4. MacBook Air
The MacBook Air actually received two major updates in 2020. The first update, in March, outfitted the MacBook Air with Apple’s Magic Keyboard in place of the much-troubled butterfly keyboard. The Magic Keyboard uses a scissor mechanism and offers 1 mm of key travel for improved typing comfort and a more-stable feel. Meanwhile, the MacBook Air maintained its tradition of portability with a starting weight of 2.8 pounds and a thickness of 0.63 of an inch. And, the MacBook Air that was refreshed in March moved up to quad-core processors for the first time with 10th-generation Intel Core processors.
But then, in November, the MacBook Air was updated again with the announcement of Apple’s M1 processor. The M1-powered MacBook Air offers a CPU performance improvement of up to 3.5X and graphics performance gains of up to 5X, compared to the Intel-based MacBook Air, Apple said. The MacBook Air with M1 also gets an additional six hours of battery life--or up to 18 hours of usage on a charge--and now does not require a fan, either.
