Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I bought the new CHEAP Walmart MacBook”.
Walmart now sells discount MacBooks., So for the first time ever, they’re selling brand new MacBooks directly on Walmart.com.. Now in the past, they’ve had the restored MacBooks, but as we’ve determined, those are always not necessarily the greatest move.. However, they love to advertise the MacBook Air for only $ 699., So this is the original M1 MacBook Air., But up until very recently, this was selling on the Apple site for $ 1,000 and yet Walmart are selling these things for 699.. So is a $ 699 MacBook from Walmart actually worth it Well, there’s only one way to find out. Wow, that’s some fast shipping. All right.
Let’S see what we get., That is a MacBook, my friends and that looks very much brand new. We’ve got ourselves. I chose the Space Gray MacBook Air..
Now this is the base configuration as you would expect for $ 300 less than it was a few weeks ago.. So this is the 13-inch M1 Air, with eight gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage., And this is the older style SSD, which is actually faster than the M2 MacBook Air, because this uses two chips instead of one.. So my thought here is that this is actually still going to be a very usable system.. Oh, that was very pleasant., And there we go. A brand new MacBook Air. Also have the dinky little charger.. It’S only like what 30 watts, which seems just absurdly slow., All right. Let’S fire it up.
Is it. Is it dead, This MacBook, with probably sitting around for so long, that the battery died. ( Austin laughing ) There? We go. Just need a little bit of encouragement..
So, if you’re unfamiliar, this is the M1 MacBook Air which has the older school design.. So it’s still the wedge, which I actually know a lot of people are a fan of the wedge design.. I do personally prefer the M2 and the M3 from a design standpoint because you actually get MagSafe in addition to the dual Thunderbolt ports. And that extra port is really nice, because, if you’re charging this device, you only have one extra port., It’s usable.
But it’s nice to have a little bit extra., But other than that, though, it’s actually not gon na be a huge difference.. So we do have Touch ID. We have the keyboard.
We have the very nice Force Touch track pad and the display, while a little bit smaller than the current MacBook Airs, it’s only like in half an inch difference or something.. It’S quite minimal. For the next few days, I’m going to live with this MacBook Air.
As my main machine to tell you exactly is a $ 699 MacBook Air actually worth it. ( upbeat music, ), So I’ve just finished setting up in the MacBook Air.. It’S only been a few hours, but I do have some initial thoughts.. This thing still feels very modern.
Now that shouldn’t be a surprise, I mean it’s only a few years old but, like I think, there’s this tendency to expect that a three four five year old system should feel old and ancient, and that’s the way that things used To be., But I’ll tell you the difference between this MacBook, which came out in 2020 and the brand new 2024 M3 MacBook Air is really pretty minimal.. I mean yes, that M3 is a little bit snappier, but, like we don’t see the kind of huge leaps that we used to when you would go from like a sixth to like ninth gen Intel processor or something like that. Like just the speed and the snappiness Feels very very solid., But at 699 I don’t really care that I’ve only got eight gigs of RAM.. I know that that is going to be fine..
Are you gon na run into the occasional bottleneck if you’re doing a heavier task? Yes, but a lot less so than you would think.. I did a video on the brand new M3 MacBook Pro that came out in 2023 and that system at $ 1,600 still ships with eight gigs of RAM., That’s egregious., But even though I don’t wan na give them a free pass, it’s still a very usable system And it is doubly so when you’re spending less than half of that. Day two with the MacBook and things have been going pretty well.. So the first thing that’s jumped out to me is the battery life.. It is so refreshing.. I have not actually daily MacBook Air in a while, and especially with Apple Silicon. I’Ve. Like last night, I spent like three hours doing like emails streaming, music that kinda stuff, and I only burned like 25 % of the battery., Like it’s so nice to not have to worry about the charger.. Now I have finally just plugged it in about 24 hours. After I unboxed it, and it’s just been a battery champ. On top of that, I have been editing with this., So this timeline is pretty indicative of what I normally do, which it’s a 34 second 4K YouTube Short and it’s holding up pretty well.. Now I will say that you will notice a little bit of a lack of performance if you’re coming from a higher end system, but not at $ 700 right. So, like I’m, throwing in all the effects. Color correction, again it’s 4K. And while yes, I have to render a couple of smaller things, especially some of the more like demanding effects. It’S not that much worse than my normal setup and it’s very workable.. I’M sitting here watching Marques’ video on the M3 MacBook Air when he mentioned something I wasn’t aware: of. Best Buy now selling this laptop for $ 649 undercutting Walmart by a full 50 bucks..
I liked this laptop at $ 700, but for 650 bucks I mean like, has there ever been a brand new MacBook? That is not wildly out of date that was available for less than $ 700.. If there was, let me know the comments, but I cannot think of a single one.. So at this point I’ve spent the entire week with the MacBook and I have a lot of thoughts. Now when you look at this as a thousand dollar laptop.
