Apple 13.3-inch MacBook Air (2011) - Fruits of Perseverance

Apple MacBook Air (2011): Fruits of Perseverance

In 2008, the world caught a glimpse of the future being removed from a manila envelope by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer Inc. Audiences around the world gasped in surprise at the appropriately named MacBook Air and since then, imaginations about the future portable personal computer were ignited. But make no mistake. Apple wasn’t the first company to create such a marvelously engineered laptop. Sony was the first to do it with their Vaio line. It was however priced out of reach for many people and so not many people really knew about them in a big way.

For laptops to become ridiculously thin (just the way we like it), it required an incredible amount money to be funneled into research and design, and not many manufacturers were prepared to throw good money at a potentially expensive product that would appeal to a small group. The original MacBook Air ran on hardware that other manufacturers have already started using, but costs a whole lot more due to the Air's design. As a result it didn’t capture the market as intended, no matter how good the marketing team at Apple was. While the initial sales of MacBook Airs were not that fantastic, it was encouraging enough for Apple to persevere with the MacBook Air line.

Today, in mid-2011 however, we can finally see how Apple’s determination was able to bring us the thinnest and most beautiful piece of consumer hardware we have ever seen. Years of experience in designing and manufacturing desirable electronics has granted Apple access to suppliers and manufacturers that help keep costs so low that other manufacturers hoping to hop on the ultra-thin bandwagon can’t keep up. Working with Intel and convincing them to make low voltage processor variants that would suit the thermal design power of their notebook design also helped keep their machines running longer (and cooler). After all, there's a reason why certain Intel mobile processors aren't featured anywhere else until much later.

The result is the latest 13.3-inch MacBook Air (MBA) using the mobile Sandy Bridge processor which has graphics abilities built right into the processor. It’s not powerful enough to play hardcore games, but in the world of tablets and mobile phones, the last thing you’d want to do on your core i5 (1.7GHz) ultra-portable notebook is to play those games (it can handle Facebook games just fine though). Cost-wise, the MBA has also become extremely competitive, reducing the previously large number of reasons not to get it.

Looks-wise, it resembles the more powerful MacBook Pro (a design change which started with the previous generation of MBAs), to keep things uniform, just the way Apple (and apparently their customers) like it. It is still decked out in champagne colored matte aluminum. While it generally feels solid, there are areas where we observed flex like on the lid as well as the bottom of the machine.

The new Air features the most relevant and commonly used connectivity options but there's still no USB 3.0 support. In place however is the addition of a ThunderBolt (TB) port. Reports say that it is a watered down version, but a ThunderBolt port is still a ThunderBolt port. While devices benefiting from this interface are few and far between, some consumers would still see it as a plus point, but many might still lament the lack of a USB 3.0 port which is fast becoming the next high-speed interface standard of choice. You even have several devices using this interface and the best part is its backward compatibility.

Close to Perfect

Overall design of the MBA is good, but also has certain small hidden flaws. An example would be that the very simple act of opening the lid lifts the bottom of the unit as well, causing you to instinctively use both hands to open the laptop in proper. While this definitely isn’t a major issue, we have seen other manufacturers pay attention to even this little detail so we know it can be done. What you do have however are the magnets on the edges of the lid and near the trackpad that keeps the lid shut. Of course you can also argue that this minor issue is testament to the tightness and solidity of the plastic hinges (which also hides the air vents by the way) that keeps the screen at your favorite angle.

Another noteworthy addition (or re-introduction) is the back-lit keyboard that went missing in the previous generation of MacBook Air. The chiclet keys themselves are still matte black, and still feel incredibly comfortable (not too hard and not too mushy) to type on just like the other MacBooks, which is not surprising for a machine made by the company that single-handedly popularized the use of chiclet keys. It is also spacious as you would expect it to be, and slightly recessed to accommodate the screen when closed, but still has plenty of key travel for tactile typing.

The sharp (1400x900 pixels resolution) screen itself is still obviously glossy, but it’s coated with an anti-glare finish that reduces reflections from the background. This understated feature is something which other manufacturers should learn from, since they are all using glossy screens for their deeper blacks and brighter colors. Reflections are still there, but somehow the screen manages to absorb or diffuse background light into a blurred image that doesn’t pierce your eyeballs, and distract you from what is happening on your screen.

