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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tipoo - Saturday, November 6, 2010 - link
I'm wondering if the larger SSD options would be faster due to more chips/parallelism? And if you could throw the SSD results from the Adamo into the test results?philipdygeus - Thursday, November 18, 2010 - link
I am looking for a new laptop and the choice is between the forthcoming 13" MBP and the new 13" MBA.The "heaviest" work I do is Photoshop CS5. I also "multitask" in the sense that I have Word, Chrome and Bridge open simultaneously, though I would only use one at the time.
What battery life can I expect from the 13" MBA when using CS5?
Thanks for any real-world insight!
Philip
info [at] philipus.com
bailwill - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - link
Hi when you reviewed the 2008 Air you helpfully stated that trying to watch 2 dvd's back to back failed after about 3 3/4 hours. Sadly I could not find this test for the 2010 air - and as I fly a lot it would be useful to know how long the battery will last in DVD watching mode.Thanks
Martyn
redslap - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
I have to say that I have never been as satisfied with a computer purchase as when I bought my Acer Timeline with SSD back in August 2009. Granted, I bought it on a trip to the states so I really got a sweet deal for 800 dollars instead of euros. However, the netbook has performed well over expectation. I have been using it everyday. The Macbook Pro 2008 Im currently writing on had a hard drive failure in early June and I only got around fixing it yesterday (with SSD ;-), mainly because I was doing fine with my timeline. It has no where near the processing power but I used it a ton for surfing the web, taking notes in class and the SSD must have really made a difference because it felt as snappy as my macbook pro in these instances. Furthermore I had no problem using Traktor and Virtual DJ as well as sound recording and editing with Adobe Audition. Coupled with a good screen, half the weigh of my macbook, the ability to fire up a strategy game like civ 4 or medieval 2 in class or on the road has been awesome and with a battery life of 7 hours; it will surely be missed now that the screen broke during my holiday travel. Alas, I will not give up on my Timeline...NYCPHOTO - Sunday, February 20, 2011 - link
I own a MacBook Air 13" and the battery life just wasn't good enough for me. I got only a few hours per charge and that is if I was lucky. My eventual solution was to get an external laptop battery from Novuscell Batteries. So far, no regrets because I'm now getting an extra 12+ hours of battery runtime per charge on my Air.