Review on the Macbook Air

The build quality of the new MacBook Air is excellent. It’s made of aluminum and does not shear or bend. The chassis feels really solid all around with the weakest points definitely on either side (screen and underbelly). I hope
that Speck or another company will build a thin hard case.

There are two USB ports, one DisplayPort, the power plug, and the standard 3.5mm jack audio out (plus what seems like to be a microphone on the side). Overall, this is an improvement over the previous design. Having two USB ports
is so much more practical and with this design, I can leave my mouse USB connector on at all times.

At two pounds (0.9kg), this design puts to shame most competing computers that weigh an average of 3.3 pounds/1.49kg (Lenovo X100e, Lenovo U150, Toshiba T215D…). That’s a significant weight advantage, and it feels very much like
having an iPad (1.5 pounds) in the bag. Low weight is definitely one of the big advantages of this 11.6? MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air keyboard uses the same chiclet design than the MacBook Pro Series. The Function keys and the arrow keys are a bit smaller, but other than that it feels pretty much the same.

The quality of the keyboard is great. I have unfortunately not been able to identify a PC chiclet keyboard that I like as much (I’m actually a “PC” guy), maybe except for the HP Envy 14? Beats Edition. I typed part of this review
with the MacBook Air. Note that there’s no backlighting option for the keyboard.It’s pretty sad to see that in the computer world, most companies can’t even match the trackpad of a MacBook Air. This is the same glass trackpad
that you can find on the MacBook Pro Series – although just a tad smaller (in height). It’s about the size of an iPhone, and the short design did not bother me at all. I might not be using enough gestures, or maybe that size is simply good enough. I’d bet
on the latter. I noticed that the trackpad was significantly stiffer to click on than the MacBook pro one.

The MacBook Air speakers are surprisingly good, given that they seem to be placed in some natural, or rather, invisible place. It’s about as good or possibly better than on the MacBook Pro 13. I watched a few trailers on the web
and someone who was a few yards away was asking what the music was (it was quiet around us). This is good stuff – especially when you take into account the size of the machine. You can definitely enjoy a movie in a relatively quiet place.
The MacBook Air comes with the same 45W charger that powers the MacBook Pro 13, there’s nothing new here. That also means that external batteries like the HyperMac can be used with this MacBook — at least, that’s my best guess. HyperMac weighs one more lbs,
but you could more than double the Air’s battery life. Not such a bad deal.

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Posted by Kashif Khan on Nov 20 2011. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry