 Lately it's really felt like thin and light laptop manufacturers have been getting so close to creating the perfect laptop Like Microsoft Surface laptop for example, it's sexy the screen is great and the keyboard is amazing But the I.O. is hot garbage The Dell XPS 13 it's got top-tier build quality solid I.O. and is really quick But the screen options and the webcam placement in particular are mediocre Alright, so what about the OG thin and light laptop king? Apple to find out Alex who writes our laptop reviews these days Completely switched to Apple products giving up his pixel 2 and surface laptop for the iPhone XS and MacBook Air Which has finally been updated for 2018 Memory Express's Victoria BC location is now open and this new store offers all the same product selection and quality of service as their others Check out the link below to learn more First impressions last a lifetime and first impressions of the MacBook Air are that well It's probably gonna have a long lifetime. This is a damn well-built machine The aluminum chassis is easily among the stiffest on the market There's virtually no screen flex whatsoever. And although it is thin it's kind of denser than you might expect weighing just under 3 pounds compared to the last version of the air which by the way debuted in 2013 the reduction of the bezels and the way that the glossy black extends right to the edge really ups the sex appeal of this year's Model and you wouldn't feel weird taking it out of your backpack. No matter what the setting Just make sure that while you're putting it in your backpack. You remember your dongles now to be clear I'm not too torn up about the IO. These are both Thunderbolt 3 ports with compatibility for displays, docks, external GPUs Any USB device you could want including charging the MacBook Air itself So I would take these over a type-a and a mini display port any day of the week Microsoft Now let's get back to the screen. It's more than just glossier It addresses every problem with the old MacBook Air design increasing the resolution to 2560 by 1600 that's a taller 16 by 10 aspect ratio for those keeping score at home and They also increased the color gamut making it among the best laptop displays available with an asterisk I Don't expect this to make any difference in fact. I suspect that Apple gives exactly Zero F's what I think but I'm once again disappointed that they Refused to include touchscreen support in their Mac OS and on their laptops at least the touchpad is awesome though and And boy is it ever awesome like I know we always go on about how great Apple's touchpads are but Suck it up PC fanboys. We do it because they are There are a bunch of gestures actually that have been available on Windows for a long time, but I've just Never used them because they don't feel right By contrast after only a couple hours on Mac OS they just become part of the natural flow of using the machine They are so well fought out and like look how big it is Also, how close it is to the keyboard which makes it really easy to thumb operate while you're typing Also supernatural the fingerprint sensor in the power button There is one place that a fingerprint sensor is better than face ID and this is it Apple nailed it like I'm always logged in at the same time the screen turns on after opening this guy up Touch ID is so well implemented here that frankly it feels almost as natural as Windows Hello facial recognition on the surface laptop Unfortunately, there is one area where the MacBook Air can't get close to the surface laptop the keyboard now I don't personally miss the touch bar So I'm not gonna dock any marks there, but these short throw and Potentially short life key switches are just not a great time to type on for extended periods like after a while I actually can get mostly used to them really similar to the MacBook Pro and Credit where credit is due they are really easy to type on in awkward situations like if you're walking around like holding your laptop clickety clacking on it since you don't have to apply a lot of Force and that short throw does make staying steady easier But I still find myself missing more strokes than usual and have a hard time feeling where each key ends and making matters worse Is the lack of a delete key? Okay? Well backspace says delete, but it just goes back because it's a Mac and I know you can do function delete but Man, I miss my dedicated delete key almost as much as my touchscreen when I go to a Mac The part that gets me the most though is that Apple had fantastic laptop keyboards Arguably the best in the game and then now they felt the need to take what is in my mind a step back Now let's take a step back and talk about one of the things that Apple people are always shouting about How was Mac OS and the iPhone and the integration that comes along with them? in short Okay, the lack of Windows snap assist and Mac OS is really annoying one time in particular I had a video conference that and I had to take notes and ended up missing two slides Just trying to get all the darn windows to each take up like exactly half of the screen in the way that's aesthetically pleasing It's funny because I'd always see people on MacBooks with their windows just kind of strewn all over the place like papers on a desk And I just assumed they were bad at computers But it turns out that once you get over about four applications open It can be really difficult to keep things organized and frankly isn't worth the effort With that said iMessage when we weren't running into some kind of random bugs is really nice to have on the desktop It's just that as a non-mac person like if you've made it this long without iMessage and FaceTime for that matter I don't really feel like it adds a ton of value all of my friends use whatsapp hangouts Facebook messenger or WeChat Like I've gotten maybe 30 to 50 messages via SMS this entire calendar year And frankly the disappointing webcam on the MacBook Air made for a very mediocre FaceTime experience as well Overall the best thing about macOS is that everything just seems to work with no babysitting required Spotlight search can't find the camera with any of the obvious keywords But it's otherwise awesome and if you reboot it plunks you right down where you left off You don't need to make sure it's not updating in the background sucking up your battery when you unplug all that sort of thing Like I know a lot of people in my life that could benefit from macOS simply because it's better at crap management than Windows Like I've seen people on Windows machines that are shockingly slow not because the hardware is bad But because of a bunch of junk wear and kind of putting everything in the wrong spot where it's hard to find it Whereas with macOS although you don't get the same degree of control it is harder to totally mangle it So overall if what you plan on doing is mostly productivity and internet based macOS is just pretty darn great the dynamic light and dark themes and surprisingly snappy experience Given the low power processor stand out But then also bring me really nicely to what doesn't stand out about the MacBook Air 2018 It is only available with a dual core CPU when four cores has been the standard in ultrabooks for the last year or so Like it handled a simple model in Fusion 360 but it's at a significant disadvantage compared to competitors Like the Surface Laptop 2, Dell XPS and Lenovo X1 Carbon when it comes to multitasking and multi-threaded workloads The good news is that the dual core low power chip can be basically silently cooled even in such a thin device And it unsurprisingly yields great battery life with this thing lasting a good 10 hours while doing work like editing this script But is it worth the asking price? Well that's another question. Our model here cost an eye watering $2,600 for an ultrabook Mind you it has 16 gigs of RAM and a 1.5 terabyte SSD but even our bang for the buck recommended config comes in at $1,400 That's a lot But Apple kind of sets the bar for the premium thin and light market and with other manufacturers creeping their pricing up over the last few years Honestly it's actually not that far out there anymore So bottom line with most of the laptops that come through our lab we complete the review then pawn it off to the next new employee who needs a computer The MacBook Air 2018? 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