Apple's 2010 MacBook Air (11 & 13 inch) Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 26, 2010 10:08 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Air
- Laptops
Final Words
I really like the form factor of the 11-inch MacBook Air. It's great to carry around. It's like an iPad for people who have to get real work done. I just wish it was faster. If Intel made a 32nm Core 2 Duo, clocked high enough the 11 would be perfect. I guess that’s what Atom is eventually supposed to be, but right now the performance is just too low. Intel appears to have been too conservative with Atom. Perhaps Bobcat and ARM’s Cortex A15 will light a fire under Intel's Atom team.
The 11-inch MacBook Air is effectively a $999 netbook from Apple. I call it a netbook because it can do all of the things you could do on a netbook, without any of the performance or quality headaches. You get a great display, a beautiful chassis and much better performance. The problem is that it’s $999.
Granted that’s not all that much more expensive than an iPad with all the trimmings, and much more useful to actually get work done on, but it’s still a lot of money. At $599 or even $699 the 11-inch MacBook Air would be a steal. It would probably do wonders for Apple’s marketshare as well. But at $999 it, like many of Apple’s products, is a luxury item.
For me, I’d have to own the 11-inch, plus a 15-inch MacBook Pro plus my desktop. That’s three machines, plus a smartphone and I’d be set. I’d carry the 11-inch on most business trips, the 15-inch for big shows that I’d have to cover and any heavier work I’d do at home on the desktop. I don’t mind the setup, it’s just a costly setup to have.
Unlike the 11, the 13-inch MacBook Air is far easier to recommend and can actually replace a machine in your arsenal. If you’ve got another machine (e.g. desktop), the 13-inch MacBook Air can easily replace a 13-inch MacBook Pro. You give up some performance but you do get a more portable machine, a higher screen resolution and an SSD for only $100 more than the base MacBook Pro configuration ($200 more if you add the extra 2GB of memory needed to equalize things).
You will get much better battery life on the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but otherwise the Air is actually quite compelling - particularly if you have to carry this thing with you all day. I suspect the decision will be a lot easier once Apple moves the Pro line to Sandy Bridge, but if you’re buying today the race is close.
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Exelius - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
I don't know any company that will do this -- HP and Dell require you to mail your machine in as well (unless you pay the extra $500 for the "Gold" replacement plans; an option only available on their most expensive "business" machines.) Often you have to remove the HD before you send it off or else yours might get "lost" (along with all the data on it.)Not that it's a great situation to be in; but this is an issue with many more companies than Apple. You'd still be out a machine.
I own an MBP because it was the only machine available with both discrete graphics and better than 3 hours of battery life. The screen is also dynamite. Were there other machines that were cheaper? Sure. But Apple is the only company that makes a machine comparable to the MBP at any price.
khimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
M11x has a descreet, and intergrated, and better then 4+ battery life, in home repair (they send out technicions)ill give ya the screen though. mac books do have nice displays.
khimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
FYI if you have a Fry's electronics near you, when you get a notebook from them they will give you a loaner laptop till they finish fixing your system. If your paranoid about hardware failing in your system its something to consider.On another note the way that the macbooks are built makes it so that when you drop them you can do serious damage to the internals. Ive seen several MBPs that needed an external disk drive becaus the aluminum mill next to the dvd tray was made to thing and warped to the point where it would scratch any disk going in, or would not be able to load a disk at all.
Roland00Address - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
You only get a loaner if you bough Fry's Protection Plan that they offer not if you get it repaired under a manufacturer warranty (which Fry's will gladly service since they are an authorized repair center for many brands.)I second the aluminum mill being able to be warped it happened with my 08 macbook pro. That said many samsung dvd external drives are so cheap (and work with OS-X). I am seriously considering buying another ssd and a mounting mechanism in my macbook pro and then booting from the ssd.
ajuez - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
According to Anand:"The SSD isn’t in an industry standard form factor, although the connector appears to be either micro or mini SATA. Presumably 3rd party SSD manufacturers (ahem, SandForce partners I’m looking at you) could produce drop in replacements for the MacBook Air SSD."
And... bingo!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/27/macbook-air-upg...
"The Air USB 3 Adapter gives you not only a brand-spanking-new 256GB module with a Sandforce SF-1200 controller, but a speedy USB 3.0 flash drive too -- which smartly doubles as the mechanism by which you move your old files over, as you can just transfer everything through the USB port. Once you're done swapping modules, the company says you'll see a 30 percent speed boost over the original drive, with reported transfer rates of 250MB/s on both sequential reads and writes. "
lemonadesoda - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Thanks for the link. Interesting.And matte screens are also available:
http://www.techrestore.com/pr/macbook-air-matte-sc...
All that is missing is an SD card slot
Exodite - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
It's a couple of very interesting machines, to say the least, but seem to suffer from much the same issues as previous generations.That said i'd be a pretty much perfect machine for me if it had;
The traditional backlit keyboard.
AMD's upcoming thin-and-light Fusion chips or an Intel Sandy Bridge ULV.
USB 3.0 and HDMI ports.
Matte screen options.
Maybe the next version, eh?
SlyNine - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
"In practice I found the 2008 13-inch MBA launched applications quicker (short bursts of full clock speed), but after prolonged use or completing CPU intensive tasks it was tough to tell apart from the new 11-inch. What's even more troublesome is that Apple's aggressive clock throttling went relatively undetected until now. This is something I'm going to have to devise tests for and pay more attention to in future reviews. Sneaky, Steve, sneaky."And this isn't the first time, Your Dell XPS 16's throttled like crazzy, and still do.
ipredroid - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Anand, can 13in MBA run 30FPS on StarCraft 2? I realize this isn't a support forum... sorry for the lazy question. Thanks for the review. I saw the 11in MBA FPS) no 13in MBA :( FPSkhimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
it is possible to do SC2. the memory bump would do you well if your considering running starcraft on the Air (RAM is shared with gpu and cpu) since you loose 256 megs of your 2 gigs to the video card and SC2 has a min spec of 2 gigs with a recommended of 4.it has performed respecabaly on the old air on low settings, so you should be able to bump up a couple of settings possibly getting up to medium with this new revision.
but if your looking for 30FPS through i would go for low. with lots of units on the map in some games your system might lock up at the wrong time.