WEBVTT

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Apple's MacBook Air is one of the bestselling laptops in the world and if

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anything, one of the most ubiquitous. You've seen one at a university. You've

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seen one at a coffee shop. And today, we get another new MacBook Air. This is the

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MacBook Air M4, now upgraded with, as I

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just said, M4, their latest and greatest

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chip. Look at that. There's also, if you're seeing right here, this

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sexy new color. What is this called? sky blue or something like that. Sky blue.

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Wow, that looks pretty sharp. Hey, I just need to mention here that this is

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pretty much the same color as my M3 uh

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which is Silverstone and they call it sky blue and it looks pretty much the

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same. Just saying. Just saying. In the box here, we've got uh typical Apple

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propaganda. I miss Apple stickers. I

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know that they don't do them anymore, but I think honestly that's kind of a

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crime. We've got a sleeved MagS safe to USBC cable here, which is about this

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long. And then a power brick. What is

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this 30watt USBC power adapter that

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comes by default, but if you upgrade from the base model, which is what we

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have here, you can get a 35 watt dual

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USBC power brick or a 70 watt, which is the max charging rate that this thing

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can handle. Um, but by default, you get that 30. I like this because in like

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direct light and honestly on this top down camera this the color of this thing

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looks like almost OG just Mac gray

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especially like there but then looking at it in person offaxis it looks it's

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super blue offaxis. Yeah, it really it doesn't show up well on camera but it

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genuinely is pretty blue. Now, right off the bat on the top here, this thing, as

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far as I can see, is identical to last

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generation. Uh, in terms of dimensions, in terms of weight, aside from the new

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color, you could totally fool your friends saying, "Oh, I've got the new

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MacBook Air. It's so nice." Even the M2 look the same. So, there's not so much

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of that like I need to flex on my friends factor um these days with Apple,

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which is kind of interesting. Now, speaking of being identical, the IO is

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also uh practically identical. 3.5

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millimeter headphone jack on one side, two USBC ports, and the MagSafe charging

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port. Outsidewise, man, they might as well be the same laptop. But inside,

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huh? Just kidding. It's also the same. We've got the same size trackpad, the

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same size screen, the same specs on the screen, same resolution, same

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brightness, no high refresh rate, which h man, I really thought this year was

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going to be the year, but no, we still have the same 60 Hz liquid retina

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display that's around 500 nits brightness and not the fancier screens

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from any of the MacBook Pros. No high refresh rate to be seen, unfortunately.

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Now, in terms of what is inside the insides of this laptop, that new M4 chip

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is coming with two more cores, which is pretty nice. Um, they're efficiency

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cores, so nothing too crazy in terms of performance buff, but you will seemingly

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some amount of performance increase. There must be we'll get into the Labs

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testing in a bit. And then we're also getting a bit of a RAM bump, which is

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yes and no. Apple when they launched the M3 Air had an 8 gigabyte base model

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option uh which they later discontinued so that the base model was actually 16

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gigs and didn't change the price. This new generation they're not making that

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same mistake again. The base model is 16 gigs but you can also go higher this

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time around. So instead of the max being 24 gigs on the top spec model, you can

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actually go all the way up to 32 which is a nice buff. It also technically has

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a tiny bit bigger battery. you're talking like 1Wth hour difference. Uh,

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and they don't rate the like listed battery performance any differently. And

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at least based on what I know from the M4 MacBook Pro, uh, the M4 chips tend to

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draw a tiny bit more power. So, I suspect that's probably just trying to

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compensate for that. Now, speaking of the M4 MacBook Pro, uh, compared to

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that, you're getting a lower starting storage, uh, 256 instead of 512. You're

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getting two less GPU cores at base. It's only eight instead of 10. And then

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you're also, like I mentioned before, getting a lower refresh rate, less

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bright screen. That being said, it's a fair bit cheaper. This new laptop, 100

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bucks less, $9.99 USD, which is still a

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lot of money, don't get me wrong, but we're in a different era. I was talking

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to Belle, our ShortCircuit producer, a little bit earlier. He's got an M1

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MacBook Air. I'm like, aside from the looks and a couple other things

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performance-wise, do you really desire for a new one? and he was like, "Me,

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this laptop is going to last a long time." So that $1,000 US, while it is a

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lot of money, is an investment that I actually think will have decent returns

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in the long run if you just need a laptop to do stuff. And it's it's no

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slouch. It's it's not just a spreadsheets and email machine. This

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thing can cook a little bit. Other than that, I just got to show you this. Our

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sponsor. Just kidding. It's not on the screen. Bam. It's actually right here.