There are some trade offs, but those trade offs are very different at 650 or $ 700.. So take something simple like the inputs, the keyboard and track pad are pretty much identical to the much more expensive MacBooks., And while the keyboard is pretty good, the track pad remains to be the absolute best in the business. Touch. Id is nice and the screen is quite solid, considering the price point.. So no, it’s not going to be 120 hertz in ProMotion, but it is still very, very solid.. It’S high resolution.
It’S gon na look a lot better than most other laptop displays at this price. Point. Now the speakers are a little bit of a low point, I’ll be honest. They’re fine., But especially if you compare it to something like a MacBook Pro, it is a huge difference.. I mean those things sound phenomenal. The MacBook sounds average., So my use case is not incredibly demanding..
The things that I’ve done with the MacBook this week include editing a little bit., So you know again some Shorts, nothing, that’s super huge and demanding, but doing some editing on it. I’Ve actually done some gaming, so I just recently spent some time playing StarCraft II.. So obviously this is a game that is very old right, We’re talking about something that came out probably a decade ago, if not longer.. Now what I’m actually seeing for performance is not perfect.. So it’s definitely I’m lagging just a little bit here, but I am running on high settings and it’s on a fanless MacBook.. So look.
No one should buy a MacBook for gaming right. It’S just it’s not a good move ever for any reason.. But what is nice is to be able to play a little game every once in a while. And that’s the way that I honestly that’s the way I game period..
But the thing is when we’re talking about a $ 650 computer gaming is something that you will probably wan na do from time to time. And while there’s a fairly limited selection of games that are available on Mac, they do exist.. You know it’s funny, gaming. On Mac is in a really weird spot in 2024, because most games, of course, have never run on Mac., But the thing is there actually are some signs of life here.. There are a number of games that are coming out.. You know some of the AAA games that are on the Mac. App Store, show up every once in a while. In fact, actually subscribe to the website and ring-a-ling that ding-a-ling button, I’m actually working on a gaming on Mac, video, very shortly.. So there’s a lot to talk about here., But the nice thing is that, even though the M1 Air is the absolute lowest end configuration that could possibly run Apple Silicon, as we found out last year, when I tried to game on a Mac, the MacBook Air base Model is still pretty decent., Obviously not a gaming computer.. So with the M1 and the M3 MacBook Airs, they use dual NAND SSDs, which are much much faster than the single NAND SSD in the M2 MacBook Air, which means that, ironically, the cheapest MacBook Air actually has tied for the fastest SSD of all of them..
That isn’t a huge problem unless you’re again doing some crazy over the top workloads.. What is a bigger problem is just the fact that 256 gigs of storage is not a lot.. It’S fine! If you use your computer like a glorified Chromebook. – And I say that with no shade – I use my computer, it’s kinda like a glorified Chromebook., I mean yes, I do some video editing.
I do some things, but when I’m doing that, I’m usually working off like an external drive and I can actually live inside the 256 gigs of storage fairly easy for my workflow., I mean I do like having a larger drive, but it’s not incredibly important. And it Depends on your workflow right, Because the problem with this MacBook is that, first of all, while they’re here, they’re here and as soon as they’re sold out, these are gone right. They’Re, not gon na restock them as far as they know.. So look at this MacBook Air..
I think, first of all, it compares really favorably compared to the last time when I looked at this when it came out in 2020.. At the time Apple Silicon was brand new. And while there’s a ton of potential, most apps really weren’t optimized.. But at this point pretty much everything is right.
And the few apps that are and specifically games that are not optimized, still run very well under Rosetta.. So performance is a giant thumbs up.. Is it a slight bit slower than an M2 or an M3 MacBook? Yes, yes, it is.. Are you going to notice unless you put them side by side, you absolutely will not., While you might scoff that I’m talking about a base model, 3-year-old MacBook Air, that doesn’t have a fan and eight gigs of RAM and like yeah, that might not be the system For you, but for an enormous amount of people out there, this is not only the best MacBook. I think it is hard to argue. This is not the best value MacBook that has ever existed., But on top of that, it’s good for just most people period..
This. Just sort of makes me sort of wish that Apple could find a way of actually selling, even if they just kept the M1 MacBook around and gave it a price cut. Like, even if they had to sell these things for, like $ 800 MSRP or whatever, like This is such a phenomenal system, but I understand why they can’t do that, because if this exists at 650 or 700 or even $ 800, there’s no reason to buy the $ 1,000 MacBook.. There’S no reason to buy the $ 1,100 MacBook..
There’S no reason to almost buy the $ 1,600 M3 MacBook Pro like you have to go to the high-end Pro machines to have any significant difference in the experience that you have with these devices.. So the problem with the M1 MacBook Air is a nefarious one.. It’S too good to live, and that is a dangerous place to be .