Following the iPad Pro reviews, the MacBook Air review embargo has lifted today – and they make for surprising reading.

I fully expected the reviews to grumble about the $200 price hike over the old MacBook Air, and over how long it took Apple to update the machine, but conclude that this is clearly the best choice for a typical MacBook user. Some did reach that conclusion, but a surprising number said that you might be better off instead paying the extra $100 for the base model 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar.

The tone of almost every MacBook Air review is muted. Most feel this is the machine Apple should have launched years ago, and that where Apple once led the ultra-portable market, today it’s merely keeping pace with it …

Because as much as the MacBook Air is night-and-day better than the old one, we no longer live in a world where the Air is the small and light machine, and the Pro the powerful but heavy one. As The Verge’s Dieter Bohn put it:

So before you rush out and replace your old MacBook Air with the new one, you might want to think about what’s important to you.

Is it […] like a 13-inch MacBook Pro (sans Touch Bar), just with cheaper parts? After all, if you set the latter down next to this new Air, you can barely tell them apart.

With that caveat, let’s get into the reviews …

CNBC

CNBC says this is the machine MacBook Air fans have been waiting for, but not a Pro.

CNET

CNET says that the new form factor and screen are welcome, but you’re paying a significant premium now for a machine with a still-limited processor.

People like me have been turned off by the lower-powered, small and more expensive MacBook. And I don’t need the power or want to pay the higher price of the MacBook Pro. This sits right in the middle, and gives consumers almost everything they loved about earlier MacBook Airs, but with a beautiful new display and improved performance.

Macworld

Macworld sees it as a slightly upgraded 12-inch MacBook, rather than a whole new MacBook Air.

Do you get better performance than before? Yes. Should you expect more CPU power from a $1,199 laptop that weighs 2.7 pounds and has some serious fans? Also yes.

For an extra $100, the basic 13-inch MacBook Pro really is much more powerful in CPU performance terms.

Mashable

Mashable’s MacBook Air review concludes the new machine is good but not great.

Retina and Touch ID are wonderful additions, but everything else seems like it’s just playing catch-up on a product that had fallen way behind the times despite holding on to its thousand-dollar price tag […]

If you’re familiar with the 12-inch MacBook, using the new MacBook Air makes it immediately obvious that this is a slightly updated and scaled-up version of that model, with the “Air” name attached. If you’ve been waiting for years for Apple to finally re-imagine the MacBook Air in a way that will once again revolutionize the thin-and-light laptop market, you’re going to be disappointed to find that it has only been brought up to the standards of other modern Mac laptops, with all the good and bad that goes with that.

SixColors

SixColors sees the new machine as the default choice for MacBook buyers.

That’s almost never too heavy a lift for my quad-core MacBook Pro, but it was a definite workout for the dual-core Air. About an hour into the day, as my Chrome tabs started multiplying, I heard the cooling fan kick in […] Most of the time the MacBook Air managed to keep up with my actions, but here and there you could tell it was struggling: an extra second to switch between apps, a touch more confusion about the resolution of an external monitor, a spinning beach ball lasting longer than usual. Not deal-breakers, by any means, but as they add up, they get more noticeable […]

If the new MacBook Air came in at the same price as the old one, it would be a steal. Sure, you pay for the privilege of being able to use macOS on the Apple ecosystem. But in years past that also meant access to cutting-edge features and design. As pretty as the MacBook Air is, there’s nothing that innovative about it. In today’s Apple, it seems, privilege amounts to just staying current.

TechCrunch

TechCrunch said in its MacBook Air review that the one thing this machine does do is render the 12-inch MacBook obsolete – but not the entry-level MacBook Pro.

If you’re shopping for a Mac laptop, start with the MacBook Air. Want a cheaper model? The old Air is there for as long as it lasts. Want something even smaller and lighter, and are willing to trade some power, port flexibility, and money for it? The MacBook is for you. Want something more powerful, and are willing to take on a slightly heavier and more expensive device? The 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar is for you. Want even more power? The 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros offer numerous opportunities to upgrade specs and spend more money.

