Replaced a pumped MacBook Pro with an old Air with an Intel processor. A week later, I don’t understand how we endured it

In the near future of 2022, I bought myself the latest MacBook Pro 16 with an M1 Pro processor at that time.

It’s for everyone but its size: best screen in class, staggering battery life, unmatched by others macbooks graphic arts. But it’s heavy and not designed for daily backpacking.

Did an experiment the other day and took over a predictive MacBook Air portfolio. What’s the catch? It came out in 2019 and runs on a frail 1.6Hz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor.. Here is an overview of the 2018 models a little older, but very similar.

At the same time, it became possible to look back at the last two years and soberly, not blurred by smooth animations of the eyes evaluate the breakthrough (or lack thereof) that Apple has made with its chips.

Below are five parameters that any laptop relies on: dimensions, performance, battery, screen and … the last point surprised to know themselves.

Let’s start with the obvious.

How small and comfortable it is! Pros are over

Working, watching movies and playing with a laptop “on your own” has become not only pleasant, but more difficult to enjoy.

Sometimes I use the laptop for its intended purpose and keep it on my lap or stomach. my proshka weighs 2 kg, which prevented him from sitting in such a position for a long time.

He begins to put pressure on everything that is possible, it is difficult to balance on his feet due to his size. You can’t sit in this position for more than an hour.

Apple relaxation making the laptop smaller, and for its balance between power and miniature, is the best solution (especially compared to its brothers on Windows), but still too far from really important.

But the MacBook Air is now considered the standard of form. Its dimensions are exactly what they should be in this class. Miniature, light, compact, mobile, thin, elegant.

It is very pleasant to hold Air while working “on yourself”

Each time you take this in your hands and remember why you fell in love with the whole company and its approach.

I’ve always been in high demand with Apple.

Before the M chips, even the 15- and 16-inch models had weak graphics, it would be strange to cut something else. But the back has worn out in three years, and the MacBook Air is almost not felt in the backpack. Thus, you can increase the number of days to walk and not bathe.

Unfortunately, the 2019 models, like all other MacBook Airs prior to the Apple Silicon era, achieved this wow effect through serious performance savings.

Why did people buy MacBook Air at Intel?

Definitely not for my set of games

The answer “to watch YouTube on the Internet” and “to write lectures at the university” will not suit me. For this, there have always been the same compact models on Windows, but twice as cheap. And there is no need for macOS features.

Before the M1 series, Air was different not only in size, but also in class and performance.

On the 2019 MacBook Air, I couldn’t do anything at all at my job normally. Perhaps the top machines spoiled me and squeezed me, there were several options for creating articles in such conditions, where the task was unbearable.

See for yourself what he worked on, and earlier what he moved to for the sake of interest:

▪︎ MSI trident 3 (2017): Intel Core i5-7400 (4 cores), 8 GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 1060 (3 GB)
▪︎ Macbook Pro 15″ (2018): Intel Core i7-8750H (6 cores), 32GB RAM, Radeon Pro 555X
▪︎ Macbook Pro 16″ (2021): Apple M1 Pro (10 cores), 16 GB RAM, M1 Pro graphics (16 cores)
▪︎ Macbook Air 13″ (2019): Intel Core i5-8210Y (2 cores), 8GB RAM, UHD Graphics 617.

That is this macbook air tech is more backward than i’ve owned in the last 6 years.

I’m sure Apple will return to the aesthetic of fine lines

It slowly opens applications and the interface is slow, the maximum number of contributions is several times less, Photoshop feels like years, which can be hundreds of years for illustrations, and the complexity can disappear.

I’m used to the fact that the MacBook Pro 16 on the M1 Pro exports photos to Lightroom in a second. MacBook Air 2019 for the same number of minutes needed, and it’s better not to do anything else at this time at all. This drastically slows down any process.

Therefore, until 2020, I avoided small MacBooks with all my might. With the exception of aesthetics, I had no time to “catch” in this segment.

Due to the large size, another important characteristic has arisen.

Hours are funny

Although the power supply from Air is incomparably more mobile

According to the test results, I got a laptop with an expected capacity of 86%. His enough for 3 hours light browsing and taking notes, which is no longer serious.

