The display’s saving grace is brightness, which can be turned up so high that outdoors use is possible (if not enjoyable).Īudiophiles won’t be pleased with the Air’s sound system. Subjectively, however, the Air lacks contrast and suffers from limited viewing angles. Our normal benchmark won’t work with OS X, so we can’t judge the display from a purely objective standpoint. Small font on a document or webpage, for example, often renders with a ragged, haphazard look.Ĭompetitors caught up in image quality, too. The difference in pixel density is noticeable in certain situations.
Though that’s a respectable resolution, most Ultrabook competitors above $1,000 now ship with a 1080p display, which puts Apple at a bit of a disadvantage. The MacBook Air 13-inch comes with a 1440 x 900 display. We’re still a fan of OS X’s gesture support, however, and the touchpad’s surface provides plenty of room to navigate via swipe, pinch, and waggle. Past versions of this laptop have received praise for their touchpad, but it no longer feels particularly large, premium, or smooth compared to the best Ultrabook competitors. There’s almost no light-leak from beneath the keys and brightness can be adjusted with excellent detail. OS X provides an edge by enabling useful shortcuts that simply aren’t available on a Windows PC.īacklighting is standard and works extremely well. Key caps are large, key feel is above average, and there’s good separation between each individual key. The Air’s keyboard isn’t the best available, but it defeats most Ultrabooks on the market. Fortunately, the port can be used with HDMI and DVI displays via an inexpensive adapter. There’s nothing about the Air that’s explicitly bad, but there’s far too much about it that’s merely “meh.”Thunderbolt technically is a great addition, but device support remains somewhat limited. Only two USB 3.0 ports are available, along with a combo headphone/microphone jack, a Thunderbolt port, and an SD card reader. Seeking portsĬonnectivity is an area where the Air clearly lags behind the competition. Most Ultrabooks offer a similar look and similar quality. Now, several years later, the competition has caught up.
When the original MacBook Pro and Air hit the market, they re-invented how a premium laptop should look and feel.
More importantly, the Air no longer feels remarkably thin next to PC competitors like the Acer Aspire S7 and Dell XPS 13.Īpple’s design also lacks the “wow” factor that used to separate it from the pack. Less than a tenth of an inch separates the maximum thickness of the 13-inch Pro with Retina and the 13-inch Air, and while the latter does taper to a much thinner edge, the difference between them is no longer impressive. When unboxed this laptop from the rear and momentarily thought we’d picked up a Pro with Retina by accident. The Air’s age is starting to show, however. Give the Air a few moments on a grinder and you’d be able to dice vegetables with it. The laptop’s simple, silver exterior remains among the most elegant in the business, and the chassis tapers forward to a sharp, definitive point. Though Apple changed the internals, the 2013 model is aesthetically no different from previous years. Can Apple’s aging laptop keep up with the latest Ultrabooks? You’ve seen this before The design of the current Air dates all the way back to late 2011.
Then again, the lowered price may be necessary. Though perhaps not innovative, this is still significant, as computers rarely receive new hardware and a price drop simultaneously.
Apple also dropped the 11-inch model with 64GB drive in favor of an 11-inch model with a 128GB drive (without increasing the price), and also lowered the price of the 13-inch Air to $1,100, a price drop of $200. While the new architecture is the Air’s most significant update, it’s not the only one. The Apple MacBook Air was the first laptop on the market to offer a dual-core 4th-gen processor, and, at the time of this review’s publication, still has few PC peers.
“Just” may be too weak of a word, however, because the hardware update consists of Intel’s new Haswell architecture and the 4th-generation Core processors based on it. Instead, Apple has just upgraded what’s inside.
Retina, considered an obvious upgrade by some, didn’t make its way to the Air, nor was the chassis itself redesigned. Fitbit Versa 3Īpple’s WWDC 2013 gave us a revised MacBook Air, but the revision didn’t go as far as expected.