MACBOOK AIR M1 REVIEW: DESIGNED FOR THE FUTURE
The M1 processor is the most important novelty launched by Apple in 2020. With this move, the apple house will become increasingly independent from Intel for the CPUs, adding a fundamental element to an already strongly " Applecentric " ecosystem , which allows a 360 ° control of future MacBooks and Macs. The new MacBook Air with M1 processor , as well as its Pro variant, are just the beginning of a path that will lead Apple to become even more closed to the outside, with the advantage however of greater optimization and vertical integration.
From the operating system to the software, now to the
hardware, Apple has managed to take an important step towards greater
independence and towards an alternative way to x86 applications, a process
thatMicrosoft has tried to do it in recent years but with poor results . The
truth is that Windows notebooks with ARM processor have not convinced while
with the new M1 processor, net of current limits, there is already an air of
victory.
Iconic design, do we really need news?
One of the main criticisms leveled at Apple with its MacBook
Air M1 concerns its design. Identical to its predecessors, this must be said,
but was it really necessary to change? Just take a look at the Windows world,
where models that reflect the style of the apple abound: why should Apple have
changed lines that are immediately recognizable and become iconic over time?
True, there are no news whatsoever, but the need is not yet felt given the
general quality of the apple notebook.
The style is the classic one seen in many Apple products,
minimalism reigns supreme in the unibody body made of aluminum, available in
Space Gray, Silver and Gold colors. The dimensions are 30.41 x 21.24 cm, while
the thickness is 1.61 cm, for a total weight of 1.29 kg, data that clearly
indicatethe propensity of the MacBook Air to work on the move .
It is not the lightest laptop we have tried, in this area
some Windows products do better, but the build quality is at the top of the
category, conveying a distinct feeling of solidity. By placing your thumb on
the lid, it rises without the bottom of the notebook lifting, showing a screen
with clearly visible but not too thick edges. The keyboard, backlit, has been
revised compared to the past, thanks to the elimination of the butterfly system
in favor of a scissor one .
The feedback of the keys is very good, to the touch the
pressure seems to generate the "click" of a mechanical keyboard, but
with a barely perceptible audio feedback. Difficult to press a button by
accident, the actuation force is slightly above average for laptops and the
short key stroke does not cause any discomfort when typing.
The TouchPad, as always in a central position, is generously
sized and very responsive, there is no shadow of a doubt that, for use on the
move, we are facing one of the best laptops among those we have tried in the
course Some years.
On the sides of the keyboard you can see a part of the frame
perforated, which hides the integrated speakers. Already with the iPhone 11 and
12 Pro Max Apple had made a small miracle, but even with this MacBook Air we
are faced with an audio section that amazes for the quality it manages to
express , despite the small size of the speakers. The sound performance has a
high maximum volume without exaggerating, with a very clear and distortion-free
sound reproduction. The spatiality is also excellent, listening to music or
watching a film the sounds seem to come from a wider position than the
placement of the speakers, making it very pleasant in both uses.
Is everything perfect then? Not really, because the few
connection portsavailable can give some problems. In all there are two
Thunderbolt - USB Type C, one of which is also dedicated to charging, and a 3.5
mm jack. In mobility this limit is felt less, if you need to connect an SD card
reader just an adapter, in a fixed workstation instead the situation changes,
especially in this period where you often work from home. What if you need to
connect a mouse, keyboard, and external memory drive to your MacBook Air, along
with perhaps a higher quality webcam?
Those who already have wireless input devices have an
advantage, for everyone else the purchase of an external hub becomes
practically mandatory. Speaking of webcam, Apple could have updated it with a
unit capable of reaching 1080p, while this stops at 720p : given the importance
of this element in the last period, perhaps an upgrade would have done well.
M1, the new architecture
The Apple Silicon M1 processor is the pivot around which
Apple has built its new architecture. Actually speaking of
"processor" is not really correct, in this case the term SoC is more
appropriate, because the M1 chip is more similar to a System On a Chip of a
smartphone than the classic computer CPU. The main difference is that many more
components are integrated in an SoC, starting from the GPU, then moving, in the
case of the M1, to the Neural Engine, the Thunderbolt / USB connection
controller, the security chip, the image processor. up to RAM memory. Also in
this case the term RAM is only partially correct, Apple speaks of Unified
Memory , because this memory is shared between processor and GPU.
This is memory that is handled differently than x86-x64
solutions using a similar system. In the case of a normal Windows notebook with
shared memory between GPU and CPU, the RAM is separated into two parts, one
dedicated to the smaller GPU and one to the CPU. The new Apple architecture, on
the other hand, allows complete access to RAM both to the CPU and to the GPU ,
without reserving memory for one or the other component, which can thus access
data without having to move it between one buffer and another. A huge
advantage, especially since the RAM is integrated directly into the SoC, thus
increasing the data transfer speed and the speed with which they are retrieved
in memory.