It turns out that every two minutes there are 1%. Turn on Photoshop, and the indicator will begin to melt before your eyes.

Especially when it comes with the MBP 16, one charge is enough for 10 hours with Photoshop, Lightroom, Pixelmator Pro and dozens of tabs. After a year of almost daily use with a resource of 92%.

If you remove the “sharp” design, the difference in thickness is not so big: 1.56 cm in Air and 1.68 in Pro.

Somewhere subconsciously I expected better. The MacBook Air on Intel looks exactly the same as on the M1, and with it has already developed a height that can fit a significant amount of time in a thin body. Even our tests are proven.

And fell into the same trap as other Apple products.

Physically, they look great for ten years, but technically smolder for a couple of years. Because of the battery in the first place.

But there is something from the filling that has not yet become obsolete.

I quickly got used to the screen, but there is a problem

I understand why Apple updates their displays so infrequently. The same panel has been created for five years since the release of the MacBook Air in an updated design from 2018 almost to the MacBook Air with the M1 chip.

The matrix still looks expensive, juicy and pleasant.

If there are problems with my MacBook Pro 16, the worst contrast and saturation are conspicuous. Black is more gray, not enough.

Color difference due to True Tone enabled on the laptop on the right. Bright gray stripes stand out there, which always annoy me in LEDs.

Thick bezels are screened awkwardly

In practice, this means that the mini-LED technology in the MBP 16 does a great job of hiding the gray bars on top and provides visibility while watching movies, immersing you in the session, and processing photos and videos, which allows you to correct colors to take into account a wider range of coverage.

The biggest minus I will notice a lower level of concentration. It seems to be not much different – 500 nits in MBP 2021 and 400 nits in MBA 2019 – but due to the mini-LED, even in SDR mode and when watching videos from the Internet, the picture on the new laptop looks juicier and better resembles reality.

I agree that the nitpick is weak, as they talk about a different class of devices. the locations and environments of the various screens, even the Air mini‑LED is not up to date.

But something in the Apple computer unified all its laptops a few years ago. So I met an old friend whom I had not thought of for two years.

Forgotten Butterfly. I understood those who did not love her

I delayed the transition to the MacBook Pro 16 2021 until the last moments, because the short stroke and thin profile in my past MacBook Pro 15 (2018) not just with the audience, but delighted every day. It looks chic, and the buttons are almost touch-sensitive.

I remind you that there is a scandalous “butterfly” mechanism. Innovative, but fragile, because of which it was often necessary to carry MacBooks manufactured from 2015 to 2019 ahead of time.

It is also in the 2019 MacBook Air, albeit the third generation, with a special rubber gasket. It was the last Air with this mechanism, after which Apple switched all its laptops back to scissors for almost half a year.

It turns out that compared to the new Magic Keyboard in the MacBook Pro 16 (2021), it is inconvenient. It is harder for fingers to “feel” the correct detection, the recoil is too sharp, sometimes you start to stray on this button carpets.

In the new MacBooks, the move is clear, although it is larger. Maybe it doesn’t look so futuristic, but the sharpened “scissors” are definitely comfortable.

It turns out that for three years he praised the “butterfly” in the MacBook Pro 15, because the other did not know.

Get away from Intel and don’t look back

The phrase “did not know the other” is very well suited to the owner of the MacBook Air on Intel. Compact, elegant, light and convenient typewriters for 100,000+ rubles are a thing of the past and will not return.

The experience of moving down the class (16″ vs. 13″) and architectural generation (ARM to x86) of MacBooks below felt eerie. As if a second-grader will start a hundred-meter run for an athlete’s record.

But between not 10 years, but only 2 years!

How glad I am that the era of frankly weak small laptops is over.

If the old Air on Intel compared with the new one on M2. Remove the screen with a mini-LED, and the main theses about a breakthrough in performance go away.

It is obvious that every time when I took the device to myself according to the will, taking into account the wallet, chasing technological technologies will never work.

But when the remaining owners of MacBooks on Intel switch to Apple Silicon, I will be sincerely happy for them. The satisfaction from uptime and productivity will be no less than I got from losing a step back.

📸 All photos in the article: