Apple MacBook Air 11"

Ratings

Overall score Overall scoreclose Consists of performance (20%), battery life (30%) and ease of use (50%).	78%
Performance (/10) Performance (/10)close Based on scores from the Peacekeeper benchmarking program which measures the performance of common computing tasks. Evaluation was conducted using each laptop's native operating system.	7.1
Battery life (/10) Battery life (/10)close Measured in standby and a range of active modes.	8.0
Ease of use (/10) Ease of use (/10)close Based on software, migrating settings and software, monitor visibility, manuals, support, ergonomics, and other features.	8.0
Peacekeeper score Peacekeeper scoreclose If a computer achieves twice the Peacekeeper score of another, it means that it ran twice as many operations in the same time period, completed the test in half the time, or rendered graphics at twice the frame rate of the other. See 'How we tested' for more information.	3015
Hard drive read/write time - 5GB (mins)	1

Need to know

Good points

The MacBook Air achieved the best overall combination of performance, battery life and ease of use. While its Peacekeeper benchmarking score was only around half that of the Sony Vaio, it was nearly twice that of the netbooks tested. Its 1366 x 768 resolution screen rated best by a significant margin, and it had very good battery life - around 3 hours for high usage and a lengthy 8 hours for light. It's very portable, with a light weight and a super-slim profile that allows it to be slipped into a standard A4 envelope (not that you’d want to mail a $1700 computer like that). Very fast read/write time.

But

No VGA or HDMI outputs. No optical drive. No memory card reader. Small 64GB hard drive. Expensive.

Bottom line

A stylish small laptop that's slim and light and performs better than a netbook - but you could buy a bigger, more fully-featured laptop for the price.