BY
Launched in March 2020, Apple’s latest MacBook Air updated the ultraportable laptop, with the Magic Keyboard and the improved performance from the processor the highlights, along with the retina screen.
Launched in March 2020, Apple’s latest MacBook Air updated the ultraportable laptop, with the Magic Keyboard and the improved performance from the processor the highlights, along with the retina screen.
But if you want to really make full use of the screen, you need to run Windows 10 on your new MacBook Air.
Apple is proud of the screen fitted to the MacBook Air, with the homepage promoting the text rendering, true tone technology, and vibrant colours:
“With a resolution of 2560-by-1600 for over 4 million pixels, the results are positively jaw dropping. Images take on a new level of detail and realism. Text is sharp and clear. And True Tone technology automatically adjusts the white point of the display to match the color temperature of your environment… With millions of colors, everything you see is rich and vibrant.
The MacOS Catalina powered laptop display is punching out 400 nits of brightness. Not as much as the new 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop launched early in May which offers 500 nits. But the display on the MacBook Air is capable of matching the brightness of the MacBook Pro. You just can’t do it with MacOS.
Andreas Osthoff and the team at Notebook Check have been testing the Air, and as part of their testing they “always install Windows [via BaseCamp] to perform additional benchmarks and measurements.” Which makes sense, you want the same baseline when you are going into detail. It also allows the performance and specs of MacOS to be compared to Windows 10. Which is where the display brightness issue was discovered:
“First of all, the two measurements show that the screen is very accurate, independent of the operating system. There is no color cast and the deviations compared to the sRGB reference color space are very small. But you can clearly see the different maximum brightness (column “100”, line “Y” in the lower right table). The value for macOS is 415 cd/m², but the value for Windows is 547 cd/m².”
There you go. If screen brightness is important to you (and when we are allowed bad out into the sun, it will be for many), the answer is simple. Upgrade your MacBook Air to Windows 10 and unlock the full power of the mighty screen.
The bigger question is why this is the case.
The Occam’s Razor answer is more than likely lifespan. The MacBook Air has an backlit screen, and like any component it has a limited life space. That will reduce at a faster rate the when more is demanded of it. Downrating the brightness of the display in MacOS could be a choice by Apple to increase the usable lifespans of the display.
While this is admirable, it’s a choice that Apple has made on your behalf. If you want to decide you would rather a brighter screen for a shorter lifespan – essentially over clocking the screen – surely that should be your choice to make?
It’s clear that the display brightness between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro is a point o differentiation for those comparing the two machines. I can’t help wondering if this difference is down to improved hardware on the MacBook Pro, or a marketing move to separate the two laptops.
Comments