Such a concentration of silicon in such a small space is
possible first of all thanks to the engineering carried out by Apple, and
secondly to the production process at 5 nm , which makes its first appearance
in a Mac and in a computer in general. Basically it is only the fast NVMe SSD
that is left out, everything else is enclosed in very little space. This offers
an evident advantage in performance, because CPU, GPU and RAM can communicate
at very high speeds and with reduced latency compared to the classic
configurations that we are used to seeing on the AMD / Intel platform.
Obviously there are also disadvantages, so many transistors
generate heat, which as we will see in prolonged tasks makes itself felt, but
above all it makes any update to the specifications impossible: it is not
possible to add RAM or even increase the capacity of the SSD. All components
are soldered , which is why we strongly recommend the variant with 16 GB of
RAM, which ensures greater longevity.
The CPU consists of eight cores, including four
high-performance Firestorms and four Icestorms for the most basic tasks. We
also report the peak clock rates of 3.2 GHz for Firestorms and 2.06 GHz for
Icestorms, but a direct comparison with AMD / Intel processors on this
parameter can only lead to an error. In recent years, the development of
processors has been driven on the one hand by the increase in clock
frequencies, and on the other by the increase in the number of cores. Apple has
chosen a lower clock than other solutions on the market because high
frequencies generate heat, the M1 chip mounted on the MacBook Air is fanless ,
however , which has an incredible view of the power it is capable of
unleashing.
But how did Apple achieve it without clocking up and with
only four high-performance cores? The secret is all in the way in which the CPU
cores manage the instructions to be processed, managing to better parallelize
the work for the SoC : the result is higher performance with the same clock and
number of cores available. Apple has given a twist to the way processors handle
information, a twist that, like it or not, even AMD and Intel would sooner or
later have to take if they want to achieve greater efficiency.
Together with the CPU cores, the SoC integrates a GPU with 7
or 8 cores depending on the model chosen, with a power of 2.5 TFLOPsfor the
7-core variant used during this test. In terms of brute force this is the most
powerful integrated GPU you can buy today, even the Vega adopted by AMD's
mobile CPUs remain behind.
We talked about two versions of the MacBook Air, in fact
there are not many customization possibilities. The basic variant costs € 1159
and offers 8 cores for the CPU and 7 cores for the GPU, along with 8 GB of
LPDDR4X RAM and 256 GB of memory (version we tested). Alternatively, you can
buy the model with 8 Cores for the CPU and 8 Cores for the GPU, which also
brings the internal memory to 512 GB, for € 1429. Our trial version is the one
with the best price-performance ratio, the problem comes when you decide to add
another 8 GB of RAM, an upgrade costing as much as 230 € . A figure that is too
high, but which we believe necessary to take home a laptop that can last longer
and offer better performance over time.
Native applications, Universal App and Rosetta 2.0
In recent weeks, the benchmarks of the MacBook Air with
Apple Silicon M1 processor have amazed everyone. In reality, today it is very
difficult to make valid comparisons with other architectures, given the extreme
difference between the Apple processor and all the others, not to mention that
it is the optimization of individual programs that makes the difference. The
Mac ecosystem software needs to be updated to make the most of the peculiarities
of the M1 chip, but we are still at the beginning. Obviously the Apple
applications are all ready to use, in addition to these there are the Universal
Apps , designed to make the most of the M1 processor but also the Intel ones,
thus ensuring a smooth transition to the new architecture, without cutting out
the old models. .
It is also possible to run the apps for iPhone and iPad,
perfectly compatible since they already work on ARM architecture in the mobile
environment. However, many software are still designed to work only with x86
instructions, in this case Rosetta 2 takes care of it . It should be noted that
Rosetta 2 is not an emulator, we can define it as a sort of "instruction
translator": when an incompatible software is started, the x86 code is
translated in real time to be understood by the M1 processor, a process that
requires a a little more time at the first start of the application but that
then becomes faster.
Even Microsoft allows you to "emulate" x86
applications on Windows notebooks with ARM architecture, but the results are
almost always poor . As we will see, in the case of the MacBook this does not
happen, we must then consider that the vertically integrated structure of the
Apple ecosystem has seen developers at the forefront of converting applications
. To date there are still many, but Apple intends to make the entire software
fleet fully compatible with the M1 chip, a process that Microsoft has never
managed to start in a Windows on ARM environment. Meanwhile, where the
developers are not getting there is Rosetta 2, which already works very well.
