2014 11.6 Inch Macbook Air Review

[bchampion96]

Hi Guys,

 

Just got mine about a week ago and after heavy use for the whole week, I feel I have some conclusions some of you might find helpful. For a bit of background, I was in the market for an ultrabook for schoolwork that I can also take to uni next year or the year after if that ends up working out. 

 

I have the 11.6 inch, i5, 4gb RAM, 128 gb PCIe SSD version. It's basically the baseline one. I got it from amazon for 489 GBP. 

 

Build:

 

As is to be expected from an Apple product, I have nothing bad to say here. Form factor wise, I was expecting 11 inches to perhaps be uncomfortably small, it's not. Still very small, and I would have preferred 13 inches, but for a substantial drop in price, I'd say it's worth the sacrifice. The keyboard is pretty decent. Not as nice as the one on my old macbook pro from 2011 though. I think the reason for this is that the travel on each key is slightly less. The typing experience falls from 'Great' in the case of the macbook pro to 'Average' for the air. Ports are a teeny bit limiting. As an ultraportable, go anywhere kinda device, I don't need more than two USB ports, but I would have loved an ethernet port due to occasionally shoddy WiFi at home and at school. The webcam is good, but nothing special. Provides solid quality for skype and other similar uses. Trackpad is fantastic sensitivity wise and functions perfectly with my favourite gestures that help me around OSX, but it is a teensy bit on the small side. With a screen of only 11.6 inches and 1366x768 resolution, I was expecting a sub-par screen experience. However, the pixel density means that everything looks sharp from normal viewing distance. Only hindrance is in scrolling through websites like tumblr where one post barely fits vertically.

 

Battery Life: 

 

Always important when buying thin and light style laptops. When typing this from 100% battery, OSX quotes me close to 7 hours of battery life. So for basic web browsing purposes, I could probably make 6 hours non-stop. The 9 hours on Apple's website is probably do-able if you leave it on the desktop at lowest brightness, but that's a pointless stat. In the mornings before school, I'll pootle on the internet a bit while plugged in and then shove it in my bag, so it sits closed with 100% battery. Over a 12 hour period in sleep mode, the macbook air lost only 2% battery, which is very good to see. 

 

Performance:

 

I don't really care about benchmark numbers when looking through laptop reviews, so I'll give you my personal 'real world' benchmarks. The SSD was a big must for me, not being able to live with mechanical hard drives any more. I'll give you some speed numbers.

 

Opening the lid expecting the log on screen has a delay so short, that you won't care. 

 

Cold boot takes 12 seconds to reach the log on screen.

 

To get from the log on screen to the desktop after a cold boot takes 5 seconds until everything is initialised and ready to go.

 

In terms of CPU, having 10 chrome tabs open, a skype video call and music playing all at once did very little to harm performance. Everything still ran smoothly with just a teensy lag/stutter on a few gestures. 

 

OS:

 

I'm not going to get into a windows vs OSX here, because that's stupid. For a machine that I'm using for basic functions, I love the clean looks and simplicity of 10.9.4. It stays out of my way and just lets me get on with things, which is perfect. I did have to trawl through the settings to do quite a bit, to set up everything I like and get rid of stupid factory settings like the 'natural' scroll direction which is backwards and wrong, but it didn't take long.

 

That concludes my review. I'm one happy macbook air user! If you want to ask questions, please feel free and I'll do my best to answer them thoroughly!

 

Thanks

 

bchampion96

 

 

 

 

[prolemur]

Is there a screen option of 1080p, that would probably be a reason I wouldn't get it. Not to mention I have never really used OSX. Can you try doing some gaming on it, like CS:GO or LoL?

Very good, informative review

[bchampion96]

Is there a screen option of 1080p, that would probably be a reason I wouldn't get it. Not to mention I have never really used OSX. Can you try doing some gaming on it, like CS:GO or LoL?

Very good, informative review

 

Nope. 13 inch is 1440x900. Pros go higher I believe. I shall do some gaming as a test. I think I'll try portal and bastion as I don't have CS:GO and I hate LoL

[bchampion96]

I'll also add that I've never heard the fan turn on which I a nice unexpected bonus.

[prolemur]

I'll also add that I've never heard the fan turn on which I a nice unexpected bonus.

That is very nice, quiet like a phone or a handheld. I did see rumours about the next macbook air not even having a fan.

[bchampion96]

That is very nice, quiet like a phone or a handheld. I did see rumours about the next macbook air not even having a fan.

 

Bastion went well! Ran smoothly and was very playable. Haven't got the time to download and play portal unfortunately

[prolemur]

Bastion went well! Ran smoothly and was very playable. Haven't got the time to download and play portal unfortunately

That's good though, I wouldn't really use that laptop for anything that wasn't fairly casual.

[bchampion96]

That's good though, I wouldn't really use that laptop for anything that wasn't fairly casual.

 

Mmmm. I'm gonna delete steam to get rid of the temptation

[prolemur]

Mmmm. I'm gonna delete steam to get rid of the temptation

Ya that'd be a good idea considering it's your notebook for school. Gaming and schoolwork tend not to mix well