**The New MacBook Air: A Closer Look**
That's not that impressive, to be totally honest. It's fine, but it's basically what I would expect out of a Y-Series chip, like the 12-inch MacBook, for example. The GPU, though, that's what I want to see right now.
32, yeah, there we go again. So with the 12-inch MacBook, you're looking at a scoreroughly around 25, 24, something like that, so 32 is a pretty decent bump. Now, all of this being said, this is not an incredibly powerful laptop, right? I mean, this is still a MacBook Air. It's still got a dual-core processor. Especially on that GPU side, I'm pretty impressed.
**Testing the SSD Performance**
Next up, let's test the SSD performance on the MacBook Air. Now, we do have the base model, which has a very, very tiny 128 gigs of storage, kinda not even cool at this point, but, well, okay, that's pretty decently fast. So 1,917 megabytes per second on the read and 476 on the write. That's pretty solid.
For context, that's faster than any other 128 gig drive I've tested, and it's not too far off the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the 256 gig drive. This is a very fast SSD.
**Editing 4K Video in Final Cut Pro X**
Next up, we have something a little bit more intense: a full 4K video edit inside Final Cut Pro X. So, for reference, this is a project from the This Is channel, so it's almost exactly five minutes long and it's a mix of ProRes, a lot of graphics and stock footage, and it's about, I don't know, 70% rendered or so.
So I kinda scrolled through here. Its performance actually holding up reasonably well. Oh, and just so you guys know, I am editing off of a Samsung T3 SSD mostly because there's not enough storage on the MacBook to fit, well, anything, but especially a bunch of 4K video. (laughs)
(video playing) I mean, that's not bad. It's definitely able to play it back. What I'm curious about is what the actual export times will be. So with a fully rendered timeline of ProRes 422, let's see how long this five-minute 4K video takes to export.
So, settings are correct. This is H264. All right, ready, set, go. (heavy rock music) All right, so just over six-and-a-half minutes to render a five-minute timeline. Now, no, you're not going to want to spend a lot of time editing on the MacBook Air, specifically with 4K footage, but it is possible.
**Using an External GPU**
However, we have a slightly different method for speeding things up. In true Building the Ultimate fashion, the MacBook Air supports full Thunderbolt 3, which means that we can add an external GPU, because why not? So this is the Gigabyte Gaming Box with a full AMD RX 580 GPU inside.
Now, recently, Final Cut has received full support for external GPUs. And especially with such a thin and light laptop like this, I'm curious to see just how well it performs. Now, no, we don't have any kind of crazy scientific tests here. What I do have is, well, the curiosity of how far we can actually push it.
So, specifically, with Final Cut, it does look like the GPU is being used. It's hard to benchmark exactly how much of a difference it makes. But just for some reference here, this is all playing back at higher quality, and I am running it at full 4K in unrendered timeline, and the computer's able to keep up reasonably well.
**Playing Fortnite on the MacBook Air with External GPU**
So we were going to try Fortnite running on the internal GPU of the MacBook, but I don't want to be here all night, so let's get the external GPU going. (groans) Why do we ever try to play Fortnite on Mac? This is always such a disaster of just waiting and crashing and just being garbage.
So the new MacBook Air is a little bit more powerful than I expected, but it is definitely... Did it just switch? Did it just start loading? What? Are you serious? It actually took 20 minutes to... Oh. (Ken laughing) Oh, okay. All right, hopefully you guys enjoyed this video.
The 13-inch MacBook Air is a little bit more powerful than I expected, and you can do some stuff with it, but don't get your hopes up like playing a game of Fortnite or anything. If you're bored, though, you can feel free to check out This Is where's there's lots of videos that aren't boring.
WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Hey guys, this is Austin.This is the 2018 MacBook Air.And for $1,200, there'sbeen a lot of controversyabout the performance of this laptop,and on top of that, just exactlywhat's inside this thing.So, of course, the questionis how powerful is it really?Interestingly, there's onlya single processor optionfor the MacBook Air this year.It is a dual-core Core i5 8210Y.This is an 8th generationY-Series processor,which does give it a dual-corechip with hyper-threading.And the clock speeds actuallyaren't all that impressive.It has a 1.6 gigahertz baseand a 3.6 gigahertz boost,a far cry from a lot ofthe quad-core systemsthat you can often findat this price point.So there's some interestingthings with this chip.First of all, it has UHD 617 graphics,something I've never seen inany kind of Intel chip yet.And also interestingly,this is a 7-watt TDP.So what that means is that mostof these Y-Series processorsare used in things likethe 12-inch MacBook.Now, that does not have any kind of fan.And, originally, I was actuallytold at the Apple eventthat this MacBook here is fan-less.However, a lot of reports have shownthat this actually does have a fan.Also, I updated it and heard the fan.So let's open it up and seewhat's actually inside. (laughs)I thought we had to, like,clarify that I heard a loud fan.It's usually a pretty goodindicator there's a fan inside.Just sayin'.Take this off and immediatelywe see that there is a fan.So it shouldn't be a big surprise.So what's kind of interestingabout the MacBook Airthis year is that this isone of the smallest fansI've ever seen for cooling in a laptop.Now, this is actuallynot strictly necessary.If they would have gonefor a slightly lower-endY-Series processor with alower, like, 5-watt TDP,for example, the fan wouldnot have been necessary.But on the flip side, thatmeans that you're really relianton a lot of other issues with cooling.So say you were in a very hot environment.The actually chassis of the computerreally can't dissipate as much heat,where even a small fanlike this should makea big difference, and itgives you the added benefitof getting a couple extra watts of TDP,which will give you alittle bit more performance.I will say, it is avery, very clean layout.So not only do we have the Trackpad here,but we also have our three battery cells.And what's interestingabout this battery is that,at least based on the rumors,and certainly taking a lookat it seems to sort of back that up,is that unlike most MacBookPros that are currentwhere you kind of haveto replace a large chunkof the laptop to be able toget rid of the batteries,with this, it looks like you couldprobably swap these out pretty easily.You also see the fairly large speakers,and then we've got what isa pretty small motherboard,and I assume that's probablyour T2 chip underneath here.Hey, look at that.The Apple T2 chip.So this is actually verysimilar to some of the SoCsthat you'll find inside an iPhone,but this handles a lot of thesort of lower-end processeson the MacBook, includingencrypting the SSD,running your Touch ID.It's got the secure enclave;it's got the ISP which runs the webcam.There's a lot of very smartthings that are on the iPhonethat all run from thistiny, little T2 chip.All right, so with thecomputer put back together,let's actually see how it performs.Starting out with, we do have Geekbench,which is the classic.All right, there we go.4301 on single-coreand 7725 on multi-core.It is an upgrade over thelast generation MacBook Air,but it is not a big upgradeover, well, much anything else.I mean, sure, it's decent as a dual core,but we really have moved on to quad-coreacross the board for the most part.Next up, we have theGeekbench compute test.This one's kind of interesting,because this does have a unique GPU.I've never seen the 617 available.Now, it is one of theIntel UHD Series GPUs,so it's probably not goingto be anything crazy,but maybe somewhat faster.Maybe they added two morenumbers to the last one I tested.This is 22135.That actually is a little faster.Now, to be fair, I'mrunning Metal right now,but that's actually pretty decent.So that's a fair bit overthe 615, and that's closerto what you would find withthe full UHD 620 graphics.I've gotta say, we'rejust getting in the video,and I've already foundsome interesting stuffwith this MacBook.Let's keep going and get intoa little bit of Cinebench.So what's interestinghere is I actually thinkthe Y-Series processors havebeen changed this generation.So not to get too far into nerd town,but traditionally,Y-Series on the Intel sidemeans it's their very, very low TDP chips,which are traditionallyused