MacBook Air 13” Review (Late 2011)

By Zaz on November 29, 2011

The MacBook Air might seem an odd choice to be reviewed as a business use laptop. Apple notebooks are expensive compared to PCs. They barely offer any security solutions. Apple is loathe to support any OS beyond a couple years, not the five to seven year cycle most businesses are on, but go to any airport lounge or Starbucks in America, and you’ll see men and women dressed in suits using this notebook, and its little brother, the 11” Air. Despite these shortcomings, the Air features what a lot of users crave. It’s light and portable, unbelievably thin, offers plenty of performance, has a good screen with above WXGA resolution and mated with a SSD drive, it’s fast. Read on to see if the Air makes a good fit for your business.

MacBook Air Specs

The specifications of the Air under review are:

Model:13” Macbook Air (MC965LL/A)
Operating System:OS X Lion
CPU:Intel 1.7GHz Core i5-2557M (3MB L2 Cache 1333MHz FSB) 17w
Chipset:Intel QS67
Memory:4GB DDR 1333MHz
Hard Drives:Samsung (SM128C) 128GB mSATA SSD
Screen:LG 13.3” WXGA+ (1440×900) Glossy
Graphics:Intel HD3000 Integrated
Network:Broadcom WiFi Card(A/B/G/N) and Bluetooth
Inputs: Keyboard and TrackPad
Ports:
- Two USB 2.0 – One Left, One Right
- Headphone Jack
- Thunderbolt Port
Slots:
- SD Card Reader
Battery:50w, 45w Power Adapter w/MagSafe
Dimensions (Six-Cell):Width 12.8”, Depth 8.94” and Height .11”(Front)/.68”(Rear)
Weight:2.9 Pounds
Warranty: One Year
Cost: $1,299

Design and Build

The MacBook Air was the first ultrabook and everyone’s been playing catch up since. Apple redesigned the Air this summer, but it’s the insides that received most of the updates. The Air is aptly named. It’s absurdly thin. It measures just .11” at the front of the notebook. It then gently expands as it moves to the backside, maxing out at .68”. Every time I look at it, it reminds me of a ninja throwing star. I think if I fling it at the wall, it will stick right in. As you can see from the picture below, it’s barely thicker than my iPhone 4.

In addition to being almost razor thin, the Air is, not unexpectedly, incredibly light, weighing just under three pounds.

Apple’s design ethos with the Air is minimal. You get a silver machine with a black keyboard and Apple logo affixed to the back, and that’s it. Simple is elegant. It’s smooth to the touch and there’s no sharp edges making it uncomfortable to use.

The body of the MacBook Air is made from aluminum, in Apple’s well known unibody construction method. It feels very solid, sort of carved from one block of aluminum, which is kind of what the unibody is. There’s very little give on it anywhere, but being so thin, there’s little to give. You can make the screen ripple a bit by pushing on the back, but the LCD housing looks as if it will hold up well to the scrapes and dings the average Air is likely to see. The Air uses a single hinge to connect the LCD to the body. It covers most of the rear of the notebook and hides the air vents inside. The hinge manages the tricky task of being easy to open and yet remains in place during use, that’s no easy feat. The LCD is latchess, but it felt secure when closed.

Screen

The Air is one of the hottest notebooks on the market today, if not the hottest. One of the major reasons for this is the WXGA+ LCD. It’s one of the few sub 14” notebooks using a resolution above WXGA. The 13” version also maintains a 16:10 aspect ratio, which makes it a little easier on the eyes. For those of us raised on SXGA+ and UXGA screens, the loss of vertical resolution as notebook screens have morphed from 4:3 to 16:9 aspect ratios, has been especially disappointing. After having used the Air for a while now, the extra 132 pixels has left me a little underwhelmed. As you can see in the picture below, going from 768 pixels to 900 adds only an extra three or so lines of text to a web page. While that’s nice, I don’t think it’s anything worth getting overly excited about. Plus most of the extra resolution comes on the sides of the screen, which doesn’t have as much value as getting more space vertically.

Apple is known for using above average LCDs in its notebooks. The Air is no exception. The screen on the Air measures 13.3” diagonally and, has a resolution of 1440×900. It is a TN panel and uses LED for the backlight. All Air screens are glossy. The gloss is subdued compared to other glossy screens I’ve seen. Only in direct light did the glare rise to the annoying level. The screen on the Air is quite nice, it offers a high contrast ratio and colors are lush and pop off the screen resulting in movies and photos that look fantastic. The screen is bright, perhaps a bit too bright, as it’s a little washed out at the highest brightness levels. You may wish to dial down the brightness a few notches to get the best viewing results. The screen has a slight purplish hue to it, but nothing calibrating the screen can’t do away with. The Air has an above average sweet spot in terms of viewing angles, but it won’t match an IPS screen. The Air I received had no backlight bleed nor dead/stuck pixels.