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It's freaking Dbrand, baby. And look at these skins. Wow. Look at this crazy

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design. This is their X-ray line of skins, which as the name implies, they

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X-ray scanned these MacBooks. And that's what the internals kind of look like.

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It's so high-tech. You can even see the Apple logo. That's a talking point they

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gave us. So, I had to make sure that I hit it. You're welcome, Dbrand. Now, I'm

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going to try to apply this live, but uh if you are bad at this, even though

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Dbrand has some great instructional videos, it's a two for one deal. So, you

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get both the dark skin and the light version. And you can kind of decide

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which one you

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want. Look, it looks kind of like Belle's but like more cooler. See, he's

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used to being slightly less cool than me. So, get your Dbrand skin for your

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MacBook Air M4 or any other of the devices that they make skins for at the

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link down below or at shortlinus.com.

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That's a great domain. Now, the MacBook Air 13 doesn't have top firing speakers.

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So, if you are really into listening to music, you should buy

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speakers or a 15-inch MacBook Air. I

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guess that is also technically an

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option. Oh, you know what? Maybe maybe you can

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kind of say that they are kind of top firing cuz they come out of the like air

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vent thing and like bounce off the screen. They sound honestly like pretty

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damn good for not having like speaker grills here. Now, let's try the

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keyboard. I'm not expecting anything

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different since one group more. It feels

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identical. The touchpad is still great. It's still an Apple touchpad and um

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still a lot of Windows laptops need better touchpads. Is Is the camera any

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different? It looks It looks the same.

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Does it sound any different? I'm just going to say some stuff. I'm just going

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to say some stuff. I'm just going to have to say some stuff and then you're

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going to hear what it sounds like. And I suspect it's probably going to sound the

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same. And it looks pretty much the same. Uh, it looks good. On to the Labs

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testing then. Eh, now in terms of gaming

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performance, it's not going to blow your socks off in terms of performance, but

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it seems like there's depending on the game, uh, from a a frame or two to a

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couple of frames of improvement there. uh anything that's CPU dependent like

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Stellaris which is like a realtime strategy kind of top-own game uh there's

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a big improvement and that also really shows up in productivity testing. So, in

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Blender, uh, on the CPU timeline, it was like half the time, which to me didn't

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seem like it made sense, but maybe this thing doesn't over thermal throttle as

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much or something. And the GPU test, you know, 2 minutes down from 2 minutes and

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45 seconds. That's a huge improvement.

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Uh, Inbench multi-threaded scores going from 600 to 800. Singlethreaded scores

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going from 140 to 170. Photoshop,

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Premiere, good performance bumps there. And in terms of the power consumption,

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like I mentioned with the M4 MacBook Pro, it's a little bit higher. They're

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giving these things a sprinkling in just a little little bit more juice in there.

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And then for battery, interestingly, Apple doesn't say that the M4 Air is

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better on battery. They list both the M3 Air and the M4 Air as having 18 hours of

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battery life. And while the laptops we tested didn't last nearly that long, in

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the more realworld Plex video playback tests we do, both the M3 and the M4 Air

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performed about the same. So those extra CPU cores shouldn't hurt battery life

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very much. More battery life, more performance. Damn, girl. And then in

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terms of the display, it does hit the rated 500 nits brightness. We actually

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tested it around 520. So I mean, I don't know what else there is to say. It's

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faster than the last generation. It's cheaper than the last generation. It has

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more RAM than the last generation. It's got more CPU cores than the last

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generation. It has more colorways than the last generation. All you get is more

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uh except for the price, which is lower. Like I said, I don't know that if I had

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an M3 Air, I would be running to the Apple store to upgrade. I don't know if

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I would be running to the Apple store if I had an M2 Air. I don't know if I'd run

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to the Apple store if I had an M1 Air. But if you had an Intel MacBook Air or a

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Windows laptop or maybe your MacBook died, this is still excellent. It is a

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really, really freaking great laptop and at an even better price than it was

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before. It's not cheap, but if you need

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something for work, you need something that do does stuff, you should probably

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buy this. Most people I know buy MacBook Pros and they're stupid. They should

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just buy MacBook Air. It's plenty enough for most people.