If there’s any place where the MacBook Air has regressed (beyond the $200 increase in base price), it’s in its status as a consumer laptop that could have its specs boosted into something resembling a pro laptop. That’s how I used my MacBook Air, and I’m a little disappointed that it’s no longer built for that use case—but for $100 more I can buy a MacBook Pro that still fits that scenario.

Still, Apple has placed the MacBook Air back where it spent the first part of this decade: firmly at the center of the Apple laptop universe. It’s not the cheapest or fastest or lightest laptop, but it’s the lowest-priced Retina Mac and it’s powerful and flexible enough to serve the needs of the broad audience for consumer Macs. The new geographic center of the Mac is once again where it’s been for most of this decade: It’s the MacBook Air.

TechRadar

TechRadar’s angle is that the new MacBook Air is the cheapest way to get a Retina display.

A quick glance at the above graphic really highlights the gulf between the Air and Pro, though the new chips do mark an upgrade over the 2017 MacBook’s single- and multi-core scores of 3,527 and 6,654. The new silicon is plenty zippy for most users’ daily tasks, but if you need more out of your system — be it for gaming or resource-intensive tasks like video edit — it’s worth the jump to the Pro.

The Verge

The Verge, as mentioned in the intro, raised the question of whether you should buy this or the base model MacBook Pro for $100 more. If you do decide to get this, it’s a very capable machine, but it’s not a Pro.

Okay, it’s not the $999 MacBook Air you were hoping for, but the MacBook Air 2018 price makes this technically Apple’s most affordable laptop at $1,119 (£1,199). It starts at $200 (£200) more than before […]

The new MacBook Air 2018 is smaller, lighter and more powerful, fitting into the modern computing landscape just as neatly. And it still comes at a fairly affordable price – for a MacBook.

Wall Street Journal

The WSJ says that the update is three years late, and has turned the MacBook Air from a leader to a follower.

If you’re hoping you’ll be able to upgrade and get way faster video editing or process a ton of RAW photos at once, get a MacBook Pro. Those kinds of tasks will bring this Air to a chug and spin up those fans. I have found it to be more capable and powerful than the 12-inch MacBook, but, again, the difference is not as big as I’d hoped […]

But if you were hoping that lightning would strike twice and this new MacBook Air would be as revolutionary as the old MacBook Air, well, it’s not. It’s basically a MacBook that finally includes all of the stuff that has been happening with laptops for the past few years. It is on par with the rest of the laptop world, but it hasn’t moved beyond it. Sometimes that means the fan is going to spin up on you.

Wired

Wired echoed the view that the new MacBook Air is a catch-up model, not one that leaps ahead of the market.

The bad news? It’s three years late. Once the leader, the Air is now the follower, and the competition is pulling ahead in features, ergonomics and battery life. While there’s a lot to love about the Air, there is still a lot to be desired […]

Hate is the right word to describe my feelings on the 128GB of storage that comes with the $1,199 entry-level model of the Air. Not only does the laptop cost $200 more than its predecessor, but it starts with an amount of storage that was paltry even four years ago. It’s a blatant upsell, just like iCloud storage and 16GB iPhones.

If you’re in search of a new Mac, the Air is [however] the best choice. I’ve ordered one already. If you need more power, go on up to a higher-level Pro—the entry-level model doesn’t have Touch ID or the improved keyboard.

Check out also a test of how the new MacBook Air handles 4K video editing.

The computer is not particularly innovative. Its chiseled build, high-resolution display, eighth-generational Core i5 processor, long-ish battery life, quiet keyboard, larger trackpad, and fingerprint sensor are not breaking any new ground. They’re not new on Apple products, and they’re not new on laptops in general […]

Apple has heard the calls for a newer, better MacBook Air, and it has answered. Thank goodness for that. But one might get the sneaking suspicion, as she stares at the gorgeous, liquid-looking display of this new machine, that such a laptop could have arrived two years ago. Or more. The new MacBook Air is not pure innovation; it’s an incantation composed to make you think it is.

Once you’ve read a MacBook Air review or three, let us know in the comments whether any of them have changed your view of the machine.

Photo: Zlata Ivleva/Mashable