Apple MacBook 2.4GHz review

Apple MacBooks have always looked distinctive, but its aluminium chassis makes the latest model look particularly stylish.

It also feels rigid and sturdy, for which Apple credits its manufacturing process, where the base is machined out of a single block of metal. The keyboard feels firm and responsive. The keys are comfortable and automatically illuminate when used in dim lighting conditions.

The most striking feature of the new MacBook is its huge touch pad. It doesn't have any buttons, as the entire pad clicks, although the top of the pad feels stiffer than the bottom. It feels odd at first, but quickly becomes second nature. Contextual menus can be brought up by holding two fingers on the pad while clicking or by pressing the pad's lower left or right hand corners. By swiping differing numbers of fingers across the pad in certain directions you can also perform various tasks. These include scrolling through web pages, rotating images and cycling through windows and programs. It may sound convoluted, but the gestures are easy to learn. They don't work under Windows, though, and the pad feels less accurate, too, presumably because of the drivers.

Despite its sturdy case, the new MacBook weighs just 2kg. It lasted four hours and 31 minutes in our light-usage battery test, making it a great choice for working on the move. As with previous models, the power adaptor's magnetically attached cable detaches harmlessly if yanked, instead of dragging the laptop to the floor, or damaging the socket.

This is the first MacBook without a FireWire port, so any FireWire peripherals you have, such as MiniDV video cameras, won't be compatible. There aren't any ExpressCard or memory card slots, either, and only a pair of USB ports.

The 13.3in, 1,280x800 screen looks bright and produces vivid colours. However, viewing angles are narrow and the glossy finish can cause problems with reflections. The MacBook has a mini-DisplayPort connector, which is Apple's smaller variant of the standard DisplayPort. You'll need an adaptor if you want to connect a DVI or VGA monitor: none is included in the box.

The MacBook uses one of Intel's latest processors, the Core 2 Duo P8600. Unlike previous models, however, Apple has chosen to use an Nvidia chipset rather than an Intel Centrino 2 one. Despite this, the MacBook has many features in common with Centrino 2 laptops, such as a 1,066MHz frontside bus and Draft-N wireless networking. It sped through our applications benchmarks, despite the fact that it comes with 2GB of DDR3 RAM. The 250GB hard disk is disapointing, too; other laptops at this price are more generously specified.

The Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics chip managed 8.6fps in our Call of Duty 4 test, which rose to 16fps when we disabled anti-aliasing and reduced the screen's resolution to 1,024x768. It's not powerful enough for playing graphically intensive games, but can handle older, less demanding titles.

We were impressed with the MacBook's long battery life, sleek design and comfortable keyboard and touch pad. It's a great ultra-portable laptop, as long as you're happy to use Mac OS X. A good Windows alternative is Asus's U6V. Its battery life is shorter, but it's 400g lighter, is faster in applications and has a bigger hard disk, as well as plenty of ports.