- Hey guys, this is Austin. My voice might be gone, but what isn't is the MacBook Air. Why does it still exist in 2017?Surprisingly Apple released a new version of theMacBook Air this week. It's a pretty minor upgrade, but for a computer that'sessentially been around unchanged since 2010,that's not bad. What's interesting about the Air is that this isactually still one of the most popularMacs that Apple sells. So while they have updated most of their other moremodern Macs, I think a lot of people look at the Airand say, yeah, that's all I need. Inside we get the Air itself. Now to be fair, this design really has not changedsince 2010, but it's still a nice looking laptop. So it's all metal and it's maybe not quite as niceas something like some of the newer MacBooks,but this is not an old, terrible piece of hardware at all. One nice thing that hasn't changed is MagSafe. So while there are a lot of advantages to going withUSB-C and Thunderbolt, there's something really niceabout having a magnetic cable that, if you say, tripand fall over your cable,And yes, I'm looking at you, Ken. (crashing)Open up the Air and you should seethat it looks very familiar. Now that's not a huge downside. So the keyboard, the track pad,and especially the build quality does feel good. And especially in 2010, this was pretty solid. But when you're buying a laptop that literally cameout today and it looks exactly the same as somethingthat came out seven years ago, you've got a problem. The first thing that jumps out to me when usingthis Air, is how bad the screen is. So while some things from 2010 holdup pretty well,that TN panel definitely does not. So it has a 13. 3-inch displaywith a 1,440 by 900 resolution. Low, but not the end of the world. However, the color, and especially with the viewing angleshere, are terrible. I mean, look at this. You can barely see it. I get it straight you can kind of see it a little bit. But it's so bad. For a thousand dollar laptop, this should be a deal breaker. So to put things in perspective, this is the LG Gram. And I'm gonna be doing a video on this soon,but this is also a thousand dollar laptop. And when you go look at the screen on thiscompared to the MacBook Air, it's not even close. Now if Apple wants to keep sellingthe MacBook Air in 2017, by all means go ahead. There are legitimate advantages to having a MacBooklike this still around. But the fact that they have not updated the screenin this many years and it looks this bad, is crazy. If this screen was on a $200 laptopI would complain about it. On a thousand dollar laptop? No. To be fair, it's not all bad with the MacBook Air. So this is the new 12-inch MacBook. Now this is kind of the successor to the Airand it is a very small and thin laptop. And when you put it side-by-side with the Air,you'll see that it is a much, much smaller laptop. It's definitely not perfect though. So this is a USB-C port. While that's a nice thing to have on a laptop,it is the only port on the 12-inch MacBook. Now that can cause some big problems when it comesto using one single port to not only charge the computerbut connect to an external monitor,connect to USB accessories, it all has to happenthrough this single port. Whereas on the 13-inch Air, that is not a problem. This guy has a mini DisplayPort that also doublesas Thunderbolt 2, a full size USB 3, SD card reader,and on the flip side, you have one more USB 3 port,as well as the MagSafe power adapter. So while the MacBook Air is not the perfect laptopit definitely is not dongle life ready. The Air has seen an update for 2017, but the upgradeis incredibly minor. So it's gone from a 1. 6 to a 1. 8 gigahertzCore i5 processor, but it still has the same eight gigabytesof memory and 128 gigs of SSD storage. What hasn't changed is the actual processors inside. So the Air's still rocking a 5th Gen Core processor,whereas pretty much all of the MacBooks and most Windowslaptops these days are on the 7th Gen. It really feels like an upgrade just to say, hey look guys,we can put the 2017 badge on it now. Take a look at performance and the Airhas definitely fallen behind. So not only is it slower than the 12-inch MacBook,which has a much lower power Core m3 processor. It's also much slower than the LG Gram, which isabout the same price, but has a much newer Core i5. To be fair, performance is not the be all, end allfor the MacBook Air. One of the other big advantages here is battery life. So with the way the 13-inch is specced with it'sfairly large battery, you should expect around 14 hourson a charge, which is really solid. The only issue is other laptops, such as the Gram,have absolutely caught up to that number. One area where the Air definitely does hold up iswith the keyboard and trackpad. So the keyboard itself actually still feels pretty decent. I slightly prefer what you get on the newer MacBooks. But I do think a lot of people like the extrakey travel. And the trackpad is good. So again, it's not quite as new and quite as niceas some of the newer Force Touch trackpads,but I still feel like this is a better trackpadthan pretty much any Windows laptop you can buy. When it comes to actually using the Air,it does feel reasonably snappy. So yes, if you look at it compared to something elseon a benchmark, it's not going to be as fast. For more basic usage like web browsing, which honestlyis probably what everyone does on MacBook Airs anyway,it does feel pretty good. The screen definitely does let it down, but besidesthat it's a pretty solid machine. The value proposition with the MacBook Airis a little bit weird. So on one hand it's $300 cheaper than any other MacBookthat you could pick up. On the other, it hasn't really been thoroughly updatedin quite a few years. It also only comes with a 128 gigabyte SSDin the base configuration. Now if this is just your Facebook machine,then sure, that can work out. But other than that, once you start upgrading itit just doesn't make any sense. The MacBook Air was a really impressive laptopwhen it came out in 2010. However, if you're buying a new laptop in 2017,it just doesn't make sense. So what do you guys think about the MacBook Air?Let me know in the comments belowand I will catch you in the next one.