Apple's 2010 MacBook Air (11 & 13 inch) Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 26, 2010 10:08 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Air
- Laptops
The 11
While both models are extremely light, the 11-inch MacBook Air is portable perfection. It’s the closest thing to an iPad with a keyboard (short of an iPad with an actual keyboard). I’m afraid that’s where the comparison ends. Despite what Apple would have you feel, the new MacBook Air is no more an iPad than its predecessor. The size and form factor is really nice however.
Apple won’t call it a netbook, but that’s exactly what the 11.6 inch MacBook Air is: a netbook with much better hardware. You get a full sized keyboard, an old but faster-than-Atom processor and a great screen. If you’re a writer, the 11-inch MacBook Air is the perfect tool just at an imperfect price.
While $999 is much more affordable than the previous generation MacBook Air, it’s at least $400 more than you would expect to pay for a notebook with these hardware specs. We’re talking about 2GB of memory, a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU with 3MB L2 cache and an NVIDIA GeForce 320M integrated graphics chipset.
Using the 11-inch MacBook Air is great. Closed it’s small enough to painlessly carry around and open it’s functional enough to get real work done on. The keyboard is mostly unchanged from the rest of Apple’s lineup.
You do make three sacrifices with the 11-inch’s keyboard: thinner function keys across the top, a not-as-tall trackpad and not as much wrist-rest area. Overall they are worthy tradeoffs as none of them impact typing speed. Despite the smaller than normal trackpad, it’s still much larger than what you get on most similarly sized notebooks from other vendors.
Build quality is of course excellent. The MacBook Air employs Apple’s unibody construction. There’s a removable plate at the bottom of the machine that covers the internals, but the typing/mousing surface is carved out of a single piece of aluminum and is solid.
The weakest link in the design is the hinge, which I feel is actually a bit looser than the hinges in other Apple notebooks. While the display is far from floppy, the hinge isn’t strong enough to keep the display from opening/closing more when faced with sudden movements of the notebook. Picking it up from a desk without closing the lid would sometimes cause the lid to tilt back . I didn’t have the problem of the lid auto closing due to gravity when I used the 11-inch Air while laying down, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that developed over time. In the quest for weight savings sacrifices have to be made. While the rest of the construction is flawless, the hinge isn’t.
The screen is an odd (for Apple) 16:9 ratio 1366 x 768 panel glossy, LED backlit panel. You don’t get the glass bezel from the standard MacBook Pro and as a result the display doesn’t seem quite as glossy. Reflections indoors were minimal at worst, but it’s not a matte screen.
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Z25MN6 - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
Great review. But I have yet to see a review of the new MBA's that *thoroughly* describes the SDHC port. Specifically, can it, in practice, be routinely used as an auxiliary hard drive? Does the SDHC card fit all the way into the body of the computer (like in a Dell Mini 9), or does a portion of it remain sticking out when inserted (like a Dell Mini 10v), leaving it vulnerable? Spare SDHC cards are trivial to carry, and terrific for expanding a small hard drive. For example, movies or music kept on an SDHC card leave a lot of room for programs on a 64gb internal boot drive. Especially with Snow Leopard cutting down on the amount of hard drive space the OS needs relative to programs, there is a lot of creative use (e.g., Photoshop scratch drive) to which a "permanent" SDHC card can put.jintoku - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
I couldn't find a way to contact the authors but am wondering if I can reach them this way. There seem to be multiple displays for the new Macbook Air's. In particular for the 13" one there are at least two, with the above two numbers being revealed by going to System Preferences, Display - Color -> opening the default profile, scrolling down to the bottom and looking at the model info.DarkUltra - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
I wish there were more focus on where and under what circumstances the electrical devices I buy where manufactured. And what impact on the environment is has. And if it uses coltan from african miners that work under very very poor conditions, and support bad militias. There should be a chain of documentation with each product that any online reviewer goes through to see if there are any bad or uncertain/questionable conditions.Please Anand, try to look into it in some of your reviews and write a few words about it. Change the world slowly to a better place :)
jintoku - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
THANKS IN ADVANCE!jedimed - Tuesday, November 2, 2010 - link
In response to a question about, the SD card DOES stick out. It seems to work fairly well, though I haven't speed tested it as yet.billy_kane - Tuesday, November 2, 2010 - link
iPad was pecfect & MBA11 need a bobcat core apuBreakingStrata - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
"If all you do is write, browse the web, write emails and talk on IM - the 11 gets the job done. Ask more of it for long periods of time and I think you’ll be disappointed."Wow. You've just described a $1000 netbook. Granted its nicer looking but also 3x as much. What a joke.
jintoku - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
Please provide this information if you have it. I have a question about the review. Thanks.ChunkAhoy - Friday, November 5, 2010 - link
I find that its lacking gaming benchmarks on Mac OS X.i.e. Left 4 Dead, StarCraft 2, Half-Life.
I'd love to see the difference between the 11.6 and the 13.3 in games.
Beside this little detail, this review is great. Thank you :)
jintoku - Friday, November 5, 2010 - link
I'm wondering which display model their Airs had, as multiple ones with apparently discrepant quality are used in each the 11 and 13 inch models...