Apple MacBook Air review

Few laptops have ever generated a buzz like the MacBook Air did on its January 2008 release. It was followed by the inevitable debate over the merits of putting design before function, as the Air undoubtedly did.

There's no denying that this is a well-designed laptop. Its slim, smooth uninterrupted lines and impeccable finish are as gorgeous as they were at launch; it's the most desirable ultraportable around. And this latest version has seen Apple update much of the specification that initially proved so underwhelming. The 65nm Merom Intel Core 2 Duo processors of the original have been replaced with 45nm Penryn parts, with the low-power, 1.86GHz SU9400 used here.

The 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM has also been upgraded to the same amount of 1,066MHz DDR3 memory; the Intel integrated graphics have been replaced by Nvidia's GeForce 9400M chipset; and the 64GB SSD of the original Air has doubled in size. On paper, at least, the upgraded Air sounds a more practical proposition than its forebear.

Despite these improvements, however, the Air is still slow, scoring just 0.69 in our 2D benchmarks, which makes it the most sluggish laptop in this group. The Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU, meanwhile, isn't cut out for gaming, struggling through our medium-quality Crysis benchmark at just 5fps.

The low-power components resulted in surprisingly poor battery life results: just four hours in our light-use test under Vista and only a little more in Mac OS X are disappointing figures for a laptop so tightly focused on portability.

The Air's chassis is still one of the most stylish and slimmest on the planet, but you do sacrifice a lot for the looks. There's no optical drive, and connectivity is limited, with just a single USB port and 3.5mm audio jack. The Mini DisplayPort video output requires £17 exc VAT adapters for D-SUB or DVI output. And while the screen and Scrabble-tile keyboard are perfectly adequate, they're not as impressive as those sported by rivals this month.

If you're sold on the looks and want Mac OS X then you'll probably enjoy owning this stylish laptop. But the high price, lack of pace and average battery life all count against it.

Author: Mike Jennings