Apple MacBook Air (11.6-inch)

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Ports and features



The sides of the wedge-shaped notebook showcase what inputs there are; on the right is one USB 2.0 port and one mini-DisplayPort...port. On the left is a second USB 2.0 port, the MagSafe power adapter, combo headphones/microphone/remote control jack and an integrated microphone.

It's unfortunate that there isn't any high-speed storage for the MacBook Air - given its limited storage capacity (64GB, in this instance), USB 3.0 or even eSATA would be a welcome addition. Apple would probably never add an eSATA port to any of their notebooks, however, and USB 3.0 will likely be added in the next revision.

Fortunately, the MacBook Air does fully support 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Bluetooth 3.0 would have been another nice addition as the protocol allows for much faster transfer speeds (since it essentially uses Wi-Fi).

The 13-inch MacBook Air also gives users an SDXC card reader on the right-hand side of the laptop. That slot is omitted from the smaller model, to pretty much universal frustration.


Performance, benchmarks and gaming



One of the big criticisms of the current MacBook Air platform is that it uses Core 2 Duo chips at its core. Taking a step back, however, it appears to be a pretty reasonable decision. Until Intel's Sandy Bridge platform rolls around (presumably), the integrated graphics offered by the chipmaker are...less than stellar.

Unfortunately, the thermal envelope of the MacBook Air is unable to support both integrated and discrete graphics - a necessity if Apple had chosen something like the Core i3-330UM. Using the NVIDIA MCP89 chipset and associated GeForce 320M graphics, (a custom part for Apple based on the more powerful GeForce 335M found in laptops like the M11x) Apple is able to get respectable graphics performance and adequate battery life while maintaining the MBA's profile.

Even though the Core 2 Duo SU9400 is only clocked at 1.4GHz, it remains a surprisingly robust platform capable of handling some complex tasks.

The flash-based storage found inside of the MacBook Air was given a substantial amount of talktime at Apple's press event. While the marketing team in Cupertino would like the world to believe that Apple has done something incredible, using the "same flash memory" found inside of the highly-successful iPad, it's really just an SSD designed like a stick of RAM.

At least it's fast, which is why the MacBook Air has such speedy suspend and wake states. While the OS X install responds in just about 2 seconds upon opening the lid, a similar Windows 7 installation varied from between 3 and 5 seconds.

One of the more exciting aspects to the MacBook Air, even the lower-powered 11.6-inch version, is the fact that it stands to be a pretty capable little gaming notebook (for its class). While gamers shouldn't expect the same results as those given by the previously mentioned Alienware M11x, the Air can handle itself in a pinch.

Both Left 4 Dead 2 and Call of Duty: World at War were run at the Air's native 1366x768 resolution, with AA and AF turned off and settings at medium and normal, respectively.

While the Air should also have no trouble playing local HD content (specifically, in a GPU-accelerated player), it will stutter a bit on the various online options. YouTube content played back smoothly at 720p and even at 1080p there weren't any slowdowns (thanks to the NVIDIA GPU) but it was clearly not as smooth.


Heat and noise



While the MacBook Air does have a cooling fan, you wouldn't know it. Under normal loads, the notebook is silent, with the fan either off or running at extremely low speeds. As load increases, so will the fan speed, though it became really noticeable only during the benchmarking process, and not even during a little light gaming session.

The same benchmarking saw the notebook get worryingly hot, however, with nearby vent temperatures reaching up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Even then, only the area close to the vent got warm, with most of the keyboard remaining below 100 degrees and the trackpad dipping below ninety. Under typical loads, the keyboard barely warmed up at all.


Battery Life



Apple switched to non-user replaceable batteries some time ago, and while there are always critics, most customers appear unruffled. With the addition of lithium-ion polymer batteries and their associated extension in usable battery life, it's often a non-issue.

The 11.6-inch MacBook Air offers a 35Whr li-poly battery, while its larger 13-inch sibling ups the capacity to 50 watt-hours. At an estimated 5 hour battery life, the 11.6-inch MacBook Air is actually Apple's shortest-running notebook in production.

In our tests, we managed to eke out 6 hours and fifteen minutes on the battery, running with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and backlighting set to fifty percent brightness. Admittedly, testing was limited to some light web browsing - no real media or computationally-taxing programs were run. Performance will vary, but taking the backlight down even further could make for some interesting battery life numbers.

A note: battery testing was done inside of Mac OS X; Windows is widely reported to suffer from worse battery life (likely due in part to unoptimized drivers from Apple).


Conclusion


While there is something about the Apple/Microsoft dichotomy that seems to bring out the worst in tech aficionados, it's hard to deny that the new MacBook Airs, especially the smaller, 11.6-inch model, have style. Holding one makes it easy to believe Apple's rhetoric about the future of computing: all solid state, no optical drives, no power cycling, standby times and more.

Despite the fact that it's pretty, and useful, and even pretty useful, it's still an Apple laptop. That means that buying into the MacBook Air means paying a little Apple tax - especially noticeable when compared to alternatives such as the Alienware M11x or Acer TimelineX 1830T.

Still, Apple did well what Apple usually does well: they made a gorgeous computer. In today's increasingly cloud-centric world, that might just be enough.

Pros:

Small, sleek and light
Can run games in a pinch
Best-in-class trackpad
Full-sized keyboard

Cons:

No Ethernet networking
No USB 3.0, no SD card slot
No backlit keyboard

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[francisfred]

my brother has one of these for a year now and the battery is not working properly anymore,it is very fast to drain..