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  • - Hey, guys, this is Austin.

  • This is a MacBook Air.

  • So you may have seen our video last year,

  • where we took a look at why Apple

  • is still selling this laptop in 2017.

  • And of course, they're still selling it

  • in Apple Stores today.

  • But my question is, does it actually make sense

  • to pick up a used model?

  • So this is the 2014 11 inch MacBook Air.

  • And fun fact, this is actually the exact laptop

  • that I reviewed almost five years ago.

  • Thankfully video quality has improved a lot since then.

  • The good thing is the design actually doesn't feel

  • all that out of date.

  • So you're still getting the solid aluminum chassis

  • which feels good even by today's standards.

  • And you have to remember, the MacBook Air

  • was kind of the first Ultrabook.

  • So, even though it might not be quite as thin

  • as something like the 12 inch MacBook,

  • it's still going to be much thinner

  • than the vast majority of laptops out there.

  • Again, it's like $500.00 on eBay right now.

  • So where you can really tell the MacBook Air's age

  • is with the display.

  • The 11 inch Air is rocking a 1366 by 768 panel.

  • Definitely not retina quality.

  • And it's really not great,

  • even on a small display like this.

  • The bigger issue though, is that it's going to be

  • a low quality TN panel.

  • Color's not going to be great.

  • There's very little contrast.

  • And the viewing angles leave a lot to be desired.

  • Honestly it kind of feels like a budget two,

  • maybe three hundred dollar laptop that you would buy today.

  • Now don't get me wrong,

  • it's not exactly going to be a deal breaker,

  • but when you're picking up a MacBook Air in 2018,

  • the low quality screen is definitely something

  • that you're going to notice.

  • Thankfully though,

  • something that hasn't really aged too much,

  • are the rest of the inputs.

  • The keyboard is still better than stuff

  • like the 12 inch MacBook, in my opinion.

  • It's got good spacing, it's still going to be back lit.

  • And the trackpad is also better

  • than most Windows laptops even today.

  • So the only real difference between this

  • and a newer MacBook trackpad is going to be

  • that you actually can't click on the front,

  • as opposed to the Force Touch that you get

  • on the new MacBook Pros.

  • And maybe it's just going to be a little bit smaller.

  • Besides that, you're getting every little bit

  • of the functionality, and every bit of the smoothness

  • that you would expect from a MacBook.

  • Take a look at the specs

  • and it's actually not going to be

  • all that much out of date.

  • So this is going to be powered

  • by a fourth generation Haswell processor.

  • Most of the MacBooks had Core i5s,

  • although I did opt to upgrade this one to the i7.

  • Mostly because I actually used to do video editing on this.

  • But for the most part, the performance is really

  • not going to be too far off a modern laptop

  • in more normal, less super demanding tasks,

  • like, ahem, don't try to game on your MacBook Air.

  • Or don't try to do 8K HDR RAW editing on it.

  • But besides that, for normal stuff,

  • it doesn't really feel that much slower.

  • One thing you should keep in mind

  • is a lot of these MacBook Airs only had four gigs of RAM.

  • It's going to be usable,

  • but if you're able to find a model

  • with eight gigs out of the box,

  • it's going to make things a lot better.

  • Something that I did not do to my MacBook Air,

  • when I ordered it back in 2014, is upgrade the SSD.

  • This guy only has 128 gigs of storage.

  • Now to be fair, it is going to be a PCIe SSD.

  • And it's actually going to be faster

  • than a lot of SATA drives.

  • Pretty much any SATA drive that you find today,

  • but with only 128 gigs of storage,

  • you better have lots of external hard drives around,

  • if you wanna do anything serious.

  • Now believe it or not, I actually used to edit

  • pretty much all of my videos when I was on the go,

  • on the MacBook Air.

  • But, things have definitely changed since then.

  • So instead of shooting on a DSLR at 1080p

  • with a fairly low bitrate,

  • instead now we shoot everything in 4K.

  • We're shooting primarily in ProRes,

  • and it's going to require a lot more data

  • and a lot more processing power to work with.

  • However, I actually switched over to Final Cut since then,

  • which is fairly well optimized,

  • and because we shoot in ProRes, I think the MacBook Air

  • might actually stand a decent chance of being able to edit.

  • Although it might also horribly crash and burn (laughing).

  • So to give you an idea of what we're working with here,

  • this is pretty much all going to be 4K ProRes.

  • So some of it was shot on a RED,

  • and some of it was shot on Sony FS7.

  • But for the most part,

  • it's going to be fairly straightforward.

  • And the good thing is, Final Cut actually does work

  • with ProRes pretty well.

  • Now if we actually open up the project,

  • what we're gonna see here is the performance

  • really is not going to be bad.

  • And mind you, this has been rendered,

  • but if I turn up the volume here,

  • - For the best selling game console of all time.

  • The next closest is the Nintendo DS,

  • so especially in the ear--

  • It's simple and straightforward.

  • - That's not bad at all.

  • Now this is an already edited timeline.

  • But if we wanted to go in and do some color correction,

  • to simulate what it would be like

  • if we actually didn't have everything rendered

  • and have it all ready,

  • start playing back here, go to full screen,

  • It's dropping a couple of frames at full quality,

  • but I would say for the most part,

  • this is going to be usable.

  • Where it's really gonna slow down, though,

  • is when it comes to actually exporting.

  • So no, you probably shouldn't go out and buy yourself

  • a MacBook Air just to go do some video editing.

  • But, especially when you're working with stuff

  • like Final Cut, as well as ProRes,

  • which are very well optimized

  • to work on this kind of hardware.

  • It actually is going to be usable.

  • Although I probably won't bring this guy

  • back out of mothballs to edit

  • all of our videos again.

  • One of the nice things about going with a 2014 model

  • of the MacBook Air, versus an earlier one,

  • is that it does have the Intel Haswell processors.

  • Now this was the last time

  • that there was a huge leap in battery life.

  • So when this thing was brand new,

  • it was able to get between six to seven hours on a charge.

  • Now today, obviously with a slightly older battery,

  • it's a little bit closer to say, four, four and a half.

  • But considering this is an older laptop

  • with not in it a particularly user replaceable battery,

  • having that kind of life in an older laptop

  • is going to be super helpful.

  • And of course because this was a premium laptop at the time,

  • it does have 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

  • No Ethernet jack, because it's a Apple MacBook,

  • from after 2011, 2012, whenever they dropped it,

  • But you're still gonna have fast Wi-Fi.

  • Which again, is going to be pretty much the same

  • as a current MacBook today.

  • There are two ways of looking at this.

  • So on one hand it's kind of crazy that a nearly

  • five year old laptop has held almost half it's resale value.

  • But on the other hand, it kinda makes sense.

  • When you compare this to something like a brand new

  • 13 inch MacBook Pro, which is way over double the price,

  • you've got a lot of the same features,

  • besides the garbage town display.