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Amazon knocks $100 off the latest MacBook Air

It hasn't dropped this low since the beginning of August.

Engadget

The 2020 MacBook Air is the best version of the notebook that’s come out in the past few years, and now it’s available for $100 less at Amazon. The online retailer knocked the price of the MacBook Air down to $899, which is an all time low and the same sale price that’s available for students and educators on Apple’s website. The step-up model that has 512GB of storage is $100 off as well.

Buy MacBook Air (256GB) at Amazon - $899 Buy MacBook Air (512GB) at Amazon - $1,199

The $899 model is the base MacBook Air, which runs on a 10th-gen Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. You can get a bit more power in the next model up, which is on sale for $1,199 and runs on a 10th-gen Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

One of the things Apple improved in this year’s MacBook Air was the base storage, upping it to 256GB. Even if you paid full price, you’d be getting more storage off the bat, which is a nice perk. But even better is the updated Magic Keyboard on the MacBook Air — gone are the old, controversial butterfly keys, as they’ve been replaced with traditional scissor-switch keys that make typing easier and more comfortable. You’re far less likely to get a stuck key on the MacBook Air, which is a big improvement from the inconsistent butterfly keys found on older Apple notebooks.

We also appreciate the MacBook Air’s excellent trackpad, lovely Retina display and included TouchID sensor. The latter comes without the TouchBar found on MacBook Pros, and that’s probably for the best because the TouchBar a controversial piece of hardware itself. TouchID, though, is quite useful on this laptop as it lets you securely authenticate and log in using your fingerprint.

But you’ll have to live with the scant port selection that comes with many thin-and-light laptops nowadays. The MacBook Air only has two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone jack, so you’ll need a dongle or two to get the most out of it. While battery life is good, lasting roughly 11.5 hours in our testing, but there are other notebooks out there that push battery life even further. If you can live with those tradeoffs, this sale is a good opportunity to grab the latest MacBook Air.

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