Finding the best laptop for photo editing doesn't necessarily mean the most expensive model on the market. You don’t need a powerful computer to make basic edits to photos, such as cropping, resizing and applying simple filters. The best Mac laptop for most people is the 2018 MacBook Air.It’s fast enough for the things that most people use a computer for—Web browsing, working on documents, even light photo editing—and it has an excellent high-resolution screen, a great trackpad, enough battery life to get most people through a day of work, and a (relatively) reasonable price.

BestMacBookiMore2019

You'd be hard-pressed to find any website that does as much deep-dive research into everything about Apple's Mac notebook lineup than iMore. We run every model, ever version through their paces (and then some) to determine which is the best MacBook for the average person and which one is perfect for the pros. Our best overall pick is the MacBook Air. With Touch ID, a retina display, and sleek and slim design, this is the one to beat.

Best Overall: MacBook Air

With a major update in 2018, the MacBook Air now has a faster processor, Touch ID, a Retina display, and is still thin enough to fit into a manila envelope.

The Retina display specs are 2560 x 1600 at 227ppi with an sRBG color gamut, and the bezels are slim, providing as much screen landscape as possible on a 13-inch Mac laptop.

Though you don't get the much-loved MagSafe charging port, you do get, in its place, two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports along with the 3.5mm headphone jack. That means 40Gbps high-speed data transfer so you can move photos, videos, and huge documents between hard drives or other computers lickety-split.

The MacBook Air also now supports Touch ID for biometric security. Not only do you use it to unlock your MacBook Air, but also to pay for things online that use Apple Pay (it's such a time saver).

Pros:

Retina display
High-speed data transfer
Touch ID
Affordable
12-hour battery life

Cons:

Only two Thunderbolt 3 ports
previous-generation processor (8th-gen)

Best Overall

MacBook Air

The perfect Mac laptop for most people.

The MacBook Air has the perfect balance of features and affordability. As the lowest-price Retina display Mac in the laptop lineup, you're getting a hard-working computer without paying the premium price of the rest of the MacBook lineup.

Best value: 13-inch MacBook Pro (two Thunderbolt 3 ports)

The lower-priced 13-inch MacBook Pro is feature-rich without being too much computer for the average person's needs. It's got the highest-quality Retina display with 3DPI wide-color gamut, two high-speed Thunderbolt 3 ports for 40Gbps data transfer, and an ultra-fast processor chip. If you don't need more than two Thunderbolt 3 ports, support for heavy graphics, or daily lengthy video rendering, the smaller MacBook Pro has the best feature-to-price ratio, making it the best value of the MacBook lineup.

Pros:

Portable
Ultra-fast storage
High-speed data transfer
Retina Display

Best value

13-inch MacBook Pro (two Thunderbolt 3 ports)

The biggest bang for your buck.

When it comes to portability, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is just right. It's got the power of a top-of-the-line computer in a lightweight body you can take anywhere.

Best for pros: 15-inch MacBook Pro

For the pro on the go, there's the 15-inch MacBook Pro. This workhorse of a laptop can support up to 8 cores of Intel's latest Coffee Lake refresh processor chip with turbo boosts of up to 5.0GHz and SSD read speeds of up to 3.2Gbps. It's got four Thunderbolt 3 ports, the most in the entire Mac laptop line, and can be spec'd out to as much as 32GB of memory and a 4TB SSD hard drive with Radeon Pro Vega 20 graphics with 4GB of HBM2 memory. It's fast. It's powerful. It'll sing for you while it renders your videos (not literally).

Pros:

Latest Intel processor (9th-gen)
Improved keyboard
Advanced GPU
Up to 8 cores
Touch ID
Retina display
True Tone

Best for pros

15-inch MacBook Pro

A pro laptop for the pro user.

If you need the most power and the best performance with the option of mobility and are willing to pay the premium price, the 2019 15-inch MacBook Pro is your pick.

Best for Versatility: 13-inch MacBook Pro (4 Thunderbolt 3 ports)

The four Thunderbolt 3 port 13-inch MacBook Pro starts about $500 higher than the two Thunderbolt 3 port model, but those extra ports may be the most important thing you'll need. It's got the highest-quality Retina display with 3DPI wide-color gamut, four high-speed Thunderbolt 3 ports for 40Gbps data transfer, and an ultra-fast processor chip. If you're going to be plugging in more than two peripherals that need Thunderbolt 3's fast data transfer capabilities, you're going to want to spend the extra money on those extra ports.

Pros:

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Portable
Ultra-fast storage
High-speed data transfer
Retina Display

Best for Versatility

13-inch MacBook Pro (four Thunderbolt 3 ports)

Versatility at a lower price.

When it comes to versatility, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with four Thunderbolt 3 ports offers more flexibility for your dollar. You get high-speed data transfer from all four ports.

Bottom line

Because the MacBook Air has everything most people need for daily computer use tied up nicely in a small package, and because it supports Touch ID for biometric security and Apple Pay, it's our pick for the best MacBook in 2019. The fact that it's also the least-expensive Retina Display MacBook is just icing on the cake.

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Of course, if you're looking for something with more power, but don't need the fastest, most powerful processor and graphics, the 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar has the most specs for its price, making it our pick for the best value.

Credits — The team that worked on this guide

Lory Gil is iMore's managing editor and has extensive knowledge of the MacBook lineup. Though she doesn't own every single MacBook ever, she's got a pretty decent-sized pile building up.

Rene Ritchie is iMore's resident Apple analyst and has studied every aspect of every MacBook. He puts his MacBooks through their paces and knows exactly what each one's limits are.

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