and how the lower TDP performance is sustained over a long period of time. Because the i5 is so limited by the cooling system, wondering if is it worth the upgrade over the i3?

[RicoVIking9000]

Curious about the i3 and how the lower TDP performance is sustained over a long period of time. Because the i5 is so limited by the cooling system, wondering if is it worth the upgrade over the i3?

Quad core, so the system performance will be better, and long term workload will be better, but from other reviews, it seems that even the i3 get stuck at 99C. So yeah hopefully notebookcheck reviews it soon

[Jeff K]

Any idea why the Rocket League FPS results are worse than the 2018 Air?

[william blake]

Quad core, so the system performance will be better, and long term workload will be better, but from other reviews, it seems that even the i3 get stuck at 99C. So yeah hopefully notebookcheck reviews it soon

another cpu, new review? no thank you, too much attention to one laptop model.

[S.Yu]

The cleanliness of Apple's internals impress me time and again, people could copy the exterior, but never the interiors.
But the inclusion of a single fan without a heat pipe to the SoC is simply baffling.

[RicoVIking9000]

Any idea why the Rocket League FPS results are worse than the 2018 Air?

Quad core with almost the same cooling system = more heat =  more throttling

Quad core, so the system performance will be better, and long term workload will be better, but from other reviews, it seems that even the i3 get stuck at 99C. So yeah hopefully notebookcheck reviews it soon

another cpu, new review? no thank you, too much attention to one laptop model.

Then I guess you don't pay attention to Notebookcheck doing this for numerous other laptops from HP, Lenovo, Dell, and so on, along with this article saying "We will try to review the two alternative processors as soon as possible." right under the R15 results

[william blake]

Then I guess you don't pay attention to Notebookcheck doing this for numerous other laptops from HP, Lenovo, Dell, and so on, along with this article saying "We will try to review the two alternative processors as soon as possible." right under the R15 results

it should not be a priority. new models first, free time between them-do whatever yo want.

[LL]

Well i guess i'll never understand how Notebookcheck arrives to overall value.

[william blake]

Well i guess i'll never understand how Notebookcheck arrives to overall value.

welcome to the club

[Klaus Hinum]

We plan on testing the i3 version next, hopefully the unit from a shop arrives next week.

Well i guess i'll never understand how Notebookcheck arrives to overall value.

The rating is a combination of all our measurements and specs, we don't publish the exact composition as some manufacturers would optimize their laptops to get higher ratings. In the case of the MBAir its rather clear, very good shell, screen, battery runtime, heat and idle noise. Performanc is not that important in our subnotebook category.

[John C]

Curious about the i3 and how the lower TDP performance is sustained over a long period of time. Because the i5 is so limited by the cooling system, wondering if is it worth the upgrade over the i3?

Quad core, so the system performance will be better, and long term workload will be better, but from other reviews, it seems that even the i3 get stuck at 99C. So yeah hopefully notebookcheck reviews it soon

He wasn't asking if it was quad core, everyone knows that... he was asking about the performance given the cooling limitations when comparing i3 vs i5. I too am curious about that.

[John C]

Any idea why the Rocket League FPS results are worse than the 2018 Air?

Maybe because of thermal throttling? Sounds like 2020's model gets hotter than 2018/2019, so even with a better chip it performs worse in certain scenarios w the GPU? I really hope this isn't the case and that it can be explored further.

[Mark P]

The cleanliness of Apple's internals impress me time and again, people could copy the exterior, but never the interiors.
But the inclusion of a single fan without a heat pipe to the SoC is simply baffling.

There are a lot of baffling things about the cooling choices of Apple laptops these days, including the long threads about the MacBook Pro 16. I understand when there is a huge range of Windows machines by manufacturers such as Lenovo that it gets difficult to engineer solutions for so many different chassis and combinations of CPU/GPU. But Apple does not have this excuse - the chassis stay the same for years at a time. Thermals should actually improve over time - but they don't.

Is this Intel's fault for not giving OEMs sufficient data in the lead-up to release? Will this no longer be a problem when passively cooled Apple-designed ARM chips take over in the Air? I hope so.