CPU, Performance and Storage

The Air is a capable performer for most tasks. The Air uses Intel based Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) processors. The machine I have has the 1.7GHz 17w Intel Core i5-2557M CPU, but there is an option to upgrade to the i7 if you need some extra oomph. Surfing the web, watching movies, restoring my iPhone, writing this review all performed effortlessly. The ULV CPUs aren’t meant to crunch databases or code video all day, but the ULV CPUs should be more than enough for the day to day duty the Air is most likely to see. The extra battery life the ULV CPUs offer is a more tangible benefit for most users.

For typical notebook usage, the hard drive, not the CPU is the performance bottleneck. Apple uses SSDs in the Air which help to keep the Air trim, but also provides a major performance boost over a conventional hard drive. The downside of using SSDs is it increases the cost and limits capacity compared to conventional drives. Opening applications is snappy. Despite Apple’s press releases, boot times on the Air are not instantaneous, but this machine booted in 22 seconds from a cold start. That’s pretty comparable to Windows SSD equipped machines I’ve seen. The resume function is extremely quick, it took only a second or two before the Air was ready to use after opening the lid. That’s impressively fast and much better than most Windows machines I’ve seen.

The ULV CPU does well in the benchmarks against the full voltage i3 even though it gives up 400MHz of clock speed. Below is a benchmark comparison of the MacBook Air with its ULV Core i5 versus the ThinkPad X220 with a Core i3-2310m using GeekBenchas the benchmark test software:

In a more real world test, I used Handbrake to encode an episode of ‘The Critic’. The ULV i5 came it at 7:31 while the Core i3 in my ThinkPad X220 took 8:15 to do the same file. That mirrors the GeekBench 2 scores. For common notebook usage the Air should offer plenty of performance. If you need more CPU power, like a quad core, you should be looking at other machines.

	GeekBench 2 Score	HandBrake Encode Time
Apple MacBook Air (Intel Core i5 1.70GHz)	5,502	7 minutes 31 seconds
Lenovo ThinkPad X220 (Intel Core i3-2310m 2.10GHz)	4,253	8 minutes 15 seconds

Apple does not offer an optical drive on the Air. I don’t know where they’d fit it. Apple will sell you a SuperDrive (DVDRW) for $79 or you can pick up a generic drive on eBay for less if you don’t mind it does not match. One thing to note about the storage is neither the hard drive or memory is upgradeable on the Air

Keyboard and TouchPad

The keyboard on the Air is the chiclet style keyboard that Apple has been using for a while now. The Air keyboard is it is now backlit, making it easier to use when in low light locales. It’s a full sized keyboard. I found the keyboard to be good, but not great. The keyboard is certainly firm as there’s little room underneath it. Because the screen uses a 16:10 aspect ratio, it affords the Air a set of big set of palm rests to place your wrist. It’s comfortable and there’s no sharp edges digging in. The key travel is slightly longer than I’m used to. The key depth is too shallow for my tastes. Both of those are probably personal preferences and I’d probably adapt to it if it were my notebook, but I’d take a Thinkpad keyboard over it every time.

The trackpad on the Air is expansive, it’s one of the biggest I’ve seen, measuring 4” across and 3” top to bottom, including 17” notebooks. The touchpad itself is smooth. Apple has a lot of neat gestures like two finger scrolling, pinch to zoom and three finger swiping. They make it easy to fly around the screen and are a pleasure to use. My problem with the touchpad is the button is somewhat stiff and a bit noisy if I must say, which I do not like. It takes an above average amount of force to engage it. This is especially true for the top third of the touchpad, making the effective area on the touchpad smaller than actual size. Dragging items across the screen is tedious as you have to keep the button pressed when doing so. I also did not like how Apple handled the right click. You can use two fingers to right click, but I often found myself already having two fingers on the touchpad, making right click when I didn’t intend to do so. You can assign a corner of the touchpad as the right click, but this cuts into the functional area of the touchpad as well.

The Air also has a camera above the screen for all those video conferences and saying good night to the kiddies. The picture’s resolution is 640×426. It’s not a HD camera, but seems to do respectably if there’s enough light.

Battery

The Air has a 50w battery that is enclosed inside the case. Battery life on the Air is good. With the screen set to around half brightness and WiFi on just doing normal stuff like surfing the web, listening to music, writing this review and a few movies, I was able to get just under six hours of battery life before the Air went to sleep. That’s good for a notebook that weighs three pounds and has a smaller sized battery.

Most people who buy a notebook know at some point down the road, they’re going to have to buy a replacement battery. On most notebooks this isn’t a problem as you can buy one and swap it out with the old one. On the Air, things are more complicated. Because the battery is housed inside the case, it is not user replaceable. Apple gives you a couple options for battery replacement. You can mail it in, which usually takes 3-4 days, or you can have it done at an Apple store with an appointment. The cost($129) isn’t terribly expensive compared to what other manufacturers will charge you for a battery, but if you’re not close to an Apple store, it may be important if you can’t be without your notebook for a few days.

The Air comes with a 45w power adapter. Like other Apple notebooks, it has a MagSafe Connector. MagSafe, as the name implies, uses a magnet to attach the power connector to the notebook instead of a traditional plug. The benefit of this is if the connector is tugged at, it comes off easily. This reviewer had a chance to test it, unexpectedly. I plugged the Air in right after I got it to charge the battery. I forgot about it, because I had just got it, and walked by the coffee table it was sitting on ten minutes later where I managed to snag the power cord on my foot, which in turn yanked at the Air. It came right off and saved the Air. It all happened quickly and dramatically, but the MagSafe worked as advertised.

