Should You Buy a $500 MacBook Air? #Helpful Post

ey guys this is Austin this is a

MacBook Air you may have seen our video

last year where we took a look at why

Apple is still selling this laptop in

2017 and of course they're still selling

at an Apple stores today but my question

is does it actually make sense to pick

up a used model so this is the 2014 11

inch MacBook Air and fun fact this is

actually the exact laptop that reviewed

almost five years ago thankfully video

quality has improved a lot since then

the good thing is the design actually

doesn't feel all that out-of-date so

you're still getting the solid aluminum

chassis which feels good even by today's

standards and you have to remember the

MacBook Air was kind of the first

Ultrabook so even though it might not be

quite as thin as something like the

12-inch MacBook it's still going to be

much thinner than the vast majority of

laptops out there again

it's like $500 on eBay right now so

where you can really tell the MacBook

Airs

age is with the display so the 11 inch

air is rocking a 1366 by 768 panel

definitely not Retina quality and it's

really not great even on a small display

like this the bigger issue though is

that it's going to be a low quality TN

panel color is not going to be great

there's very little contrast and the

viewing angles leave a lot to be desired

honestly it kind of feels like a budget

to maybe 300 on a laptop that you buy

today now don't get me wrong it's not

exactly going to be a deal-breaker but

when you're picking up a MacBook Air in

2018 the low quality screen is

definitely something that you're going

to notice thankfully though something

that hasn't really aged to much are the

rest of the inputs the keyboard is still

better than stuff like the 12-inch

MacBook in my opinion it's got good

spacing it's still going to be backlit

and the trackpad is also better than

most Windows laptops even today so the

only real difference between this and a

newer MacBook trackpad is going to be

that you actually can't click on the

front as opposed to the forced touch

that you get on the new MacBook Pros and

the idea that's just going to be a

little bit smaller

besides that you're getting every little

bit of the functionality and every bit

of the smoothness that you would expect

from a Mac go take a look at the specs

it's actually not going to be all that

much out of date so this is going to be

powered by a fourth-generation hazle

processor most of the mac books had Core

i5

although I did off to upgrade this one

to the i7 mostly because I actually used

to do video editing on this but for the

most part the performance is really not

going to be too far off a modern laptop

and more

normal less super depending tasks like

um don't try to game on your MacBook

gear or don't try to do 8k hgr raw

editing on it but besides that for

normal stuff it doesn't really feel that

much slower one thing you should keep in

mind is that a lot of these MacBook Airs

only had four gigs of RAM it's going to

be usable but if you're able to find a

model with eight gigs out of the box

it's going to make things a lot better

something that I did not do to my

macbook air when I ordered it back in

2014 is upgrade the SSD this guy only

has a hundred and twenty eight gigs of

storage now to be fair it is going to be

a PCIe SSD and it's actually going to be

faster than a lot of SATA drives for any

say the drive that you find today but

with only 128 gigs of storage

you better have lots of external hard

drives around if you want to do anything

serious now believe it or not I actually

used to edit pretty much all of my

videos when I was on the go on the

MacBook Air but things have definitely

changed since then

so instead of shooting on a DSLR at

1080p with a fairly low bit rate instead

now we shoot everything in 4k

we're shooting primarily in ProRes and

it's going to require a lot more data

and a lot more processing power to work

with however I actually switched over to

Final Cut since then which is fairly

well optimized and because we shootin

pro res I think the MacBook Air might

actually stand a decent chance of being

able to edit although it might also

horribly crash and burn so they give you

an idea of what we're working with here

this is pretty much all going to be 4k

pro res so some of it was shot on a red

and some of it was shot on sony fs7

but for the most part it's going to be

fairly straightforward and the good

thing is find out that actually does

work with pro res would be well if we

actually open up the project we're gonna

see here is the performance really is

not going to be bad and mind you this

has been rendered but if I turn up the

volume here that's not bad at all no

this isn't already edited timeline but

if we want to go in and do some color

correction to simulate what it would be

like if we actually didn't have

everything rendered and have it already

start playing back here go to full

screen stopping a couple frames at full

quality but I would say for the most

part this is going to be usable where

it's really gonna slow down though is

when it comes to actually exporting so

no you probably shouldn't go out and buy

yourself a MacBook Air just to go do

some video editing but especially when

you're working with stuff

final cut as well as ProRes which are

very well optimized to work on this kind

of hardware it actually is going to be

usable although I probably won't bring

this guy back out of mothballs to edit

cauliflower videos again one of the nice

things about going with a 2014 model of

the MacBook Air versus an earlier one is

it does have the Intel Haswell

processors now this was the last time

that there was a huge leap in battery

life so when this thing was brand new it

was able to get between 6 to 7 hours on

a charge now today obviously with a

slightly older battery it's a little bit

closer to say four four and a half

considering this is an older laptop with

not and it particularly user replaceable

battery having that kind of life in an

older laptop is going to be super

helpful and of course because this was a

premium laptop at the time it does have

a toe 2.11 AC Wi-Fi you know Ethernet

jack because it's a Apple MacBook from

after 2011-2012 whenever they dropped it

but you're still gonna have fast Wi-Fi

which again it's gonna be pretty much

the same as a current Mac up today there

are two ways of looking at this so on

one hand it's kind of crazy that a

nearly five-year-old laptop has held

almost half its resale value but on the

other hand it kind of makes sense when

you compare this to something like a

brand new 13-inch MacBook Pro which is

way over double the price you've got a

lot of the same features besides the

garbage town display but if you're using

it for lighter stuff you really are

gonna notice a huge difference however

one of the things you are going to be

losing are those newer processors the

better battery life but I think for most

people especially considering the price

it's actually not going to be a bad

pickup so I'm curious would you guys

ever want to pick up a used macbook like

the air and of course for a run the same

money you could get a new budget laptop

but there are going to be pros and cons

on both sides so let me know what you

guys think and if you want to see a

comparison with this than some of our

other budget laptops anyway guys thank

you so much for watching and I will

catch you on the next one