Apple unveils a brand new MacBook Air for 2020
Faster, more storage and a new starting price of £999
Apple has unveiled a new MacBook Air for 2020, which the company says will double the performance as well as seeing improvements to the keyboard and storage while still benefiting from a price cut on the previous model.
Let’s not go overboard – at £999, it’s still an expensive laptop, but it is a big improvement on the previous version that started at £1,099 on the Apple website yesterday.
Price aside, there are essentially three main improvements. The first is in its raw power, where 10th generation Intel Ice Lake processors give a welcome boost. This goes all the way up to a 1.2GHz quad-core i7 processor if you have the money for it, though the regular £999 model comes with an i3.
The second improvement is in storage space. While the previous model started with a fairly weak 128GB SSD, the 2020 MacBook Air starts with 256GB, and it can be configured up to 2TB if you have the funds.
Finally there’s improvements to the keyboard, with the 2020 MacBook Air inheriting the Magic Keyboard debuted on the 16in MacBook Pro. If you’ve not been following, this is a bigger deal than it sounds, as it means ditching the unreliable and not hugely well loved butterfly keyboard design that has been a staple of MacBooks for several years now. Now the Air benefits from the same 1mm of keyboard travel as the 16in Pro.
Elsewhere, Apple promises the 2020 MacBook Air features “advanced stereo speakers” and functionality has also been boosted with a three-mic array for improved voice capture. If you have an expensive 6K external monitor, Apple says this is the first MacBook Air to support it too.
The new 2020 MacBook Air is available to order from Apple right now, but apparently it won’t ship until 6 April at the earliest.