Apple MacBook Air - 3rd Generation Review

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Apple MacBook Air - 3rd Generation
★★★★★
4.5
From 6 reviews
100.0% of users recommend this
  • Screen Quality

  • Battery Life

  • Ease of Use

  • Value For Money

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Frosteee's review of Apple MacBook Air - 3rd Generation

“The new Macbook Air 11 inch - the best laptop ever? I...”

★★★★★

written by Frosteee on 09/11/2010

The new Macbook Air 11 inch - the best laptop ever? I think so...



Ok, upfront disclaimer - I am well know for being a bit of an Apple fan and I've used a Mac for a while. I am however quick to critise Apple when they get it wrong and I certainly expect an amazing product for my hard earned £1000!



I saw the Macbook Air announcement and thought 'looks good but it's a little underpowered, low in memory and very expensive for a netbook.' But then I saw the little beauty in the flesh and a week later I was a proud owner.



The Pros:

It looks and feels incredible. Very very slim but still packs a full size keyboard and large trackpad. It's very light and really solidly built too. The ideal portable computer and way more useful than an iPad.



The battery life is very good - I've consistently achieved nearly 4 to 5 hours of usage. Only watching videos or Skype killed the battery any quicker.



All the practical stuff is fine. The Wifi works well and it doesn't get as hot as other Macs when in use. The only limitation down to size is having only two USB ports.



It's surprisingly fast - having only a tiddly 1.4GHz processor was almost a deal breaker but I honestly can't notice any difference between the performance of this and my 2.4 GHz 15 inch 2 year old Macbook Pro! Apparently it's down to the solid state memory being much quicker for data access than a standard hard disk.



The 11 inch screen was a concern before purchase but it doesn't feel much smaller than a 13 inch screen in practice. I spent a long time testing this out in the Apple store! The width is very close to that of a 13 inch screen so the size is shaved off the height to keep the display usable. The screen is also very bright and high resolution.



And of course.. it's Mac so it's amazingly easy to use, practically bug free and is packed full of great applications such as iPhoto and iMovie.



The Cons:

The memory is very limited. I paid extra for 128GB of storage and still can't fit all my music and images on there. You really can't rely on this as your only computer unless you're happy to permanently store lots of stuff externally or in 'the cloud'. That said if you mainly use Spotify and or have a separate desktop computer then this isn't an issue for you.



Much as I haven't noticed any performance issues yet I don't imagine it will be powerful enough to make videos or do lots of design work due to the small processor and hard disk. This is where the lots GHz



The price - £850 (£1000 for the 128GB version I bought) is a huge layout for a laptop that will most likely be your second computer. Not for the faint hearted!



Why buy a Macbook Air?

If you love your gadgets, use a Mac and want an ultra portable but high performance laptop to complement your main iMac/Macbook the Macbook Air is absolutely perfect. You may even get away with this as your lone laptop if you don't need much data or you store all your photos and music on a hard drive.



Verdict

I love it!

  • Value For Money

  • Ease of Use

  • Between 1 - 4 Weeks

    Time Laptop Owned

  • Screen Quality

  • Battery Life

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Uktintin2010's Response to Frosteee's Review

Written on: 14/11/2010

I found this review very helpful because... very good read thanks

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