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Save over £350 on the 2018 MacBook Air

Apple’s lovely ultrabook is 30% off

When Apple finally refreshed the MacBook Air with a Retina display and up-to-date internals last year, fans of the original ultrabook were incredibly happy… until they saw the price. 
 
That Apple premium was out in full force, and while we still loved the computer, we had to accept that in 2019 the ultrabook market is much more competitive, with the likes of the Surface Laptop 2, Asus Zenbook S and Dell XPS 13 giving it a serious run for its money.
 
But for some, the Apple way of doing things is worth paying a premium for, and if that applies to you then you may want to head to Amazon. There, you’ll find the 2018 MacBook Air selling for £839.99, a reduction of £359 off its RRP of £1,199.
 
That’s for a version with 128GB of internal storage. If you want to double that, Amazon will also give you a sizeable discount: it’s selling the 256GB model for £1,099, rather than the usual £1,399.  
 
To be clear, this isn’t the very latest version of the MacBook Air, but you might not actually care very much. The 2019 refresh was minor, even by Apple’s standards, leaving the processor and RAM untouched. Yes, it adds a True Tone display and updates the keyboard, but in every day performance it should be identical – in fact, if anything there have been reports that the SSD is a slight downgrade.  
 
I used to own a MacBook Air myself – the second-generation model, to be precise – and I was a big fan of it at the time. While I’ve not sampled the latest ones, Jon was pretty positive in his review, praising the design, Retina display and battery life. 
 
There was one big drawback: price. “Instead of delivering what MacBook Air fans desperately wanted – a laptop nearly as good as a MacBook Pro but for significantly less – what they’ve ended up with is a very good laptop that’s nearly as expensive but nowhere near as good,” he wrote. 
 
“That’s not to say the Apple MacBook Air is a bad laptop. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s slim, attractive and beautifully made and Apple has improved it in all the places that count, adding a better keyboard, a superior touchpad, faster connectivity and a Retina display. This is very much a MacBook Air for the modern Apple era.”
 
Now it’s over £350 cheaper than it was when Jon wrote those words, it comes with our solid recommendation.  
 
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