Hello! We welcome you to the website of F.ua. Today we will talk about the Apple MacBook Air 11 model.
American corporation Apple Inc. every day it surprises us more and more with its computer world. Apple iPhone, Apple iPod, Apple MacBook and, of course, Apple iPad - they are the founders of fashion on the planet of portable technology. In 2010, in the spring, the Apple iPad Internet tablet was released, and in the fall of 2010, in October, the eleven-inch Apple MacBook Air was presented. Also worth noting is the fact that besides this computer, the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air has been announced for the next generation. “Trinashka”, as it was called, appeared back in 2008, and now it has received a new filling and body.
There are no laptops like the Apple MacBook Air 11.6 in the world yet, and we believe that they are unlikely to appear in the near future. The previous generation of the MacBook Air was 1.94 cm thick, but now Apple has gone a lot further by squeezing the laptop into a shell just 1.7 cm thick. It will be very difficult for other manufacturers to surpass the Apple designers. Also, the functional preparation and equipment of this model looks quite powerful. What is it: the most stylish and most compact mini-laptop in the world?
Laptop design
Stylish, beautiful, amazing, alluring, attractive, durable, inimitable, cool, great. The Apple MacBook Air received such a characteristic even for a very reason. This isn't the first time Apple's anodized aluminum unibody case has been found in Apple laptop models, but now the unibody engineering principles have been applied to the MacBook Air display. The "case" of the laptop matrix, or rather, its entire base, is made of a sheet of aluminum. All the structural elements of the laptop are cut right into it. This makes the subnotebook even thinner.
The dimensions of the subnotebook are only 29.97 x 19.2 x 0.3 / 1.7 cm. The last figures refer to the thickness of this device, which amazed us. And do not think that this somehow affected the strength of the structure of this device - the materials, the build quality are considered standard. If we talk about the practicality of the laptop, namely the metal surface, then neither scratches nor fingerprints will be visible on it. In addition, the body will not bend under the pressure of your hands.
The subnotebook weighs only 1.06 kg, which means that carrying this revolutionary device with you will be very simple and easy. The maximum opening angle of the laptop should suit almost all users, there will be no problems with this. In fact, the Apple MacBook Air is only one-third the size of the iPad, yet it is all a full-fledged laptop with a good operating system.
Laptop display and sound
The glossy 11.6-inch widescreen display with a cinematic aspect ratio of 16: 9 and a resolution of 1366x768 pixels will delight the lovers of good picture quality. The picture looks rich, tasty, bright and juicy thanks to the LED backlight. You shouldn't worry about the display, which will sometimes give glare. The matrix includes an anti-glare filter that will function more comfortably than in previous models of the Apple MacBook Air series. It is worth evaluating the matrix for fairly good viewing angles, only horizontally they are close to 150 degrees. The lack of a protective glass cover is another feature of the Air series laptop screen. This is all done with one goal in mind - to reduce the thickness of the screen lid and the overall weight of the laptop.
The speakers of the laptop are located on the sides of the keyboard, they are loud enough and will cope well with their direct duties. If for a little more bass, there would be no price for this speaker system from Apple MacBook Air.
Laptop keyboard and touchpad
This laptop is equipped with a low-profile, island-style keyboard with rough and black keys. One drawback immediately catches the eye - it is the lack of backlighting.This is a disadvantage for such a model, considering also that it has already been used in other subnotebooks. In the devices for entering information in the laptop, no more flaws were found.
This glass touchpad has a fairly large size, there are also no "mouse" physical buttons. Actually, they are there, but they are well hidden under the touch pad. The Touchpad system is also equipped with its main function - the multi-touch function. It supports quite a lot of different gestures that can be performed with one hand (tap, pinch, slide, rotate, swipe with one, four fingers, double tap, scroll, zoom, lock, and drag). You don't even need to mention the sensitivity of the panel, since traditionally it is ideal for Apple.
The main program in demand is of course iPhoto. It performs editing functions (this is just a secondary function) and functions for organizing various photographs. The most important innovation is support for Facebook, sending photos to a profile (optionally, along with a comment) directly from the iPhoto application. You can also send photos by e-mail, but not as attachments, but as an album with frames separately for each of your photos.
There are also functions to create a variety of frames, photo albums, slideshow effects, caption styles for each photo, and many more. And without this, the beautiful application has become even more interesting. We recommend that you give this application maximum attention and time.
Processor and laptop performance
Actually, the 11-inch Apple MacBook Air can be equipped with 2 types of processors: Intel Core 2 Duo SU9600 and Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 with frequencies of 1.6 and 1.4 GHz, respectively. There is also a caveat here - with a more powerful processor, a laptop is assembled only to order.
So, in a MacBook Air laptop, the Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor is responsible for the performance. 1.4 GHz is the frequency of the processor, the second level cache is 3 MB. Such a processor will not create problems while working with music, office applications and video.
This handsome man has 2 gigabytes for DDR3 RAM (operating frequency is 1066 MHz). However, the laptop's Core 2 Duo SU9600 processor is equipped with 4 gigabytes of RAM.