Heat & Noise

Heat levels on the Air are impressive. Even when gaming or running benchmarks, it got only warm to the touch. When just doing normal activities, the fan on the Air was non-existent, making it a pleasure to use. I wondered whether the Air had a fan at all. That is until I downloaded and installed a simple flash bowling game from the App Store. When running it, the fan kicked in and was somewhat loud. Being that the Air is so thin, there’s not much noise shielding to it. I think for most users who won’t push the Air much, noise won’t be a problem, but if you plan to do CPU intensive tasks, fan noise may be an issue.

Wireless & Networking

The Air comes with an (A/B/G/N) Wi-Fi card made by Broadcom. There is no internal Ethernet port available for the Air though Apple does offer a USB Ethernet dongle for those who need it. I had no trouble with the WiFi card around the house, I also took it work where there are lots of networks. It connected to the non-encrypted networks without incident. The Air also come with Bluetooth which I was able to use to sync my iPhone to the Air seamlessly via Bluetooth. Apple does not offer a WWAN/Broadband option for the Air, even if you’re willing to pay for it. You’ll need to buy an external USB dongle, which is always a pain, or hack your Mac if you need WWAN. That may be a drawback for some business users.

Ports & Connections

Continuing with the minimalist design theme, the port selection on the Air is kept to the essentials most users need and nothing more. Having said that, it doesn’t bother me much. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than two devices hooked to a laptop via USB and that’s exactly what the Air offers, one on each side.

The left side of the Air has a headphone jack, a USB 2.0 port, and the MagSafe power connector:

The right side of the Air has a SD Card Reader, a USB 2.0 port and a Thunderbolt port:

No USB 3.0 is offered on the Air, but ThunderBolt is, a new high speed data transfer port. ThunderBolt is a combination of DisplayPort and PCI Express technologies. It can be used to connect displays and hard drives to the Air. It’s very fast and has a throughput of 10GB p/s, about twice as fast as USB 3.0. Being so new, there are few Thunderbolt accessories available. Apple does have some Thunderbolt LCDs available sell you right now and hopefully in the future more options will become available.

Sound

The Air has two speakers that sit under the keyboard. They’re about what you’d expect from an ultraportable, offering adequate sound, but don’t expect to be blown away. The bass is thin and it’s somewhat tinny, I found the best results a few levels below max to avoid distortion.

Software

The Air comes with OS X Lion. You can also install Windows or Linux via Boot Camp if that floats your boat. I won’t turn this into a Mac vs PC debate, which will probably still be debated long after I’ve passed from this Earth. One new feature of OS X, at least since I owned a Mac a few years back, is the App Store. If you’ve used iTunes, the App Store should be very familiar ground to you. The App Store is a centralized location to buy, download and install Mac software. The Air comes with all the software Apple users should know well like iTunes, Safari and Garage Band to name a few. One thing I was bummed about is they removed the checkers game from OS X Snow Leopard that I used to like. Yeah, sure, there are a bunch of games in the App Store, but it’s not the same.

When I received the review Air and was taking it out of the box, it dawned on me that the Air has no OS disc or any type of media to install the OS. My next thought was what if I want to re-install the OS? The Air now comes with a recovery partition. If you restart your Air with the partition wiped, after you hear the ding, hit the option key and it’ll show the recovery partition, allowing you to re-install the OS. If you picked up the SuperDrive and have an OS X disc, that’s another option, as is a network install.

Warranty & Support

The Air comes with a one year warranty from Apple. This includes 90 days of software support. After 90 days, you have to pay for software support with the Air. That’s kind of miserly for a $1,300 notebook. Most PCs give you software support while the warranty is in effect. You can of course get the AppleCare upgrade from Apple. It costs $250, almost 20% of the cost of the Air, but does entitle you to free software support for the life of the warranty. Perhaps of importance to business users is the fact Apple does not offer on-site or accidental warranty coverage on their notebooks. On the plus side, with an appointment you can take your MacBook Air to any one of the almost 250 Apple stores and growing, and have it serviced right away.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for an ultraportable, the Air should definitely be on your list. It’s thin, light and portable. The Air has an attractive design. It’s well put together, offers more than enough performance for most mobile users, and has a good screen. For business users there are still some caveats with the Air including inability to get WWAN, limited upgrades and the lack of stepped up support options. I guess the $64,000 question for this reviewer is do you want to pay the high cost of entry to get a MacBook Air? There certainly are other PCs that cost as much if not more than the Air, like the Samsung Series 9 or Sony VAIO Z, but there are also other PCs that offer a lot of value and are priced considerably less than the Air, like the ThinkPad X220 or if you want an Air clone, the Asus Zenbook UX31. If you like OSX, value a thin and light machine, want a good screen and can live with the limitations of the Air, then the MacBook Air makes an excellent choice.

Pros