Apple MacBook Air review

MacBook Air's usability and performance are almost as good as its looks, but it's let down by its miserly range of ports

Launched mid-September, the MC504 and MC505 are the latest MacBook Air laptops from Apple, featuring 13.3in and 11.6in screens respectively.

We looked at the MC504, which costs a hefty £1,349. For that you get the Mac OS X 10.4.6 Snow Leopard operating system, an Intel 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of DDR3 system memory, a fast 1066MHz frontside bus and 256GB of SSD storage.

Buyers can also specify smaller 128GB SSD for both 11in and 13in models.

An nVidia GeForce 320 card drives the MC504 pin-sharp 13.3in widescreen TFT LED backlit active-matrix display to a native resolution of 1440 x 900, and can drive external monitors to a resolution of 2560 x 1600, but it does need to share 256MB of system memory.

Users can have dual screens or simply mirror the MacBook's screen onto an external monitor. There's also a camera for use with Apple's FaceTime video-calling software situated up top in the middle of the screen bezel.

The most striking thing about the MC504's design is just how thin the device is (see gallery). At its thickest point, where the screen attaches to the main body, it measures 17mm. From here the casing tapers to a thickness of only 3mm, with the other dimensions being 32cm by 22.7cm.

This thinness is largely down to the battery design, use of SSD storage, the device's ultra low-profile keyboard, and the fact that there are just six ports for various connectors.

Tipping the scales at just 1.33kg, the new MacBook Air looks the business, and despite its flimsy appearance, is surprisingly robust. Gripping the screen and trying to flex it significantly is difficult; indeed, our 15.4in lab laptop screen flexes much more than this did.

One aspect of the design that users might find less than satisfactory is the ultra-thin keyboard. The minimal amount of key travel can take some getting used to.

The MacBook comes with a power adaptor with magnetic connector, system documentation, and a USB Flash stick for restoring the system to its factory settings.

Boot-up and shut-down times benefit greatly from the SSD, and you can be ready to work in under 20 seconds, and have web access in under a minute after the MacBook's AirPort system picks up the wireless network connection.

Firing up the system for the first time initiates a quick account creation and wireless network setup process, after which you're ready to roll.

A quick trawl through the system preferences did bring up something that should be changed immediately: the firewall is off by default.

Users working with the MacBook on their laps will also have no respite from "laptop thigh", or erythema ab igne as it is known by the medical profession, since a fair amount of heat is generated on the underside of the system.

The only applications we loaded on the MacBook were Office for Mac 2011, and Parallels Desktop 6.0 Switch to Mac Edition, which we used to import our lab laptop's Windows desktop onto the MacBook. If you're thinking of running a few virtual machines on the MacBook, we'd recommend the model with an extra 2GB of memory.

The only ports on the MC504 are two USB 2.0 connections, a standard headphone jack, Apple's magnetic AC adaptor port, an SD card slot, and a Miniport socket for connecting to other displays.

Users looking to connect to displays using DVI, VGA or HDMI face the added expense of buying an appropriate adaptor, and because there are only two USB 2.0 ports, some may also have to fork out for a USB hub at some point.

The primary network connection used by most owners will be the 802.11n Wi-Fi link, as there is no LAN adaptor for wired connections supplied as standard.

However, we were lucky enough to be supplied with the optional USB LAN connector, which would otherwise have cost us another £25.

But since this is a USB 2.0 connection with a theoretical data transfer rate of 480Mbit/s (unlikely in practice), and the LAN port is a 100Mbit/s one, users connecting to gigabit networks won't see any network performance boost.

Battery life was pretty good, with the 6.9Ah Lithium-Polymer battery recording about six hours when the MacBook was used for a mix of light and heavy workloads.

Recharging the system to 99 per cent took about 1 hour 50 minutes.

Conclusions
Overall, we were impressed by the usability of the system. We had no problems with any application throughout the test period and no hardware problems either.

Six hours' battery life under a mix of light and heavy workloads is pretty good, and the ability to put the system to sleep by just shutting the lid, and have it up and running on opening the lid in just five seconds is extremely useful.