95
Criteria
Comments
Rating
- Speed and features Snappy and more than enough for coding and my daily browsing needs. Never felt i was waiting for anything to compute faster. Good balance.
- Design and form factor Small, lightweight, good looking, and all aluminum... Nothing beat the Macbook Air.
- Battery life My power adapter stay at home, plain simple.
- Display I tasted retina macbook 15". Still one of the best LCD panel but no near IPS retina quality. On the other side, I noticed I can enjoy it !
- Durability SSD dead after 3 months. Replaced quickly. I still feel It is bad luck when compared to the quantity of Macbook sold. Apple Care needed !? I think so...
- Expandability None. But don't need really more. If you need more storage a USB3 external HD will fit perfectly. Please, get yourself 8 Gig of ram on purchase !
- Noise Gaming make the fan spin a bit. But you don't buy a Macbook Air for gaming so this thing is completely silent.
- Portability (size / weight) Work, university, home use... I just don't know why the 1-2 less lbs feel so much lighter than the rMBP but it does. Perfect size/weight
Detailed review
First Mac ever. Using IOS device since 4 years. 32 years old. Microsoft software developer (C#).
I originally purchased a retina Macbook Pro 15" but returned it because of the image retention problems everyone was facing. Decided to get a Macbook Air 13. Took me 2 week to get used back to a non-retina screen. But after 3 months, I truly feel this Macbook Book Air 13" is an awesome computer. The macbook retina screen may worth the extra money, but not the image retention problem associated with it. For me, saving more than 1000$ for a stable product (Macbook Air) was a better choice. I was mainly fearing the non retina and smaller 13.3 inch screen. But I got used to the lesser screen (comparer to retina 15" rMBP) and now really enjoy the product.
For me OSX is new experience and I have no regret getting a jump in it with the Macbook air 13". It still amaze me, how responsive and fun the macbook air is. I use it mainly at home and for university.
I never felt the CPU was slow. It really feel snappy mainly thanks to the SSD. I do strongly recommend an upgrade to 8 Gig of ram. I noticed way too often 4 gig of memory usage only doing Xcode and Safari browsing. This mean next OSX upgrade will more than likely need more RAM. Don't even hesitate, get 8 Gig and the Macbook Air will be a satisfying computer for the next couple of years and will have a much better resale value if needed.
I am impress and satisfied. Runner up was Lenovo Yoga and 3rd Lenovo X1. At that point operating system will make the difference. For me I was curious about OSX and running Windows in a VM was a good trade out. Now enjoying both OSX and Windows.
I originally purchased a retina Macbook Pro 15" but returned it because of the image retention problems everyone was facing. Decided to get a Macbook Air 13. Took me 2 week to get used back to a non-retina screen. But after 3 months, I truly feel this Macbook Book Air 13" is an awesome computer. The macbook retina screen may worth the extra money, but not the image retention problem associated with it. For me, saving more than 1000$ for a stable product (Macbook Air) was a better choice. I was mainly fearing the non retina and smaller 13.3 inch screen. But I got used to the lesser screen (comparer to retina 15" rMBP) and now really enjoy the product.
For me OSX is new experience and I have no regret getting a jump in it with the Macbook air 13". It still amaze me, how responsive and fun the macbook air is. I use it mainly at home and for university.
I never felt the CPU was slow. It really feel snappy mainly thanks to the SSD. I do strongly recommend an upgrade to 8 Gig of ram. I noticed way too often 4 gig of memory usage only doing Xcode and Safari browsing. This mean next OSX upgrade will more than likely need more RAM. Don't even hesitate, get 8 Gig and the Macbook Air will be a satisfying computer for the next couple of years and will have a much better resale value if needed.
I am impress and satisfied. Runner up was Lenovo Yoga and 3rd Lenovo X1. At that point operating system will make the difference. For me I was curious about OSX and running Windows in a VM was a good trade out. Now enjoying both OSX and Windows.
good review!
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review history
- 2013-02-10
-
Display rating changed from 3 to 4
Updated overall rating
Edited comment on Display
- 2013-02-05
-
Expandability rating changed from 3 to 2
Durability rating changed from 4 to 3
Updated overall rating