Review / I lived with Apple’s MacBook Air for a year – and it’s worth every cent of its sky-high price

Apple's flagship laptop – the MacBook Air – is a gorgeous, powerful, sleek device. It's absurdly thin, but it packs in a gorgeous 13-inch Retina display. It's got a smaller frame than ever before, but it's got the largest trackpad on any MacBook. Even the keyboard is brand new.

After one year of living with Apple's newest MacBook Air, I remain convinced: it's worth the high price tag. Here’s why

First up: what I bought

The base-level MacBook Air now costs US$1,099 before tax – when I bought it, in late 2018, it started at US$1,199 – that’s US$100 I’ll never see again. If you add RAM, like I did, it costs an extra US$200. I felt pretty comfortable with the CPU, and I refused to pay US$200 for a measly 128GB of extra internal storage, but I relented on the RAM upgrade.

I wanted this computer to last at least four years, and 8GB of RAM simply wouldn't cut it. I upgraded to 16GB of RAM, and if I could've added even more, I probably would've. After tax, I paid just shy of US$1,450. That was on the high end of what I was willing to pay for a new laptop, but I'm glad I did. All that said, the base-level MacBook Air is more than capable. I got more RAM because it fits my needs. It's entirely likely you don't need to spend the extra cash.

What's so great about it? For starters, the screen is insanely impressive.

It wasn't until I handed my MacBook Air to a friend to use that I realised how impressive the updated screen is. He was sitting next to me on a couch, and I was talking to him from the side while he used the computer. Despite the fact that I was looking at the screen from the side, no matter how thin I made the viewing angle, I could see fine details on the screen.