MacBook Air

Apple's lowest-cost notebook starting at $999 with a Retina display and Touch ID. Updated in March 2020

The 2020 MacBook Air

Apple updated the MacBook Air in March 2020, introducing a new magic keyboard with scissor switches, faster processors for better CPU and GPU performance, more memory, and a starting price of $ 999.

The overall design of the MacBook Air is unchanged from the 2019 MacBook Air, featuring a conical wedge-shaped aluminum case with a 13-inch Retina display, thin black frames, and a Force Touch trackpad. Apple offers the MacBook Air in space gray,silver, and gold.

With more than 4 million pixels and a resolution of 1024x768, the MacBook Air display is bright and clear, with bright images and clear text. A 720-megapixel FaceTime HD camera and three microphone units are installed at the top of the display. The display maintains a true tone that matches the balance of the white screen with the ambient lighting in the room, resulting in a more natural viewing experience.

The main new feature in the MacBook Air is the new Magic Keyboard, first introduced in the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The Magic Keyboard features a refined scissor mechanism that's more reliable than the previous butterfly mechanism, and it offers up to 1mm of key travel for a stable key feel.

Apple's 2020 MacBook Air is equipped with Intel's 10th-generation processors that offer up to 1.2GHz quad-core Core i7 performance and Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.8GHz. Apple says the new chips provide up to two times faster CPU performance and 80 percent faster graphics performance with Intel Iris Plus Graphics.

Like prior MacBook Air models, the 2020 MacBook Air includes a T2 chip and a Touch ID fingerprint sensor to use in lieu of a password. The T2 chip makes the MacBook Air more secure with an SSD controller for on-the-fly data encryption and a Secure Enclave to ensure a secure boot process. Through the T2 chip, always-on "Hey Siri" functionality is available.

Apple has increased the storage in the MacBook Air and the base model now starts with 256GB of storage space. Up to 2TB of SSD storage is available in total, double the previous 1TB maximum, and RAM can be upgraded to 16GB. For the first time, the MacBook Air supports up to a 6K external display through one of its two Thunderbolt 3 ports.