Apple MacBook Air review

Come on. Twelve hundred quid for a moderately specified laptop that can't be upgraded, has only one peripheral port, and has to be sent back to the manufacturer if the battery needs changing?

The thing is, though, you'd have to have a cold heart not to fall for the MacBook Air. Apple set themselves a target weight of three pounds - half that of many laptops - yet avoided the most obvious compromises to get there. Where we might have expected a 10 inch screen, there's a 13.3 inch backlit LED with a high resolution of 1280x800 pixels. It even uses new technology to give a better display with lower power consumption. And what could have been a cramped keyboard is a sturdy full-size job.

Instead, they've skimped on the only dimension left: girth. At its fattest point, the Air measures just three quarters of an inch; at its narrowest, it's all but invisible. In a plastic case, such a skinny machine wouldn't last five minutes, but the anodised aluminium shell is tough and durable, giving a real sense of robustness.

Another innovative feature is the large trackpad, which supports a number of the fingertip gestures introduced on the iPhone and iPod touch. With a photo onscreen, for example, pinching two fingers together zooms out, while doing the reverse zooms in. Twisting two fingers rotates the image. It's a neat idea on a handheld touchscreen, but it just doesn't work as well here, and we found it rather frustrating.

So much for what's been packed in. The first thing that's been chucked out is the DVD drive. The Air does come with software that you can install on a Mac or PC to allow you to borrow its optical drive to install software over a network. But you can't play DVD movies that way, and it took us six times longer to install an application than using the Air's optional USB 2 external DVD drive. The drive costs an extra £69.

If that doesn't put you off, consider the absence of connectivity. There's no PC Card slot, and just one USB 2, so you can't plug in a mouse and a flash drive at the same time, unless you carry a USB hub. There's a mini DVI socket for a monitor or projector (with adaptors), and a 3.5mm headphone jack, but no FireWire for your video camera. And if you need Ethernet, an optional USB to Ethernet adaptor costs £19. WiFi, at least, is built in.

Slim pickings

Nor is this a high-performance computer. The 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo processor is modest, and the hard drive is not only limited to 80GB in capacity, but also 4200rpm in speed, a noticeable bottleneck in tasks that require sustained data transfer. A higher-spec Air is available with 64GB of flash memory in place of the hard drive, and a 1.8GHz processor, but that costs a thousand pounds extra.

The standard 2GB of RAM is sensible, but it can't be upgraded any further. And the Intel GMA X3100 graphics chip, the same one as in the basic MacBook range (as opposed to the MacBook Pro), is weak compared to current midrange laptop PCs. As we expected given these specifications, our tests showed the Air is significantly less powerful than the £699 MacBook. It's fine for most tasks, but not a good choice if you might want to edit video or run Photoshop.

Battery life, quoted at five hours, is good, though you can't carry a spare battery since it's not user swappable. (Our usual suite of battery tests doesn't run on Apple machines.)

Like any Mac, the Air is an elegant computer that will give you much less hassle than a Windows system but can also run Windows if you choose to install it. If you need a powerful portable, this isn't it, but if you don't mind paying extra for a basic machine in a fabulous format, it's one of a kind.

Author: Kenny Hemphill