The innovation of this particular model is flash drives. Instead of SSD, as well as HDD, the manufacturer installed a new generation of drives in the new MacBook Air laptop - such as iSSD. This innovation will save about 90% of the free space in the case. They are lightweight, quiet, reliable, durable and can demonstrate just amazing speed. The iSSD storage capacity can range from 64 to 128 GB.
The notebook is equipped with an integrated graphics card such as NVIDIA GeForce 320M (this card should not be confused with a discrete card such as NVIDIA GeForce GT 320M). It is made using the new 40nm technology, it also supports DirectX 10.1 and can take 256 MB of DDR3 memory from the general system. With such a built-in video card, you can easily enjoy playing not very demanding modern games.
Laptop ports and communications
As we expected, manufacturers could not accommodate many ports on such a thin compact case. Only the most needed ports will be discovered by the user. The front and back edges are free from connectors and ports.
On the left side there is a USB 2.0 port, a microphone, a headphone output and a MagSafe power connector. Another Mini DisplayPort (support for HDCP - technology for protecting files) and USB 2.0 port contains the right side of the laptop. By the way, Mini DisplayPort can easily turn into VGA or HDMI using optional DVI, VGA, Dual-Link DVI and HDMI adapters. Alas, there is no RJ-45 connector and no card reader. This means that the user will not be able to use the local network and memory cards.
With built-in adapters such as Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (this is an increased speed for data transfer) and AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (802.11n), the laptop supports wireless networks.
An iSight camera is built into the display frame itself. With its help you will be able to communicate with friends, colleagues, relatives.Thanks to the FaceTime application, you can make calls from Mac to Mac and to iOS devices (if they support this technology). The FaceTime application automatically "picks up" the address book, while displaying all of its contacts.
This laptop comes with a pre-installed operating system such as Mac OS X v10.6.
Laptop hardware platform
Inside our 11-inch laptop (MacBook Air model) is a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB DDR3 RAM, a 128GB flash array, and an nVidia GeForce GT graphics adapter. 320M. In our opinion, this is the most affordable configuration. As we were informed, the amount of RAM can be slightly increased (up to 4 GB), but we see no point in this. The 1.4 GHz laptop processor frequency may seem insufficient to you, but in practice the machine just flies.
We also tested video playback in Full HD (1080p), and so, we did not notice any brakes, since they are absent, the system works with a bang. All other compact laptops can just dream of such smooth operation.
We were impressed by the time it took to wake up from sleep mode, it took about 2 seconds. When you open the lid, this laptop wakes up instantly, falls asleep also instantly. His predecessor is a little behind in this regard.
Graphics like nVidia are powerful enough - also a huge plus over its predecessor. Comparison of the performance of our tested laptop with the Air 2008 can be estimated by looking at the data, which is posted a little below.
To assess system performance, we used a special program Xbench:
- Xbench Score 121.65
- Thread Test 176.39
- CPU Test 98.48
- Memory Test 140.40
- OpenGL Graphics Test 83.69
- Quartz Graphics Test 103.8
- Disk Test 223.53
- User Interface Test 115.69
Naturally, these results are quite modest, they are slightly lower than that of a MacBook Pro laptop with a Core processor, but for Apple, given that this laptop is the thinnest, the data obtained during testing is quite acceptable.
Laptop battery
The MagSafe power cord is attached to the laptop with a special magnet, making it almost impossible to pull the plug out of the device.
The mobile personal computer is equipped with a polymer electrolyte battery (35 Wh), so that the device, in the mode of the wireless adapters, can work for approximately five hours. A laptop in sleep mode can be active for about 30 days.
Brief conclusions
After using the 11-inch new MacBook Air, it was very difficult for us to part with it. We came up with many options for its use, and in terms of size, appearance, functionality, there are no flaws that are inherent in the previous generation from the Air corporation.
The 11-inch Apple MacBook Air looks luxurious and expensive. It is equipped with high-quality speakers, a very bright display, a low-voltage processor from Intel, an integrated powerful NVIDIA graphics card, a revolutionary flash-drive and a sufficiently capacious lithium (polymer) battery. This laptop also has disadvantages. First, there is no keyboard backlight. Secondly, the processor is a little weak. And thirdly, the set of ports is scarce. Against the general background, these disadvantages are completely insignificant and not critical.
Summarizing all of the above in this review, the MacBook Air 11 is ideal for frequent and long trips. Powerful enough: it allows you to process videos and photos, and watch HD movies; moderately active - he can work without recharging for about 5 hours (heavy loads are taken into account). The laptop is also optimally sized to accommodate both an 11-inch screen and a full-size, comfortable keyboard. I repeat once again, he simply has no alternatives. Last year's Sony Vaio X laptop is more compact and slightly lighter, but the hardware platform from Intel Atom is lower by an order of magnitude. The current Sony Vaio Y 11 laptop is already comparable in functionality (processor from Intel Core i3), but it is much thicker and heavier. Other companies do not have comparable 11-inch models in their arsenal.
So the thinnest and most compact laptop from Apple has become not just an expensive and fashionable accessory, but also a convenient typewriter for full-fledged work. The hardware platform, the speed of work, the performance made us very happy. You can evaluate the design and appearance yourself. So if you are not too confused by its price, then you definitely need to take it.
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