MacBook 2.13GHz review

It was something of a surprise when, earlier this month, Apple chose to abandon its relatively new aluminium MacBook range, leaving only this white MacBook alongside the MacBook Pro and Air ranges.

When the white model was left in the range alongside the new aluminium MacBook last Autumn, it was seen as an acceptance by Apple that its new models were expensive compared to previous MacBooks. It was also expected that the white MacBook would be left to wither on the vine; the unwanted runt of the litter, whose existence was a result of global economic chaos rather than any Apple grand plan. Not so, it would seem. This is the second update to the white MacBook this year.

This isn't the first time that Apple has continued to ship an 'old' model; the white iMac remained available after its silver replacement had been launched. But in that case, the iMac really was left to slowly die. Apple may have released this unexpected update with little more fanfare than a press release, but the fact that it's shipping it at all suggests that the white MacBook proving very popular.

The new white MacBook has a 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor - taking it back to its clock speed prior to being 'downgraded' to 2GHz in January - 2GB of memory, an Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics processor, and a 160GB hard drive. There's also an 8x SuperDrive, two USB 2 ports, a FireWire 400 port, Gigabit Ethernet, Mini DVI, and audio in and out. Add draft 802.11n wifi and Bluetooth 2.1, and you have a very capable MacBook.

What you don't have, of course, is the aluminium unibody enclosure, backlit LED screen, backlit keyboard and glass trackpad of its smarter-looking cousins. And the memory in this model is DDR2 running at 800MHz, rather than DDR3 at 1066MHz. At £749, however, it's £170 cheaper than the less expensive of the two aluminium models, and a whopping £375 cheaper than the top-of-the-range model. The white MacBook also has FireWire 400 and Mini DVI, rather than FireWire 800 and Mini DisplayPort. In that context, it's hardly surprising that Apple feels the need to continue selling it.

For anyone whose prime concern is having a moderately powerful portable Mac on which to email, surf the Internet and do general office-type work, then the price difference is a significant incentive. The legacy support of FireWire 400 and Mini DVI is also important for schools and businesses, who buy laptops in volume and want to be able to support them with the minimum of fuss.

Our tests suggest that anyone who does opt for this MacBook, rather than its shinier siblings, won't suffer a great deal in terms of performance. It scored a very respectable Xbench overall score of 132, compared with 128 and 129 for the 2GHz and 2.4GHz aluminium models, respectively. Its CPU score of 144 was also impressive, compared with 131 and 140 for the two aluminium MacBooks. The margins in that test are relatively slim, and the differences between all three machines are within the margins of error for the test, which could explain why the white MacBook outscored both aluminium machines. We did, however, run the test repeatedly and the lowest the white MacBook scored was 142. The best that we can say is that any differences in raw power between all three machines are negligible, and won't be noticed in everyday use.

The memory test results were surprisingly close. The white MacBook scored 157 compared to the aluminium models' 168 and 169, which is surprising given that the more expensive machines have faster DDR3 Ram. Both graphics tests, Quartz and OpenGL, showed that the white notebook's Nvidia GeForce 9400M with 256MB Ram is just as nippy as that in the aluminium models.