Performance
In general use, ranging from web browsing to document
management and multimedia content viewing, the MacBook Air is simply a
splinter. Never a slowdown, never even a slight uncertainty, the perfect
integration between the Big Sure operating system, the processor and native
applications generate an impressive execution speed for reactivity, after all,
access to RAM memory is facilitated both for the CPU and the GPU, in this way
the data can be recovered or transmitted very quickly. For a use of this type
already the trial version with 8 GB of RAM is able to satisfy every type of
user, even the most demanding will not feel the lack of more memory. If, on the
other hand, you want to use this MacBook Air for more complex tasks, you need
to do a little reflection. The power generated by the MacBook Air and the new
MacBook Pro is pretty much the same, even the absence of a core in the graphics
chip doesn't change the performance much.What makes the difference is the
dissipation system , passive in the case of the Air and active in that of the
Pro, which can rely on an internal fan.
In daily use the two notebooks are equivalent, and this is a
huge step forward for the Air range, the situation changes when you need to
perform complex tasks for an extended period of time, as in the case of video
rendering. In this case the Air is subject to a rather significant thermal
throttling , which limits the frequency of the high-performance cores to just
over 2.2 GHz.
Basically, the difference between the two models is all in
the dissipation system, which allows the Pro to perform complex tasks for a
longer time. This is a usage scenario that does not concern all users, indeed,
the clear majority will not find differences between the Air and the Pro
variant, but it is good to know that if you are looking for a laptop also
suitable for video editing of a certain level, then the MacBook Pro is to be
preferred without delay.
On the benchmark front we tested the MacBook Air both with
Universal App and with applications "translated" from Rosetta 2, the
performance drop is there, but it is limited compared to what happens with
Windows 10 on ARM processor. Rosetta 2 manages to perform a small miracle in
this sense, because almost always you do not even notice that you are using a
non-native application.
Just look at what happens with Cinebench R20 , started
precisely through Rosetta 2.0, which records a score of 1947 in multi core,
very close to that of the i7-1165g7, an incredible result if you think that it
is obtained using a completely new architecture and not intended to run x86
applications.
Moving on to Geekbench 5, already updated to Universal App,
we get 1742 in single core and 7648 points in multi core. The value in single
core is the highest we have ever recorded among all the CPUs released so far ,
even the desktop ones: from the Intel i9-10900K to the Ryzen 9 5950X nobody can
reach this score, stopping just below 1700 points. In multi-core, on the other
hand, it easily surpasses that of the Ryzen 4900H, currently the top of the
range of AMD for laptops, which stops at just over 7000 points.
Results of this type, moreover for the first CPU produced by
Apple, say a lot about the paradigm shift brought about by the M1 chip, which
we remember works without the help of fans . Only the longer tasks to perform
can put him in difficulty, while remaining on more than acceptable levels of
performance.
The performance offered by the M1 SoC is exceptional, but
how does it fare in a complex task like gaming, where is the GPU that is most
subject to stress? We tried Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Alien Isolation,
certainly not very recent titles but the Mac ecosystem is unfortunately
incompatible with many games. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider we ran several
benchmarks at 1280x800 pixel resolution with AA disabled, which generated an
average of 39 fps.
A good number, however, during the test we saw a lot of
micro shots , which make it impossible to play. Alien: Isolation, on the other
hand, turned out to be perfectly playable at the same resolution and with
medium details. Then there are the games of Apple Arcade, the platform launched
last year, however at least for now playing with a MacBook with M1 processor is
not the best , also due to compatibility problems that are encountered from
time to time with some titles, still not ready to work on this model.
During the game, the increase in temperature is felt on the
body, in the upper part of the keyboard, but it is a particular context of use.
Despite the absence of fans, the MacBook Air with M1 chip remains cool during
daily use , a positive result given the power it is capable of unleashing.
Good, but not great, the test results on the SSD, which
shows a reading speed of around 2800 MB / s, stopping at around 2400 MB / s in
our test. A figure that does not disappoint but does not impress, given the
cost required by Apple to switch from the 256 GB version to the 512 GB version,
we would have expected better.
Screen and battery
Over the last year we have notice a drop in the quality of
notebook displays, except for particular models. TN panels are still often used
today, a situation that does not allow to get the best out of modern hardware.
However, Apple has gone against the trend, equipping the MacBook Air with a
13.3-inch IPS panel, with a resolution of 2560x1600, True Tone technology and a
declared maximum brightness of 400 nits.
The real novelty, at least for the Air range, however , is
the support for the P3 color space . To see the difference compared to the past
just import some images taken by an iPhone, thanks to the extended color space
the yield increases significantly.
This screen looks good both inside and out and offers
excellent visual impact, with vivid but not too strong colors. When you
consider the price of the base variant of the MacBook, this is one of the best
screens to be found in a laptop of that price range.
On the battery front, thanks to the total synergy between
SoC and operating system, we are facing a real monster, capable of staying out
of the socket for long periods of time. Even during the busiest days it is
impossible not to reach the end of the working day. In our case, even after 10
hours of use (web browsing, a little Photoshop, watching videos, text editors,
etc) there was still enough battery left for a few hours of extra use. If you
are looking for a laptop with record-breaking autonomy, you have found it.
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