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
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!!!
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?
Quote from: Jeff K on April 09, 2020, 14:18:02
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
Any idea why the Rocket League FPS results are worse than the 2018 Air?
Quote
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.
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.
Quote from: Jeff K on April 09, 2020, 15:35:02
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
Quote from: william blake on April 09, 2020, 15:39:49
Quote
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
Quote from: RicoVIking9000 on April 09, 2020, 18:45:52
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.
Well i guess i'll never understand how Notebookcheck arrives to overall value.
Quote from: LL on April 09, 2020, 22:57:41
Well i guess i'll never understand how Notebookcheck arrives to overall value.
welcome to the club
We plan on testing the i3 version next, hopefully the unit from a shop arrives next week.
Quote from: LL on April 09, 2020, 22:57:41
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.
Quote from: RicoVIking9000 on April 09, 2020, 14:46:31
Quote from: Jeff K on April 09, 2020, 14:18:02
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.
Quote from: Jeff K on April 09, 2020, 15:35:02
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.
Quote from: S.Yu on April 09, 2020, 18:26:37
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.
Quote from: Mark P on April 10, 2020, 19:03:37
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.
Even then it's still not a valid excuse, especially for the 16" inch version where every one already knows how much power intel 14nm would use.
It's not even for the 13" mba. You could handle the old 28w 4c8t 14nm in 13" mbpr before, but now you could not handle 10nm Y series?
Yes, heat is more concentrated when you shrink the lithography, but checkout how zen 2 with 7nm is handled well in Asus G14. They are all brand new products that didn't exists before, and Asus nailed it while Apple didn't, that's all. You may argue that it's a lot of heatpipes in G14 and mba are supposed to be light machine so they can't really play similar tricks, but I would say enough of this endless thin and light game. No one really benefits from that extra 200 grams you save, except Apple, who could advertise them and attract more people that don't really know what they need. Someone have to stop this. Besides, G14 is not heavy, even light, if you consider how much power is packed into it.
Quote from: Mark P on April 10, 2020, 19:03:37
Quote from: S.Yu on April 09, 2020, 18:26:37
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.
Of course, you reminded me that Apple is soon transitioning to "Mac on ARM", by then all thermal issues would certainly be resolved. There's no valid reason for A series chips to throttle more in a laptop than in iPP.
Cooling solution in this computer is ridiculous. Dell 9300 can have regular heatsink.
Man, what happened to Apple?
They have PWM on most (all current?) of their notebook displays and on the flagship OLED iphones.
They were supposed to set the display benchmark.
Any update on the i3 / i7 version benchmarks mentioned in the article? When can we expect those?
I'm wondering what's the difference in real-life usage, especially the i3 variant. Perhaps the better thermals help more?
Also, I wanted to mention that I absolutely love your objective reviews. All other review sites just link to Geekbench scores that inflate the everyday performance a lot.
I'm looking for a new Macbook without PWM. I'm looking at the "Pro 13 2019 i5 4TB3". Would there be a way for me to check if my display matches the one tested by NotebookCheck, "APPA03E".
Also, the display seems to be the same as in the "Pro 13 2018 (Touch Bar, i5)". But, in your review for that, you guys detected PWM. Just curious what might be the reason for the different results.
Thanks.