[ad_1]
Coming to 2020, the evolution of the MacBook Air is finally complete, because this time Apple really made up for a more capable keyboard. This is also an opportunity to allow us to review the differences between the MacBook Air before, during and after the main review. The publisher especially retrieved its first 2013 MacBook Air, which is not easy to get out of the warehouse, and most importantly, the charger doesn’t know where to throw it … I think the 13-inch MacBook in 2013 Air supported a 1440 x 900 display, And it has not been surpassed by laptops with FHD display. After all, it still has a 12-hour battery life, and it also has a pretty good scissor keyboard. However, due to the appearance of the 12-inch MacBook, it caused an extinction shock. Fortunately, the MacBook Air is still strong enough to replace the MacBook in 2018 and return to rivers and lakes, and replace the highly anticipated Retina display, but inherits the butterfly foot keyboard, which greatly affects the feel of hit.
In 2019, the appearance of the 16-inch MacBook Pro will bring back the scissor-style keyboard, so everyone can regain its beauty. At the same time, it also leads to speculation: when will Apple replace the MacBook Air with scissor feet? As a result, in early 2020, the MacBook Air “Ultimate” with a scissor foot, Retina display, and long-lasting battery was officially released, but the body was also lightweight. So what exactly does Apple want us to do with the scissor MacBook Air keyboard that we can only use after we’ve walked in the wrong direction? After this long presentation, it’s finally getting started.
The borrowed MacBook Air 2020 is the standard version, only equipped with the tenth-generation Intel i3 dual-core processor, 8GB of LDDR4 RAM, and 256GB SSD. It can also be compared to the Core i5 processor in 2018 to see how much performance has improved.
Just use the free version of Geekbench 5 to run a CPU benchmark. You can see that even the Intel Core i3-1000NG4 @ 1.10GHz CPU used in the 2020 version of MacBook Air is called “inferior to” the 2018 MacBook Air The Intel Core i5-8210Y used at 1.60 GHz (below), but in fact , single-core and multi-core scores have improved significantly in the new version, so you only want to buy the standard version from friends, no need to worry Has processing performance deteriorated due to drop in level and the clock? Conversely, power consumption will decrease as a result and the machine will not heat up as easily.
But in fact, the highlight of this article is looking at the new MacBook Air scissor keyboard. The official name is “Exquisite Keyboard”. Let the experts do the internal dismantling and we will take action.
The main feature of the MacBook Air is a slim and lightweight design, so after replacing the scissor legs with higher travel and keycaps, does that mean the thickness of the fuselage is increased too? The result is … nothing significant has changed. The thickness of the new MacBook Air is 1.46 cm in the center, which is not significantly different from the 1.43 cm of the 2018 version, but still much thinner than the 1.58 cm of the 2013 version. .
The following is the width of the key: Although the butterfly foot keyboard feels bad due to scale, it improves the user’s typing precision due to the larger key area. In 2018, the key width of the MacBook Air has a spectrum of 1.9mm. Basically, you can also tap the button you want to press by tapping it blindly. In comparison, the width of the scissor keyboard key in 2013 was just 1.36mm, and the gap was close to 30%. But what about the MacBook Air 2020? The width of the key is 1.49mm, which is caught between the two. When I press the keyboard for a long time, I feel my fingers touch the space between the keys more than the previous version. Accuracy is also similar.
Finally, there is the gap in the keystroke distance, which is also the most important factor that greatly affects the “feel” of typing. Although we don’t disassemble the machine like iFixit, we are actually looking at and measuring the height of the entire button to activate the machine, but we can still see the difference by measuring the height of the highest point of the key and the height of the keyboard panel. The reason is that when the MacBook keyboard keys are pressed all the way, they are probably aligned with the keyboard panel, so it can also be understood as the line spacing of the keys.
The iFixit teardown report previously answered our question, and today the publisher is checking it again. According to the measurement, there is 0.5mm gap (1mm v. 0.5mm) between the keyboard height of 2020 version and 2018 version of MacBook Air, i.e. the keystroke of the new version of the scissor foot It is twice that of the butterfly foot, that is This difference brings a clearly different experience: when you hit the scissor foot keyboard of the 2018 version of the MacBook Air, the sound and the sensation are like hitting a plastic sheet; only when you hit the butterfly foot of the 2020 version of the MacBook Air The feeling of really pressing down.
However, if you have a direct comparison between old-fashioned scissor legs and the new-style scissor foot keyboard, you’ll find that the feel is still a bit subtle. The reason is that the key from the previous version, i.e. the 2013 version of the MacBook Air, turned out to be 1.4mm high! In comparison, the 2020 version of the scissor foot keyboard is still relatively short, and the feel is a bit thin, but considering that the keyboard and stability width have increased, the new “exquisite keyboard” can be said to be it is a combination of the original scissors A new shape of feet and butterfly feet.
To conclude at the end of the article, the 2020 version of the MacBook Air is the final product that balances everyone’s needs, not only responds to the resentment of users in the last five years, but also maintains the new generation of lightweight MacBook design. Air. Friends who are still stuck on the old MacBook Air due to keyboard feel, this time it’s time to upgrade. In other words, the design of the product will not have a perfect end point, only to achieve the balance of the various needs. It took five years for Apple to finally find this balance, and the design team and legal team could relax a bit.