We also noticed that the Apple logo that lights up, using the same LEDs that also light up your screen, isn’t protected by anything. You can tell when you put the screen up against the light and you can discern the Apple logo. It doesn’t actually mean much to consumers, but we’d like to caution that the logo area of the lid is actually the weakest point, so take care when pointing sharp objects at your MBA (or anything else for that matter).

The matte glass-covered trackpad -- a feature found on other MacBooks -- is huge and an absolute pleasure to use. This multi-touch trackpad works very well with Apple’s latest OS X, Lion (which ships with this notebook) and introduces a user interface that is very similar to the touch-friendly iPad.

A pleasant surprise which we had was with the MBA’s speakers. The sound coming out of the machine at top volume was loud (very loud) and clear. Which is surprising, when you consider how small the unit is. But because this is Apple we’re talking about, anything regarding a good multimedia experience would definitely not be compromised, and the speakers were no exception.

One minor niggle we had with the MBA’s interior is the very sharp edge along the keyboard and trackpad area. Users of the MacBook Pro, which has the same design, have complained that the edges hurt the wrist after prolonged use. While it is also true here, the low (3mm) height of the MBA’s palmrest mitigates this issue somewhat, because you’d actually have to go out of your way to let your wrists feel the cold kiss of metal.

Performance and Benchmarking

When it comes to performance, we would like to declare that the benchmarks were done using Boot Camp because most popular benchmark programs can’t be run in an OS X environment. Scores indicated here are no indication towards the MacBook Air’s performance while running its native operating system. However, these scores do help people who are interested to know how it fares against the thousands of other Windows based machines out there. Besides, Boot Camping has become a very common practice as several non-native Mac users are hopping in to the Apple bandwagon.

Hardware-wise, it was relatively on par with the two other machines which we picked to go head to head with the MBA: the very sleek Samsung Series 9, as well as one of our recent favorites, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1. They were all using solid-state-drives, and they all sport Intel Core i5 processors. The major differentiating factor here was the processor variant used among all three notebooks as the X1 had a faster 2.5GHz processor and a higher GPU clock speed, while the other two were sporting low voltage, low TDP processors with slower overall clock speeds. The Samsung was the slowest of the lot in terms of processing prowess. However, their choice of processors pretty much dictated their design choices too. The Samsung's folio-like profile needed something that consumed as little power as possible but still harbored a decent processing power house. Apple's Air mustered in a slightly better processor with a higher clock speed, but it was still an equivalently low powered part. Lenovo had headroom in its design to go with a standard powered mobile processor and thus was endowed with a pretty speedy Core i5 processor.

Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, the MacBook Air’s gaming performance gave us a pleasant little surprise when tabulated. After some fact finding and digging around, we found out just what was giving the little speedster that extra performance boost - drivers.

The graphic drivers on the MBA were downloaded from Apple servers and were pretty new when looking at the driver revision and launch date. Not only were they newer than the competition, it's likely that the drivers are better optimized for the hardware since Apple has very limited configurations. This is an advantage that other notebooks can't share with the use of either generic drivers and even sometimes against the notebook vendor's own optimized drivers (as we found out first hand by applying the newest drivers available across all three machines). To be doubly sure, we even tried applying the MBA's set of drivers on the competing Windows machines, but that didn't work as just like we thought.

PCMark Vantage

In most of the test suites, the newer MacBook Air managed to hold it’s own against the Lenovo X1. The Series 9 is performed slightly behind the two, but it was expected due to the slower clock speed of its processor. What was intriguing though was how the MacBook Air managed to keep up with the Lenovo machine despite the CPU discrepancy between both notebooks.

There are several factors involved here. First, the SSD used on the MBA machine is both better and larger. Better because the Toshiba controller based drives use Apple's custom firmware for better I/O throughput. Also not to forget are SSD basics where the larger the SSD drive, the more likely it's using more flash memory chips that can be lined up to form a wider I/O path. This results in better read/write performance too and the two factors combined boosted the storage performance numbers as seen in the HDD test suite of PCMark Vantage. Secondly, the newer graphics drivers on the Mac machine boosted graphics performance and managed to match up against the Lenovo machine despite the latter having the technical advantage.

