Are MacBooks From 2020 Still Good?

The 80s and early 90s saw vast and drastic changes in the technology that existed back then. We are talking landline telephones with long curly cords to going to wireless telephones. Big cassette players in boom boxes were replaced by Walkmans, which were soon replaced by Walkman Discmans which were portable CD players. And that would then be replaced by the famous Ipods.

Big heavy IBM computers that were popular were soon replaced with colorful and still big Apple computers. Apple computers also had these smaller computers as well all of which always looked aesthetically pleasing compared to the IBMs. Since then the technology has advanced. Many things can be executed on phones. Desktop computers still have a market, but laptops are highly consumed because of the flexibility that they allow. Students and workers today travel with their laptops, which enables homework, studying, work for the office to be all be able to be done anywhere.

Fast-forward to today and we can see that as improvements were made to laptops to have greater memory capacity, higher resolution, metal exteriors, higher resolution, and longer battery lives among many other features. As we roll into each year, and the newer version of a MacBook or any other brand comes out, we have to ask, are they really that different?

Take for example the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop. Though this is now about 3 years old, how "dated" is this technologically? Lets look at the laptop as categories.

Exterior:

The Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop as well as the Apple 2023 Macbook Air Laptop both have an aluminum chassis and simple sleep design that is appealing to the eye. Both have a large touchpad and come in almost all the same colors, except the 2023 model has a black color called "Midnight." Neither have flex in the screen or the keyboard deck. Both have a 135 degree hinge range, and one finger openability. The Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop has a 13.3" display, and the 2023 model has a 15.3 display, but is also heavier. The more recent model is 3.3 lbs and the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop is 2.9lbs making it the lighter sibling of the two. The weight may seem slight, but when you are traveling on public transport and have to walk with a load, that slight weight difference can be huge.

Both have the same refresh rate which is how frequently the display can refresh and show new images, and whether it supports Variable Refresh Rate. They also have similar brightness and reflection ratios, which is how much light in the background reflects off the screen.

Other size stats:

Battery:

The Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop has a better battery life of 13.3 hours when web browsing, and has excellent battery life overall lasting easily over a full workday of light productivity. The Macbook 2023 model has only 8.6 hours. Gaming battery life was measured at 2.6 hours for the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop versus the 2023 model at 2.9 hours, which shows very little difference in this sub-category. Overall, the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop shows to be a better model when it comes to the longevity of the battery charge in a day.

Temperature:

The Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop has a fanless design, so it's completely silent. It gets a little warm around the '6' on the keyboard under load, but it isn't hot enough to cause discomfort. The 2023 counterpart has the same fanless design and temperature against usage can be considered very similar.

Configuration:

Both the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop and the Macbook 2023 model have the same CPU (the Central Processing Unit (CPU). This is the brains behind each computer and is the main component that processes the calculations being performed), at 8 CPUs for each. Both have the same RAM capacity at 8 RAMS for each. The Random Access Memory (RAM) is used to temporarily store quick access to data being used by the laptop, such as open applications or video games.

Storage for both the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop and the 2023 model are the same at 256 GB. Both laptops can be upgraded to 1TB or 2TB.

The Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop has a better storage drive performance than its 2023 counterpart. The storage drive performance is outstanding, and has a quick read and write speeds make the system feel fast and responsive, like when launching apps and transferring files. For example the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop has a sequential write speed of 2,580.5 MB/s whereas the MacBook 2023 has a 2,301.4 MB/s speed for the same. The random write speed is 51.5 MB/s for the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop , but is 42.3 MB/s for the MacBook 2023.

All in all, apart from size being bigger for the 2023 MacBook, the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop seems to equal and come out on top in many if not all measurable categories. If you are looking for a well-performing, decently sized Apple MacBook, the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop seems to meet and match all features and aspects that are sold in the 2023 model. So is the 2020 model lesser than its 2023 counterpart? The stats don't support that, and show that the Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop is still a very competitively placed and built model. If you are interested in purchasing this model, you will love the design and performance, and will not be disappointed. The Apple 2020 MacBook Air Laptop shows that technology isn't that different when it comes to laptops.