Apple switches from Intel chips in favor of their revolutionary ARM-based M1 chip in their new lineup of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops.
According to Apple, “M1 has the fastest CPU we’ve ever made. With that kind of processing speed, MacBook Air can take on new extraordinarily intensive tasks like professional-quality editing and action-packed gaming. But the 8‑core CPU on M1 isn‘t just up to 3.5x faster than the previous generation – it balances high-performance cores with efficiency cores that can still crush everyday jobs while using just a tenth of the power.”
The new MacBook Air 2020 featuring the M1 chip is not just incredibly light, it’s also silent. Apple’s tagline says “No fan. No noise. Just Air.” The M1 chip is cooled by an integrated aluminum heat spreader and no fan, so the MacBook Air will run silently even under the most demanding workloads.
Apple claims the 8-Core M1 chip is the highest performing CPU they’ve ever built, with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores working together to power through the power hungry tasks like video editing and gaming, while using much less battery power than previous chips.
In fact, Apple claims it is up to 3.9x faster at video editing and 5.3x faster at gaming than the previous generation of MacBook Air.
The M1 chip can also be found in the new MacBook Pro 13, with Intel Core I5 and I7 chips as an option. The MacBook 13 is quite similar to the Air, however it features more battery life, and other features like TouchID that are not found on the Air model. The larger MacBook Pro 16 still uses the Intel Core I7 and I9 chips with no M1 option available as of yet.
Considering the light weight, silent operation, powerful processing ability, and extremely competitive pricing, the new MacBook Air with M1 chip might just be the best laptop available for 2020.