By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor, Guardian
The
Macbook Air is a classic that's getting better with age, says Matt Warman
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.
The
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
