How Good is a $70 2014 MacBook Air in 2024?

Hi everyone, today I am giving my thoughts after 2 months using the 2014 Macbook Air as a throw-in-a-bag device. Huge shout out to @lukemiani for the inspiration with the Macbook videos and also @DawidDoesTechStuff for being my favorite tech channel. I look forward to making some more in the future.

Brayden

[OPM_Viking]

Picked up a 2013 i7 8gb version with a new battery for $120. After cleaning it, repasting and adding a line of thermal pads on the heat pipe. It runs like a dream. Pushed to 1000/1950 Geekbench 6 score running Sonoma - 6 hours watch time of YT or other streaming services. I now carry this one around in my backpack as my everyday computer, leaving my 16" M1 Max at home. Half the weight and no worries damaging it 👍

[iismellgood]

Thank you, I'm getting the same laptop, im sooo not an Apple person, I'm getting it for 2 reasons, writing screenplays and the cool lit-up apple logo lol

[bmwman]

Nice laptop! I have a 2012 Air very similar to this one and I patched Big Sur on it because it still supports modern browsers without eating into my CPU. These are excellent laptops tbh. All I have is $35 in parts into this. $30 for a battery and $5 for thermal paste.

[prestotechreviews]

I acquired a 2014 base macbook air with 4gb ram recently. It is my secondary throw in the bag laptop as I don't want to lug around my 16 in m1 max 2021 macbook pro.

It has been doing the job wonderfully. I have it running macOS Sonoma with opencore and Windows 11 via bootcamp with a workaround and it does the job great! Now I mean it is slow but for documents and web browsing it does the job.

As long as you have patience and keep your expectations in check, it will do the job well!

[EmL-kggn]

Thanks for this review! I used to have one of these (idk what year) but I broke it and I’ve missed it ever since. I saw one secondhand so it’s good to know that it would still work for me!!!

[Abcdexf]

Use the same MacBook Air as my secondary laptop. I got it in 2014. Recently I completely cleaned it, set it back to factory settings and the updated it to Big Sur. I use chrome instead of Safari as I have the experience that it is a bit faster. I have no problems with video streaming like youtube, netflix and prime. Email, Word, Excel etc. run normally. Windows laptops from that era are mostly not comparable. Usually really slow even with hardware upgrades and resets. Apple might charge a premium, but when it comes to Laptops it is really worth it. My MacBook Air is through 1500 charge cycles and has 91% capacity left. For more demanding tasks I use my MacBook Pro, but I don't want to carry it around every time and this old Air is a good Browsing and light working laptop.

[Jelamskits]

I am still using it, infact watching this on one. Honestly not a bad machine, though would upgrade to the M3 air soon.

[frankborja]

I bought that MacBook new back in the day. Still running great on its second battery which is decent also. Good pick up for vids, emails, browsing and documents. The wife inherited it after I picked up the Air 15".

[Somebodythatoverthinks]

recently got 2017 MBA for college I am satisfied with it.

[DerekDavis]

People always say that Macs retain their value, and fetch good prices years later.

70 dollars for Macbook Air? o m g

[anthony]

Great Video dude, Keep up the good work!

[IsReal]

Recently got a 2015 11 inch air, was able to install Monterey right away in the upgrade area.

[johnwilson]

I'm watching this on my 2014 MB Air. I'm awaiting a new SDD for it. Its a great little surfbox, I've upgraded it to Sonoma and it works very well.

[hoangtrieu]

i have the same configure running on Monterey (using OCLP) and personally it performs better than Big Sur with less stuttering animations. The best part of this 10yo is the keyboard and the speaker

[hahahayoukia]

Wow your last video is 7 years ago, what took you so long to upload next one?
anyway I do like this retro review. The old macbook air are just so classic

My first dream macbook model is 2017 macbook pro
Back then I was study in a graphic design high diploma program. Most of my classmate was using 2017 macbook pro 13" it looks and feels amazing!
while I was using a Thinkpad 480(not bad tho)

One year ago I was finally bought my first real macbook
It's a 14" Macbook pro M1pro happily in use!

[songsan]

Got a 2014 MBA around 2017 and stopped using it around 2019 and put in storage. Took it out last week and it still runs great. Swapped out the old battery back in 2019 and the charge is only like 16 so the battery is going to last for a few more years.

When I got it have a 500GB NVME so it have plenty of space with Big Sur. Unless I want to change it to 1TB not much upgrade could be done. 8GB of memory and is soldered in. Wished they would allow upgrading additional memory modules.

[sadie]

I have this laptop and was running out of storage and I didn't want to buy any external storage so I bought a 2020 Air. I still kept this old one, deleted everything on there, installed Big Sur, and now mainly use it for streaming.

[jhowie]

i still have my 11inch macbook air 2014. still works.

[davetech]

Lol, I've had mine since retail. I outfitted it not too long ago with a 500GB Crucial SSD using an adapter. It's still convenient being so portable! However, It lost support after Big Sur and can't receive further upgrades. It will struggle with more intensive tasks and gets warm sometimes but all in all? Still a solid laptop for basic tasks and a way better deal than a Chromebook.

[LYkOn-]

nice little laptop, i have a 100€ macbook pro i5 2011 16 gigs of ram and ssd and is so nice and well made