Last but certainly not least is down to the CPU's own performance potential. If you look closely, the Core i5-2557M mobile processor, it has a turbo boost potential of nearly 1GHz (base clock - 1.7GHz, turbo - 2.7GHz). Compare this with a lower 700MHz turbo boost potential of the Core i5-2520M mobile processor (base clock - 2.5GHz, turbo - 3.2GHz).  There's a possibility that the MBA had more opportunity to run on its turbo frequencies more often than the X1. We've done enough processor testing in the past as well as talk to Intel performance lab personnel on how their processors operate to know of this outcome. It's true that lower-end processors can turbo boost much easier because of Intel's excellent yield. Yet the higher-tier processors don't have quite as much headroom. Couple this with the above reasons and Apple's more customized treatment to make their platform more efficient, we see why the new MBA can match up with a technically superior machine like the Lenovo X1.

3DMark 06

And like in the PCMark Vantage results, the the MacBook Air’s performance also shines in our 3DMark tests. Its scores were double that of what the Series 9 could muster and edged ahead of the Lenovo X1. The MBA really shined with its updated drivers as it was noted to have several performance enhancements in its revision. Despite these results, scores like these usually only allow you to indulge in casual games. Serious gamers should looks elsewhere. For casual video and photo editing needs, the CPU's built in graphics engine is adequate for these needs. And of course most importantly, watching HD videos is a breeze on the MBA as well with the latest iteration of Intel's graphics engine - the HD 3000 - is more than capable and doesn't need assistance from a discrete GPU.

Far Cry 2

There is no truer test than having the machine run a gaming benchmark, which for us is Far Cry 2. In this test, the MacBook Air did much better than expected. At medium settings, its scores were more than double of what the Series 9 could achieve, and were also on par with the ThinkPad X1. Again we could attribute this to the newer drivers. When we visited Intel’s website to see what improvements the updated drivers have, Far Cry 2 was reported to have a whopping 40% improvement.

Even at very high settings, the MacBook Air and its new drivers were in good standing. If you don't believe the difference that drivers can make, we had the scores of the Lenovo X1 with its initial set of drivers to compare with against a more recent run with the latest drivers from Lenovo that the X1 would accept for installation on the machine. And yes, the scores recorded surged almost 40% more than the original scores. Still, with frame-rates like these, we’d still advise you not to play anything more than casual games on your new MacBook Air.

Battery Performance and Portability Index

Battery life on Macs have traditionally been very impressive. The last time we had a Mac in the labs, was when the latest MacBook Pro was launched. In our tests, the MBP stayed alive for an incredible 8 hours - and that's with our intensive video playback looping test! With that kind of battery life, you can practically work outside of the office almost an entire day without needing to recharge.

Battery Life

The MacBook Air didn’t stay alive for as long, but it did manage an equally excellent 5 hours and 45 minutes for its profile and specifications, something which we suspect Windows-based machines won’t be capable of for quite a while to come. We say this because according to our test results, the MBA running on Windows ran almost 100 minutes less. That’s practically one less movie you can watch while at Starbucks (why are MacBooks always associated with Starbucks? Is it because we never fail to see one when we get our fix?). Again, the key here is the optimized OS and drivers to get the best out of your machine.

Power consumption

And if you were wondering if the MacBook Air is powered by magic thus it’s super long battery life, well, sorry to burst your bubble but the real reason is its propensity to suck up less juice (along with its specially designed, integrated battery). Thanks to the ultra-low voltage Intel processor and lack of a discrete anything (graphics card, optical drive etc...) the MBA only uses up 8.7 watts, allowing it to stay true to its “Air” moniker (but it’s not advisable to wear them on your feet).

The discrepancy of power consumption and battery life is also an indication of how the operating system also plays a significant part in terms of battery life. When running Windows, it uses almost 50% more juice to stay alive. So if battery life is of top priority to you, then you know where to look.

Portability Index

Our portability index is a mathematical formula that we have come up with to calculate how worthwhile is it to carry around a laptop as compared to others in its class. Sure you can lift the unit up and see for yourself, but that won't tell the whole story. Our calculation factors is the battery life, weight and volume of a notebook and you won't get to see this stat anywhere else other than HardwareZone. According to our numbers, the Apple MacBook Air gives you the most bang for your buck (not surprisingly). When running on OS X Lion, it can stay alive the longest, paired with its 1.35kg weight and compact volume, it really is shaping up to be the ultra-portable to look out for this year.

