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the other day i'm looking at a list of the best-selling laptops on amazon i had

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to do a double take the best selling laptop currently in

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2020 is the macbook air

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but not the new macbook air the macbook air that was released three years ago

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discontinued six months ago and originally designed

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12 years ago and come on guys i know that

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the logo is so so pretty but this thing can't possibly still be worth the

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750 dollars it's been selling for

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can it to find out we got our hands on

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the second and third best-selling laptops on amazon both acer aspire fives

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that come in at 300 and 500 respectively

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and should kick the absolute pants off

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of this relic this video is brought to you by glasswire what's going in and out

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of your network when you're connected to the internet find out with glasswire and

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see if there are any suspicious apps behaving badly on your pc or Android device offer code Linus gets you 25 off

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down below

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when the macbook air was unveiled it was revolutionary apple called it the

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world's thinnest notebook and shocked people by only including

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a single usb type a port and dropping

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the hard drive cd drive and Ethernet port scandalous

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at least it was back when the basic design of this laptop was established in

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2008 now we did get some changes to the

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i o and the screen in 2012 and while

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technically this is the 2017 model the

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only difference between it and the one from five years earlier was an update to

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Intel's 5th gen core processor so how

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well has it held up then wait hello there we've got to give apple

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credit hinge feels good it's thin but it's

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strong actually by today's standards the io is

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very favorable two type a's sd card

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reader Thunderbolt 2 and those old school apple fans will

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love this wait for it i'm tipty taffety i'm typing

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i trip over the court bam magsafe just like that

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hey magsafe is freaking cool i love it

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but wow this screen is a real blast from the

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past is that a tn panel look at that viewing angle now you see it now you

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don't you know in fairness for a cheapo laptop

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it's not bad certainly a lot thinner than the acer

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certainly a lot less flex than the acer it's the deck flex wow man there's

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almost none apple really does do some things very

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well don't they

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meanwhile in pc land this has gotten a lot better

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for like a budget pc compared to years past but

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definitely still some flex there compared to like look at that

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the keys are moving the deck ain't i guess then we should kick off the

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comparison with some reasons why buying

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the macbook air 2017 might not actually

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be a horrible idea first of all for the price the build quality is absolutely

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outstanding the all-aluminum chassis gives the air a premium feel that you

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simply don't get on a 750 laptop

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because it isn't a 750 laptop it's still

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a thousand dollar machine it's just discounted to 750 so what that means is

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it comes with some other perks compared to budget machines as well like fast

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storage even if there isn't much of it and a high quality wi-fi and bluetooth

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solution for lighter tasks then particularly if you really want macOS

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the macbook air hides its age surprisingly well while writing this

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script on the air it was shockingly hard to complain about with a track pad that

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still beats those found on our acer machines along with a keyboard that is

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quite frankly better than a modern macbook even the macbook pro 16 inch now

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there are better keyboards out there like i would rather have a surface

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laptop or a dell xps to write on but

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this one is really good and a lot cheaper than either of those machines

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what i can complain about though is the screen the first thing i noticed was the

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massive bezels and the second was the

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1440x900 resolution compared to even our

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300 laptop here it is a lot less sharp

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not to mention the mediocre colors and viewing angles by modern standards now

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the 16 by 10 aspect ratio helps it make up a little bit of ground

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but not enough to make up for the years of panel technology advancement that has

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taken place since 2013. another area that the macbook air gets

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trounced by our 300 laptop is performance

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browsing the web navigating folders launching applications

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it all lacks the snap that we got on the dual core ryzen 3 in even our 300

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machine and then gets absolutely trounced by the four core core i5 in our

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500 machine here so if you need to do anything other than writing documents in

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word or browsing facebook you'll probably wish that you had something

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more powerful than this with all of that said though

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and this has really surprised me after spending some time with these three

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laptops if it was my money given that most of what i do on my

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portable computer is word process i would probably choose the macbook air

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i know right well the thing is the aspire like look at it it looks like a

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stock image of a laptop the keyboard and track pad are so much

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worse and the air's reduced weight and

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better battery life are going to be a big deal to a lot of shoppers out there

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not just me now to be clear the 300 aspire 5 is a

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fantastic deal but depending what you're after

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so is the air so what all this means is that a video that

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started out with us laughing at apple's pathetic specs ended up turning into a

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conversation about what makes a good laptop good because if you can't nail

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the bits that you interact with the keyboard the track pad and maybe the

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touch screen nothing else matters like i'm not going

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to run out and buy a car that performs great around the track but makes my back

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hurt every time i sit in it this does leave me in a bit of a pickle

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though um i'm supposed to be having a laugh at people that buy old laptops

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because of the pretty apple logo on them but now i'm left wondering if the best

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sub thousand dollar laptop really is this old clunker from apple

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have no fear of course it's not ah thank

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you alex we have some more contenders

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which brings us to the dell inspiron 13 7000 two and one and the lenovo flex 14.

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now we actually did a sponsored video on the flex 14 a little while ago focusing

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on how AMD has been changing the budget laptop game and even though the check

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has been safely cached i can still enthusiastically recommend this thing

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especially at its current price of just five hundred and thirty dollars it fully

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deserves its spot at number four on the amazon bestsellers list and compared to

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the air it's more powerful has a way

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better screen has better i o and still

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has excellent battery life but the macbook air still does have a leg up in

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a couple of areas lenovo clearly cut some corners to get the flex under 600

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and it shows in the uh oof

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in the build quality the screen's pretty wobbly the keyboard and trackpad are

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good but not quite at the level of the mac and lenovo might have gotten the

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name for this thing from what happens when you press on the chassis also this

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pen holder is excruciatingly stupid

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which brings us then to the dell inspiron 7000 two and one at seven

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hundred and fifty dollars it is the same price as the macbook air

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but better in pretty much every possible way now one

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note by the way guys dell didn't have the exact loadout that we wanted to

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compare this thing to so this is the black edition which has an 8th gen core

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i7 processor and a 4k display with a price of a thousand dollars along with a

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sleek black paint job but the overall experience of things like the build

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quality and the keyboard are identical to the 750 version that we would

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actually recommend to compete with this so then how is it

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well once again the macbook air actually comes out ahead

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in the build quality contest but not by as much this time the

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inspiron is all aluminum has tiny bezels

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doesn't have nearly the same degree of deck flex as our flex 14. the chassis

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stiffness is an incredible but honestly given the price for the 750 model it

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stands up really well when compared to the macbook air the inspiron 7000

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trackpad does fall behind but that is

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more than made up for with its touchscreen convertibility and generally

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betterness in every possible way you get four times the storage double the

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processing course not to mention that they are several generations newer and

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the thing just feels modern opening applications or browsing

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the web it's instantaneous and i'm not concerned that it's going to be unusable

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or have support dropped in the next couple of years you also don't have to

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worry about getting one of those stupid Thunderbolt 2 dongles the inspiron has

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usb type a type c full size HDMI and an

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sd card reader the biggest thing that makes it stand out though is that when i

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compare the inspiron 7000 and the macbook air side by side there's just

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nothing that makes me really want to go back to the air

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so there we go guys we had to work a little harder than

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we thought to make our point but we got there

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please stop buying the 2017 macbook air our

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unit was manufactured in may of last year and there's a reason that it's been

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sitting on a shelf since then it's because when the 2017 macbook air

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launched it wasn't worth buying and the only apple products that actually get

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better with age are ciders

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so thanks for watching if you guys are looking for another apple related video

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to watch maybe check out our recent review of the pro display xdr kind of in

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a different price category but it's a really good video so i'd like you to go watch it there