2011 Macbook Air 11.6″ Review

The refresh of the new 11.6″ and 13.3″ Macbook Air last July 2011 has introduced more powerful Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors into the line-up. I got the 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD Core i5 Macbook Air 11.6“ to test out. See full review after the jump.

When I bought the 11″ Macbook Air last year, it was my first dibs at owning a Mac and using OS X. I suggest reading my review of the 2010 Macbook Air 11.6″ here first, before you continue to read this one.

Most of the basics are covered there, especially the aesthetics part, so I won’t repeat them again here. You still get the same solid construction (thin and light aluminum), very sleek form factor, great attention to detail in a simple, yet elegant design.

As a reference, the model that we bought for this review is the 2nd variant of the 11.6 inch:

Macbook Air 11.6″ (MC969ZP/A) specs:
11.6″ display @ 1366×768 pixels
Intel Core i5-2467M 1.6 GHz (2 cores)
Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 2.3GHz
Intel HD Graphics 3000 384MB
4GB DDR3 RAM
128GB SSD
2 x USB 2.0 ports
Bluetooth 4.0 HS
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Thunderbolt
Apple OS X 10.7 Lion

The base model only has 2GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage and retails for Php49,990USD 852INR 72,216EUR 811CNY 6,204 while the one we got is Php59,990USD 1,022INR 86,662EUR 974CNY 7,445.

After using the old model from last year, that configuration wasn’t enough, especially on the storage end (I kept on cleaning up my the disk for un-important and un-used files). And because the Macbook Air uses an almost unibody design, there’s no turning around once you grab a variant — no user-replaceable or upgradeable memory or storage (update: but with enough determination and patience, the SSD is still replaceable but the RAM module is soldered into the board). You can have the battery replaced though.

If you want more and have the budget, you can actually get a custom variant with 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD and an Intel Core i7 1.8GHz processor. That is, if you have Php82k to spare.

From the design end, the Macbook Air remained the same except for a few additional features — the mini Display Port has been replaced by a faster, more advanced Thunderbolt port, the keyboard is now backlit (which is a huge plus), and on paper about 40 grams heavier. The iSight camera has just been renamed to Facetime camera, but there’s no megapixel improvement there.

Looking at the hardware inside, Apple finally moved to using Intel’s Sandy Bridge chips (they skipped the first generation Core i-series) with a more powerful Core i5 1.6GHz processor. That’s 2 cores and 4 threads with a base clock speed of 1.6GHz that can Turbo Boost up to 2.0GHz on both cores and can still push it up to 2.3GHz on one core.

The performance of the processor is impressive and miles away from the Core 2 Duo SU9400 Apple used from last year. This is evident when I was doing using PhotoShop and iMovie as the tasks have become more efficient and generally much faster (up to twice as fast on some tasks). Manipulating multiple images at the same time is breeze (used to be slugging in the old MacAir).

Along with the new Sandy Bridge chip is the embedded Intel HD Graphics 3000 that came along with it. Apple ditched the dedicated NVidia GeForce 320M GPU from last year (looks like there’s no room for a discreet graphics inside that thin chassis) and that somehow reduced the performance of the graphics on this one (mostly on the gaming department only).

Still the Intel HD Graphics 3000 is a very capable one running at a base speed of 350Mhz and goes up to 1.15GHz (the NVidia GeForce 320M runs at a base speed of 450MHz).

When you install 64-bit Windows 7 on this hardware, Windows Experience Index will give you a sub-score of 6.4 for the CPU, 5.9 on the RAM, 5.8 on the Graphics, 6.2 on Gaming and 7.1 on the Primary Drive {via} and those are pretty good numbers. The old NVidia GeForce 320M got 5.3 and 6.1 on WEI so the Intel HD Graphics 3000 still has a bit of an edge here, over-all.