When running on Windows however, the index drops by a laughable full point. You could blame it on Boot Camp, but its score still beats the Samsung Series 9, which is of the same weight and that tells a lot of the MBA's potential. We haven't seen an ultra-portable notebook fare this well so well for a very long time. It fared more than double the original MBA launched in 2008 and came out better than even the highly acclaimed Toshiba Portege R600. These are all of course much older machines, so the new new MBA with even better portability index and far better performance with Intel's Sandy Bridge processing platform is quite a force to be reckoned with.

Looks Good From All Angles

We think that the MacBook Air is absolutely marvelous. It is thanks to Apple, who persevered in the direction in which they think they should, that we are able to get the MacBook Air today. Instead of letting the MacBook Air die a novelty (Dell Adamo?) when faced with poor sales, they chose instead to turn the MacBook Air into one of the mainstays of the Mac family. We’ve even heard whispers down the grapevine that it may even be favored by the powers-that-be, over the MacBook Pro form factor for Apple notebooks in the future. While we are unable to verify any of that, we can however verify that the MacBook Air is the notebook which you would want.

What you want however and what you need are two different things, and the MacBook Air tries very very hard to be both (do you know of many Apple products that don’t?). Years of experience building the MacBook Air allows Apple to control each part of the manufacturing process, which we can assure you, is a very good thing indeed when it comes to hardware optimization for the best experience. And when you have manufacturers that let you have absolute control over the hardware, you’d also have control over the prices, which help keep the price of the MacBook Air deliciously low (ordering multiple millions of units to be produced also helps -- a lot).

So what you have on your hands is a very well-built (aluminum body), speedy (Core i5, 256GB SSD) and relatively affordable (S$2088) machine. If you’d like to save even more, you can opt for the cheaper model (S$1688) that has an SSD drive that is half the capacity of the top end model. Other than that, it is exactly the same. Or you could choose to upgrade the processor to a Core i7 model (1.8GHz) for a bit more speed at S$132. The more powerful processor would be ideal if you plan to virtually run the Windows OS simultaneously with OS X (as pointed out by a senior HardwareZone member). If you are on a tight budget and need a new machine, there are also two other 11-inch models that cost even less - prices start from S$1288.

Of course the MacBook Air, like any other mainstream consumer product, has its drawbacks. The MacBook Air is fully aluminum, which means it’s fairly tough. But it’s built to be so thin that it can’t really escape from slight weaknesses. If you exert enough strength, it flexes slightly. And if you stare at the (switched off) screen with a light source behind, you can actually make out the Apple logo. This means there isn’t anything protective behind the screen in the area of the Apple logo other than the surrounding aluminum lid to keep it safe from harm. Other than for bragging rights and a strong marketing purpose, we see no other reason why this weakness was introduced into an otherwise robust machine.

Having said that, the only machine of a comparable class we have ever seen that is harder and badder than the MacBook Air (in terms of looks) is the Samsung Series 9 (black Duralamin). However in terms of performance, the MBA triumphs every time. Even in price, it leaves the much more expensive Series 9 (S$2488) eating its dust. Then again, it is still too early to say if the MacBook Air will stay at the top of the pack for good, especially when the "Intel UltraBooks" make their debut (late 2011). But for now, it is at the top of the pack for machines of its class, and even besting some machines above its class.

Lastly we have the issue of operating systems. This is an age old debate that we won’t be getting into today. By now readers should have a good idea of what kind of operating system suits them better. Whether you want to try something new, or want to stick with the familiar it is up to you, and Apple gives you the choice of choosing which operating system you want to by using BootCamp. Something to note here however is that the latest version of BootCamp only supports Windows 7. This suits us just fine since it is really what you would want to run - definitely not Windows XP or Vista in this day and age.

There is also something new for Mac users, in the form of the OS X Lion, which makes its debut in this machine -- adding quite a few nifty features that would appeal to new and veteran users. Ultimately however, no matter which OS you choose to operate this sexy little machine with, you will be in safe hands, thanks to the speedy SSD that it comes with.

So regardless of what OS you choose, if you need something that combines your wants AND your needs into one package, do yourself a favour and look no further than the new MacBook Air. That’s of course if you don’t need cutting edge graphics, or a screen bigger than 13.3-inches, but need portability, durability, battery life instead at a relatively reasonable price point. Oh and did we mention it’s dripping with class? No? Well it is. The MacBook Air will definitely get looks from geeks or hipsters, no matter which group you run with.

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