Apple has officially unveiled two new pieces of hardware: the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Both MacBooks feature the company’s new, in-house M1 chip.
Starting at $999 ($899 for education), the MacBook Air features a 13-inch Retina display, Magic Keyboard, and Touch ID. Thanks to the M1 chip, Apple was able to forgo the fan so it’ll remain completely silent even through those heavy duty tasks.
Apple kept that 720p webcam for video calls but improved the image quality.
Image: apple
With an 8-core GPU and 8-core CPU, graphics are now said to be 5x faster and performance is 3.5x faster compared to its predecessors. The in-house chip also provides SSD performance that’s twice as fast, so that means previewing and importing large files should also be a lot quicker.
Although it remains to be seen through testing, Apple claims battery life has also been increased. With up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing and 18 hours of video playback, it has the longest battery life on a MacBook Air yet.
Other improvements include better camera image quality, which makes sense considering we’re still in the midst of a pandemic and video chatting is more common than ever. While the FaceTime HD camera remains at 720p resolution (which typically results in grainy image quality), the M1 chip is supposed to help deliver better noise reduction, greater dynamic range, and improved white balance.
The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, will cost you a bit more, starting at $1,299. It has a 13.3-inch Retina display and that same M1 chip which results in a 2.8x boost in performance with graphics that are 5x faster compared to previous Pro models.
We’ll see how that 20-hour battery life really holds up in testing.
Image: apple
But unlike the Air, the MacBook Pro doesn’t have a fanless design. It does, however, have an active cooling system that should hopefully help to reduce how loud it gets. Another difference to note is that the Pro also offers 8K full resolution playback. With up to 20 hours of video playback and 17 hours of web browsing, Apple’s also claiming the new MacBook Pro has the longest battery life of any Mac ever.
You can pre-order both the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro from Apple’s site today, with units expected to begin shipping out next week.