I've picked this up for 1300aud (787eur) on sale, for this price, there were no windows equivalent with such a high res display, amazing keyboard/trackpad, ram (lpddr4x) and great build quality with a very slim chassis. The i3 is good enough tbh, I'm a systems administrator and it can handle web portals with 10 tabs on safari + RDP sessions just fine. If you're doing office/coding/systems admin work, this is a great device.

I still think that an i5 processor and 16gb of ram is a way of getting a few more years out of this model. I think the ram upgrade is more important than larger SSD drive, 256 should be okay.

One current known limitation in an era of Pandemic Zoom meetings - the slower i3 processor cant handle Zoom Backgrounds. I feel more of these i3 software limitations will present themselves over the next few years.

Well, I dont need very high preformance from my laptop and this MBA should probably suit my needs pretty well.

The question is whether it will be work in, lets say, a 3 years time. Will it start to feel dated and slow down things? I have used MBPs and they have worked fine for me also after 3-5 years.

I buy MBA 2020 i3 256 gb confirming everything is normal, no overheating, no fast ventilation. This Mac is amazing by the display, the keyboard and the quality of made. Of course Madmax (I remember in 2005 with my IBM Thinkpad T43 plenty of guys post tests where they ride over it with a truck or expanding hot coffee on the keyboard) of stress test and other guys who need to push this machine over limits, must pass away and do that with PC or MB pro. I had many PC and Mac before and I assure this MacBook Air is efficient and stay cool machine for normal use.

Having used the i3 variant of the MacBook Air for over 4 weeks I am satisfied that I have this over the i5 which from your review and several others does not offer much more (except when doing video encoding which I rarely do - prefer an iMac for that). Also you cannot take into account only the i3 part of the laptop which many reviewers do and mostly all say get the i5 (for 'only' $100 more). For most people who want MacOS and only do the 'basics' the i3 version is perfect. I have found little lag in everything I have done, including photo editing and drawing using ArtStudio Pro. The only issue I have (and you didn't mention) is that using Sidecar for more than 5 minutes or so with my iPad Pro 11 causes the fan to come on as the laptop gets hot. My daughter's Surface Pro 7 (i5) gets hotter to the touch very quickly and I have found that most Windows laptops get very hot too, so its not just a MacBook issue. The other important aspect is that I have used a Windows computer ever since Windows 3 and now prefer MacOS in my retirement.

Hello, thanks for the review. I'm very interested in MBP 13 2020 (base model or higher end model) review, especially thermals wise. I suspect the base model is of a much better value compared to a higher end as it looked like CPU/GPU are throttled a lot. Will you make a review of these, when should we expect that?

Thank you!

Quote from: mcjw on May 15, 2020, 04:58:57
So is the peak/sustained performance of this new crippled i3 similar to the m3/m5 in the old, passive cooled 12" MacBook?

Sustained CB15 scores are about 20 % higher compared to previous MBA and about 35 % higher compared to the latest MB12 tested. 20 % is not a bad improvement between generations given they have the same core count. The difference between the old MBA and MB12 really comes down to the passive cooling as the MB12 had to periodically reduce frequency to cool down. They were clearly continuing to push more than the MB12 could handle while the MBA was allowed to settle.

So is the peak/sustained performance of this new crippled i3 similar to the m3/m5 in the old, passive cooled 12" MacBook?

Instead of giving quad-core processor on base model, they invent "wireless" cooling solution to this MacBook

i agree with you guys, i3 version looks like a pretty expensive typing and youtubing device, no working or gaming, but at least it makes sense.
sad thing for apple users-ice lake and new hardware platform brought literally nothing.
apple says "macbook air. light. speed" tho. what speed? i just saw ryzen+geforce in asus zenbook, there is speed. same weight btw, even lighter.