Apple Macbook Air Review

 I think there are three laptops on the market that look really stylish: Asus’s Zenbook, Samsung’s Series 9 and the Apple MacBook Air. The first of these is rather shiny, brushed metal unit the looks ostentatiously beautiful and now runs Windows 8 in all its glory; the second is implausibly slim, but for now lacks the touchscreen that Windows 8 needs to perform properly. Other, new PC ‘ultrabooks’ all hover around a similar standard. The Macbook Air, however, hasn’t changed since it was launched in 2010, lacks a really great display and a touchscreen and has a bezel round the edge of its screen that is starting to look bloated. It is, however, the best by quite some distance.

This is because of a unique combination of price, weight, solidity, durability and battery life. And above all, style. It is that rare thing that only Apple has mastered: ubiquitous without having lost its lustre. Familiarity has not bred contempt

There is now a new Macbook Air on the market, but you wouldn’t know it to look at it. New microphones, moving from mono to a new dual arrangement that offers noise cancelling, are the only visible change. And indeed, performance is largely unchanged too: using new Intel processors offer lower clock-speeds but almost identical performance in real-world use.

The massive shift, however, is in battery life. The 13” model claims 12 hours, and the 11” model I used claims up to nine. In practice, the numbers don’t matter too much: it delivers on what Apple calls “all-day battery life”. The company cites the example of watching movies, but that’s more likely, surely, to happen on a tablet or laptop with a better display if that’s your thing. The Air is a workhorse for people who want to get stuff done, so long as it’s not so high-powered that a Macbook Pro is required. If only Apple could improve the iPhone 5's battery to a similar extent.

 he new Air offers improved graphics thanks to Intel’s new Core processors, better wifi and solid-state storage. All of these are nice fillips, but none is a major alteration to the package. Mac OS X continues to offer superb, intuitive features from Airdrop to automatic saving and all the rest.

While Windows 8 needs a touchscreen, Apple’s operating system doesn’t, and it doesn’t look like the forthcoming Mavericks upgrade will either. So in that sense the Air’s appeal remains simply its combination of full-size keyboard, USB3, lovely design and now a better battery. As more software moves to the cloud, the difference between Mac and PC is diminishing. The Air could do with a better display, but it remains the best £849 you can spend on a laptop at the moment.

Manufacturer’s specifications             

11-inch
Height: 0.11–0.68 inch (0.3–1.7 cm)
Width: 11.8 inches (29.95 cm)
Depth: 7.56 inches (19.2 cm)
Weight: 2.38 pounds (1.08 kg)

13-inch
Height: 0.11–0.68 inch (0.3–1.7 cm)
Width: 12.8 inches (32.5 cm)
Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
Weight: 2.96 pounds (1.35 kg)

Processor 
1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor; 
Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz; 3MB of shared 
Optional 1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 
Processor; Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz;

Memory
4GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM onboard
Configurable to 8GB 
– 128GB of flash storage
– 256GB of flash storage
– Optional 512GB of flash storage

Display
– 11.6-inch (diagonal) high-resolution 
1366-by-768-pixel resolution
– 13.3-inch (diagonal) high-resolution 
1440-by-900-pixel resolution
• Intel HD Graphics 5000 
• Thunderbolt port supports Mini DisplayPort,

Camera
• FaceTime HD camera with 1280-by-720-pixel 
• Two USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)
• Thunderbolt port (up to 10 Gbps)
• SDXC card slot (13-inch only)

Wireless
• Wi-Fi 802.11ac
• Bluetooth 4.0

Battery
9/12 hours

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