MacBook Air 2018 - Is It Enough? #Helpful Post

hey guys Boston this is the 2018 MacBook

Air and for $1200 there's been a lot of

controversy about the performance of

this laptop and on top of that just

exactly what's inside this thing so of

course the question is how powerful is

it really interestingly there's only a

single processor option for the MacBook

Air this year it is a dual core Core i5

8210 why this is an eighth generation Y

series processor which does give it a

dual-core chip with hyper-threading and

the clock speeds actually aren't all

that impressive

is it 1.6 gigahertz base and a 3.6

gigahertz boost a far cry from a lot of

the quad core systems that you can often

find this price point so there's some

interesting things with this chip first

of all it has UHD 617 graphics something

I've never seen any kind of Intel chip

yet and also interestingly this is a 7

watt TDP so what that means is that most

of these white series processors are

used and things like the 12-inch MacBook

now that does not have any kind of fan

and originally I was actually told at

the Apple event that this MacBook Air is

fanless however a lot of reports have

shown this actually doesn't a fan also I

update it and heard the fan so let's

open it up and see what's actually

inside I thought we had to like clarify

that I heard a loud fan is usually a

pretty good indicator there's a fan

inside just saying take this off and

immediately we see that there is a fan

so it should be a big surprise so what's

kind of interesting about the MacBook

Air this year is that this is one of

these smallest fans I've ever seen for

cooling in a laptop now this is actually

not strictly necessary if they would

have gone for a slightly lower NY series

processor with a lower flight 5 watt TDP

for example the fan would have not have

been necessary but on the flip side that

means that you're really relying on a

lot of other issues with cooling so say

you're in a very hot environment the

actual chassis of the computer really

can't dissipate as much heat whereas

adding even a small fan like this should

make a big difference and it gives you

the added benefit of getting a couple

extra watts of TDP which will give you a

little bit more performance I will say

it is a very very clean layout so now

that we have the trackpad here but we

also have our three battery cells now

what's interesting about this battery is

that at least based on the rumors and

certainly taking a look at it seems to

sort of back that up is that unlike most

MacBook Pros that are current where you

kind of have to replace a large chunk of

the laptop to be able to get rid of the

batteries with this it looks like you

could probably swap these out pretty

easily you also see the fairly large

speakers and then we've got what is a

pretty

small motherboard and I assume that's

probably our t2 chip underneath here hey

look at that the Apple t2 chip so this

is actually very similar to some of the

SSDs that you'll find inside an iPhone

but this handles a lot of these sort of

lower end processes on the macbook

including encrypting the SSD running

your touch ID

it's got secure Enclave it's got the ISP

which runs the webcam there's a lot of

very smart things that are on the iPhone

it all run from this tiny little t2 chip

alright so with the computer put back

together let's actually see how it

performs starting out with we do have

Geekbench which is the classic all right

there we go

4301 on single core and 7725 on

multi-core it is an upgrade over the

last generation MacBook Air but it is

not a big upgrade over well much

anything else I mean sure it's decent as

a dual core we really have moved on to

quad core across the board for the most

part now except we have the Geekbench

compute test this one's kind of

interesting because this does have a

unique GPU I've never seen these 617

available now it is one of the Intel UHD

series GPU so it's probably not going to

be anything crazy but maybe a little bit

faster

maybe they added two more numbers to the

last when I tested this is 22 135 that

actually a little bit faster no to be

fair I'm running metal right now but

that's actually pretty decent so that's

a fair bit over the 615 and that's

closer to what you would find with the

for UHD 620 graphics I've got to say

we're just getting in the video and I've

already found some interesting stuff

with this MacBook let's keep going and

get into a little bit of Cinebench so

what's interesting here is I actually

think the Y series processors have been

changed this generation so not to get

too far into nerd town but traditionally

Y Series on the Intel side means it's

their very very low TDP chips which are

traditionally used in fanless designs

now obviously this is slightly higher

and it is of course using a very small

fan but instead of getting the

traditional dual-core chip with the

low-end GPU

we're getting the same low-end CPU so

obviously we need to keep that TDP low

we are getting that bigger GPU so for

context the 12-inch MacBook is $100 more

expensive and with that you get the core

m3 and that's not even really going to

be on par with what we're getting out of

this you really would need to bump up to

something closer to the core i7 to get

equivalent clock speeds and I don't

think you're going to get anywhere near

that same GPU performance

all right so 121 on single core and 250

on multi-core

that's not that impressive to be totally

honest it's fine but it's basically what

I would expect out of a wiser

like the 12-inch MacBook for example the

GPU though that's what I want to see

right now

32 yeah there we go again so with the

12-inch MacBook you're looking at a

score roughly around 25 24 something

like that so 32 is a pretty decent bump

now all of this being said this is not

an incredibly powerful laptop right I

mean this is still a MacBook Air it's

still got a dual-core processor but it's

basically especially on that GPU side

I'm pretty impressed next up let's test

the SSD performance on the MacBook Air

now I do have the base model which has a

very very tiny 128 gigs of storage kind

of not even cool at this point but well

okay that's pretty cently fast so 1917

megabytes per second on the read and 476

on the right that's pretty solid so for

context that's faster than any other one

swing a gig drive I've tested and it's

not too far off of the 13-inch MacBook

Pro with the 256 gig drive this is a

very fast SSD next step we have

something a little bit more intense a

full 4k video edit inside Final Cut Pro

10 so for reference this is a project

from the disses channel so it's almost

exactly five minutes long and it's a mix

of pro res a lot of graphics and stock

footage and it's about I don't know 70%

renders or so so let's kind of scrub

through here it's performance actually

holding up reasonably well oh and just

so you guys know I am editing off of a

samsung t3 SSD mostly because there's

not enough storage in the macbook to fit

well anything but especially not a bunch

of 4k video I mean that's not bad it's

definitely able to play it back but I'm

curious about is what the actual export

times will be so with a fully rendered

timeline of pro res 42 let's see how

long this five-minute 4k video takes to

export so settings are correct

this is h.264 alright ready set go

all right so just over 6 1/2 minutes to

render a 5 and a timeline no no you're

not going to want to spend a lot of time

editing on the MacBook Air specifically

with 4k footage but it is possible

however we have a slightly different

method for speeding things up in true

building the ultimate fashion map repair

supports full Thunderbolt 3 which means

that we can add an external GPU because

why not

so this is the gigabyte gaming box with

a full AMD rx 580 GPU inside now

recently Final Cut has received full

support for external GPUs and especially

with such a thin and light laptop like

this I'm curious to see just how well it

performs now we know we don't have any

kind of crazy scientific tests here what

I do have is well a curiosity of how far

we can actually push it so specifically

with final cut it does look like the GPU

is being used it's hard to benchmark

exactly how much of a difference it

makes

but just for some reference here this is

all playing back at higher quality and I

am running it at full 4k and an

unrendered timeline and the computer is

able to keep up reasonably well so we

were going to try fortnightly running on

the internal GP of the MacBook but I

don't want to be here all night so let's

uh get big scroungy for you going ah why

do we ever try to play fortnight on Mac

there's always such a disaster or just

waiting and crashing and just being

garbage so the new MacBook Air is a

little bit more powerful than I expected

but it is definitely did you switch did

you start loading what are you serious

it actually took 20 minutes - oh ok

alright hopefully you guys enjoyed this

video the 13-inch MacBook Air is a

little bit more powerful I expected and

you can't do some stuff with it but

don't get your hopes up like playing the

game of fortnight or anything

if you're bored though you can feel free

to check out this is where there's lots

of it is that aren't boring if you'll

excuse me

going to go be really frustrated it why

this is taking 20 minutes to load and

then logs me out