the other day i'm looking at a list of the best-selling laptops on amazon i had
to do a double take the best selling laptop currently in
2020 is the macbook air
but not the new macbook air the macbook air that was released three years ago
discontinued six months ago and originally designed
12 years ago and come on guys i know that
the logo is so so pretty but this thing can't possibly still be worth the
750 dollars it's been selling for
can it to find out we got our hands on
the second and third best-selling laptops on amazon both acer aspire fives
that come in at 300 and 500 respectively
and should kick the absolute pants off
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when the macbook air was unveiled it was revolutionary apple called it the
world's thinnest notebook and shocked people by only including
a single usb type a port and dropping
the hard drive cd drive and Ethernet port scandalous
at least it was back when the basic design of this laptop was established in
2008 now we did get some changes to the
i o and the screen in 2012 and while
technically this is the 2017 model the
only difference between it and the one from five years earlier was an update to
Intel's 5th gen core processor so how
well has it held up then wait hello there we've got to give apple
credit hinge feels good it's thin but it's
strong actually by today's standards the io is
very favorable two type a's sd card
reader Thunderbolt 2 and those old school apple fans will
love this wait for it i'm tipty taffety i'm typing
i trip over the court bam magsafe just like that
hey magsafe is freaking cool i love it
but wow this screen is a real blast from the
past is that a tn panel look at that viewing angle now you see it now you
don't you know in fairness for a cheapo laptop
it's not bad certainly a lot thinner than the acer
certainly a lot less flex than the acer it's the deck flex wow man there's
almost none apple really does do some things very
well don't they
meanwhile in pc land this has gotten a lot better
for like a budget pc compared to years past but
definitely still some flex there compared to like look at that
the keys are moving the deck ain't i guess then we should kick off the
comparison with some reasons why buying
the macbook air 2017 might not actually
be a horrible idea first of all for the price the build quality is absolutely
outstanding the all-aluminum chassis gives the air a premium feel that you
simply don't get on a 750 laptop
because it isn't a 750 laptop it's still
a thousand dollar machine it's just discounted to 750 so what that means is
it comes with some other perks compared to budget machines as well like fast
storage even if there isn't much of it and a high quality wi-fi and bluetooth
solution for lighter tasks then particularly if you really want macOS
the macbook air hides its age surprisingly well while writing this
script on the air it was shockingly hard to complain about with a track pad that
still beats those found on our acer machines along with a keyboard that is
quite frankly better than a modern macbook even the macbook pro 16 inch now
there are better keyboards out there like i would rather have a surface
laptop or a dell xps to write on but
this one is really good and a lot cheaper than either of those machines
what i can complain about though is the screen the first thing i noticed was the
massive bezels and the second was the
1440x900 resolution compared to even our
300 laptop here it is a lot less sharp
not to mention the mediocre colors and viewing angles by modern standards now
the 16 by 10 aspect ratio helps it make up a little bit of ground
but not enough to make up for the years of panel technology advancement that has
taken place since 2013. another area that the macbook air gets
trounced by our 300 laptop is performance
browsing the web navigating folders launching applications
it all lacks the snap that we got on the dual core ryzen 3 in even our 300
machine and then gets absolutely trounced by the four core core i5 in our
500 machine here so if you need to do anything other than writing documents in
word or browsing facebook you'll probably wish that you had something
more powerful than this with all of that said though
and this has really surprised me after spending some time with these three
laptops if it was my money given that most of what i do on my
portable computer is word process i would probably choose the macbook air
i know right well the thing is the aspire like look at it it looks like a
stock image of a laptop the keyboard and track pad are so much
worse and the air's reduced weight and
better battery life are going to be a big deal to a lot of shoppers out there
not just me now to be clear the 300 aspire 5 is a
fantastic deal but depending what you're after
so is the air so what all this means is that a video that
started out with us laughing at apple's pathetic specs ended up turning into a
conversation about what makes a good laptop good because if you can't nail
the bits that you interact with the keyboard the track pad and maybe the
touch screen nothing else matters like i'm not going
to run out and buy a car that performs great around the track but makes my back
hurt every time i sit in it this does leave me in a bit of a pickle
though um i'm supposed to be having a laugh at people that buy old laptops
because of the pretty apple logo on them but now i'm left wondering if the best
sub thousand dollar laptop really is this old clunker from apple
have no fear of course it's not ah thank
you alex we have some more contenders
which brings us to the dell inspiron 13 7000 two and one and the lenovo flex 14.
now we actually did a sponsored video on the flex 14 a little while ago focusing
on how AMD has been changing the budget laptop game and even though the check
has been safely cached i can still enthusiastically recommend this thing
especially at its current price of just five hundred and thirty dollars it fully
deserves its spot at number four on the amazon bestsellers list and compared to
the air it's more powerful has a way
better screen has better i o and still
has excellent battery life but the macbook air still does have a leg up in
a couple of areas lenovo clearly cut some corners to get the flex under 600
and it shows in the uh oof
in the build quality the screen's pretty wobbly the keyboard and trackpad are
good but not quite at the level of the mac and lenovo might have gotten the
name for this thing from what happens when you press on the chassis also this
pen holder is excruciatingly stupid
which brings us then to the dell inspiron 7000 two and one at seven
hundred and fifty dollars it is the same price as the macbook air
but better in pretty much every possible way now one
note by the way guys dell didn't have the exact loadout that we wanted to
compare this thing to so this is the black edition which has an 8th gen core
i7 processor and a 4k display with a price of a thousand dollars along with a
sleek black paint job but the overall experience of things like the build
quality and the keyboard are identical to the 750 version that we would
actually recommend to compete with this so then how is it
well once again the macbook air actually comes out ahead
in the build quality contest but not by as much this time the
inspiron is all aluminum has tiny bezels
doesn't have nearly the same degree of deck flex as our flex 14. the chassis
stiffness is an incredible but honestly given the price for the 750 model it
stands up really well when compared to the macbook air the inspiron 7000
trackpad does fall behind but that is
more than made up for with its touchscreen convertibility and generally
betterness in every possible way you get four times the storage double the
processing course not to mention that they are several generations newer and
the thing just feels modern opening applications or browsing
the web it's instantaneous and i'm not concerned that it's going to be unusable
or have support dropped in the next couple of years you also don't have to
worry about getting one of those stupid Thunderbolt 2 dongles the inspiron has
usb type a type c full size HDMI and an
sd card reader the biggest thing that makes it stand out though is that when i
compare the inspiron 7000 and the macbook air side by side there's just
nothing that makes me really want to go back to the air
so there we go guys we had to work a little harder than
we thought to make our point but we got there
please stop buying the 2017 macbook air our
unit was manufactured in may of last year and there's a reason that it's been
sitting on a shelf since then it's because when the 2017 macbook air
launched it wasn't worth buying and the only apple products that actually get
better with age are ciders
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so thanks for watching if you guys are looking for another apple related video
to watch maybe check out our recent review of the pro display xdr kind of in
a different price category but it's a really good video so i'd like you to go watch it there