in fan-less designs.Now, obviously, this is slightly higherand it is, of course,using a very small fan,but instead of getting thetraditional dual-core chipwith the low-end GPU, we'regetting the same low-end CPU,so obviously we need to keep that TDP low,but we are getting that bigger GPU.So, for context, the 12-inchMacBook is $100 more expensive,and, with that, you get the Core m3,and that's not evenreally going to be on parwith what we're getting out of this.You really would need tobump up to something closerto the Core i7 to getequivalent clock speeds,and I don't think you'regonna get anywhere nearthat same GPU performance.All right, so 121 on single-coreand 250 on multi-core.That's not that impressive,to be totally honest.It's fine, but it's basicallywhat I would expectout of a Y-Series chip,like the 12-inch MacBook, for example.The GPU, though, that's whatI want to see right now.32, yeah, there we go again.So with the 12-inch MacBook,you're looking at a scoreroughly around 25, 24,something like that,so 32 is a pretty decent bump.Now, all of this being said,this is not an incrediblypowerful laptop, right?I mean, this is still a MacBook Air.It's still got a dual-core processor.Especially on that GPUside, I'm pretty impressed.Next up, let's test the SSDperformance on the MacBook Air.Now, we do have the base model,which has a very, verytiny 128 gigs of storage,kinda not even cool at this point,but, well, okay, that'spretty decently fast.So 1,917 megabytes per second on the readand 476 on the write.That's pretty solid.So, for context, that's fasterthan any other 128 gig drive I've testedand it's not too far offof the 13-inch MacBook Prowith the 256 gig drive.This is a very fast SSD.Next up, we have somethinga little bit more intense:a full 4K video editinside Final Cut Pro X.So, for reference, this is a projectfrom the This Is channel,so it's almost exactly five minutes longand it's a mix of ProRes,a lot of graphics and stock footage,and it's about, I don'tknow, 70% rendered or so.So I kinda scrolled through here.Its performance actuallyholding up reasonably well.Oh, and just so you guys know,I am editing off of a Samsung T3 SSDmostly because there's notenough storage on the MacBookto fit, well, anything, but especially nota bunch of 4K video. (laughs)(video playing)I mean, that's not bad.It's definitely able to play it back.What I'm curious about is whatthe actual export times will be.So with a fully renderedtimeline of ProRes 422, let's seehow long this five-minute4K video takes to export.So, settings are correct.This is H264.All right, ready, set,go.(heavy rock music)All right, so just oversix-and-a-half minutesto render a five-minute timeline.Now, no, you're not going to want to spenda lot of time editing on the MacBook Air,specifically with 4Kfootage, but it is possible.However, we have aslightly different methodfor speeding things up.In true Building the Ultimate fashion,the MacBook Air supportsfull Thunderbolt 3,which means that we canadd an external GPU,because why not?So this is the Gigabyte Gaming Boxwith a full AMD RX 580 GPU inside.Now, recently, Final Cuthas received full supportfor external GPUs.And especially with such a thinand light laptop like this,I'm curious to see justhow well it performs.Now, no, we don't have any kind of crazyscientific tests here.What I do have is, well, the curiosityof how far we can actually push it.So, specifically, with Final Cut,it does look like the GPU is being used.It's hard to benchmark exactlyhow much of a difference it makes.But just for some reference here,this is all playingback at higher quality,and I am running it at full4K in unrendered timeline,and the computer's able tokeep up reasonably well.So we were going to try Fortnite runningon the internal GPU of the MacBook,but I don't want to be here all night,so let's get the external GPU going.(groans)Why do we ever try toplay Fortnite on Mac?This is always such adisaster of just waitingand crashing and just being garbage.So the new MacBook Air isa little bit more powerfulthan I expected, but it is definitely...Did it just switch?Did it just start loading?What?Are you serious?It actually took 20 minutes to...Oh.(Ken laughing)Oh, okay.All right, hopefully youguys enjoyed this video.The 13-inch MacBook Air isa little bit more powerfulthan I expected, and youcan do some stuff with it,but don't get your hopes up,like playing a game ofFortnite or anything.If you're bored, though, you can feel freeto check out This Is where'sthere's lots of videosthat aren't boring.If you'll excuse me, I'm goingto go be really frustratedat why this has taken 20 minutes to loadand then logs me out.
