I like the aluminum body a lot. I'm not particularly clumsy, but each of my macbooks ends up with some fall damage at some point over the 5+ years that I have it.

When I used to be assigned a plastic Dell work laptop, I dropped one onto the carpeted floor of my office because I thought it was going into my padded sleeve of backpack and that cracked the case, and broke the screen. I've accidentally yoinked my MBA (last intel one they made) off my desk, and while it dented the body of it, nothing broke. That is now my drum computer, and it gets regularly pelted with drumsticks when my grip tires.

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cadamsdotcom 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Unfortunately dropping your laptop once in 5 years actually does make you too clumsy for a plastic laptop.

	▲	mdasen 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		As someone clumsy, I'm so grateful that my MacBook Air can take a beating. It has one slight dent of about 1mm in the 4 years I've had it and I definitely drop it or knock it off a desk or something a few times a year. I'll take the extra weight of aluminum (0.3lb, 130g). Yes, someone might say the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is 14", but the 13" MacBook Air actually has a 13.6" screen. If I were in the market for a PC laptop, I'd definitely take a look at the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but I'm also not worried about the weight of my MacBook Air. The X1 Carbon Intel ones are on sale right now since Panther Lake will be a huge upgrade coming soon, but even on clearance they aren't cheap. An X1 Carbon with 32GB RAM and 1TB storage (Ultra 7 268V, the cheapest one due to the sale) will cost $1,679 while a similar MacBook Air will cost $1,699 - and the M5 has 48% better single-core performance and 56% better multi-core performance (Geekbench). A 16GB/512GB (Ultra 5 225U) X1 Carbon is $1,538 compared to $1,099 for a MacBook Air - and the M5 has a 74% single and multi core advantage there. Panther Lake might narrow the performance gap, but early indicators don't seem like that's the case. Even the top of the line Ultra X9 388H sees the M5 with a 36% single-core advantage while the Ultra X9 388H gets 3% faster multi-core. And I'm not sure the higher wattage "H" processors work for something like an X1 Carbon. The highest non-H Panther Lake processor (Ultra 7 365) sees the M5 get 51% better single-core and 58% better multi-core. Maybe we'll see better, but it looks like Intel isn't closing the gap in 2026.
	▲	Imustaskforhelp 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Does it? In my case, it was my father who dropped my mac but luckily everything was all safe with tis but a scratch. So perhaps that can be taken into factor as well that its more than one variable. That being said, I am pretty clumsy but I have never dropped any hardware except a dumb phone which I threw out a lot and it was so small and tiny but it never had any problem. And then one day I dropped it from top just a little bit and let it drop/slide inside my bag (like a cushion) and that day it died. I recently asked someone about it and turns out that its battery got inflated.

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Imustaskforhelp 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My father recently dropped my macbook air from the car essentially on concrete bricks.

It has just gotten a single dent for something less than 0.5 cm and its on the side (although this damage was done when the laptop was closed so some damage is just above the laptop's display aluminium shell.

To be honest, its barely visible and everything is working and there was no damage on display or anything else for what its worth.

I usually don't like apple but damn the macbook air is tiny and can take some damage.

Although I am still just a little sad about the damage because the laptop was perfect condition beforehand now that we talked about it but its incredibly better than any other laptop atleast with that thing in mind. Gonna use this laptop for a long time (M1 Air)