Just to be sure, I also ran a couple of benchmarks comparing the old modela and this new one. Here’s what I got from NovaBench:

2010 Macbook Air 11.6″ (1.4GHz Core 2 Duo, NVidia 320M)
RAM score: 98
CPU Tests: 112
Graphics Test: 53
Hardware Tests: 11
3D Frames Per Second: 121
Write Speed: 72 MB/s
RAM Speed: 2013 MB/s
NovaBench Score: 274

Here’s what I got from the review unit:

2011 Macbook Air 11.6″ (1.6GHz Core i5, Intel HD Graphics 3000)
RAM score: 123
CPU Tests: 303
Graphics Test: 22
Hardware Tests: 28
3D Frames Per Second: 54
Write Speed: 227 MB/s
RAM Speed: 5767 MB/s
NovaBench Score: 446

Over-all score is almost twice with significant improvements in CPU, RAM and read+write speed on the SDD.

The GeekBench scores also validated the numbers from above:
2011 Macbook Air 11.6″: 4630
2010 Macbook Air 11.6″: 2202

The Thunderbolt port replaced the mini Display Port and though there’s not much real-world use for it now but once more devices support the technology, you can actually hook this port to up to 7 Thunderbolt devices in a single cable line (imagine what a 10Gbps speed can do over this line?). For now, all I can do with this is plug in a large external display into this port using the same old mini Display Port cable.

Apple has finally brought back the backlit keyboard in the Macbook Air (it’s been a huge drawback for me when I’m typing in the dark with the old model). The brightness controls are found in the F5 and F6 keys while the Facetime camera also serves as ambient light sensor. The brightness of the screen and the backlit keyboard reacts accordingly when light is projected into the camera.

The 2011 line of Macbook Airs also came with the new Mac OS X Lion and along with it, some OS improvements and UI changes. I specifically liked the LaunchPad which looks like how the apps are arranged and scrolls on the iPad. The most useful one is the ability of windows to take up the entire screen (I used to get annoyed with the old Mac OS because it can’t do this).

The trackpad gestures are also pretty cool though I’m finding it a bit awkward to use all four fingers at once. The biggest confusion I guess, and this is probably true with most Mac users who just upgraded to Lion, is that the trackpad scroll is reversed (drag down to scroll up, drag up to scroll down). Of course, you can switch it back the way you liked it in the System Preferences.

I kinda find it more intuitive though, and didn’t took much time to get used to it, since it follows how you scroll on the iPhone and the iPad.

Apple is also the first manufacturer to add Bluetooth 4.0 into laptops. It’s not much of a use right now (since very few other devices have it) but I guess there’s one more bragging rights for you.

Battery life on the Macbook Air has somewhat reduced compared to the old one. One normal use, I could get between 3.5 to 4 hours on a single full charge — and this is heavy browsing with WiFi on, some Adobe Photoshop and some ro two sessions on iMovie (where display is at 50% brightness). I think I could push it to 5 hours with light browsing or mostly reading or typing but I rarely do that.

Things it missed and are still missing:

i) No Ethernet or LAN port – you’d have to buy a LAN to USB port adapter.

ii) No optical disk drive – you can buy the external drive or use the Remote Disc software to use the drive of another PC over WiFi. But we already know that ultra-thin laptops carry this compromise, right?

iii) SD card slot – the 13-inch model has them but the 11-inch ones still don’t (sorry, no more space left) so I bring a card reader with me all the time.

iv) No installation CD, not even the USB flash recovery drive from last year (there’s a rumor you can get that Flash drive for an additional $69PHP 4,049INR 5,848EUR 66CNY 502). What Apple did with the new Macbook Air is included the Lion restore into the drive (you do this by pressing Option while booting and it will prompt you to the Recovery mode or press Command+R).

The storage could still be an issue to some and although you can bump it to 256GB (SSDs are still very expensive these days — you can get 160GB Intel SSD at Php17k from PCX). However, the benefits of much faster disk read and write speeds could be a justification to some. In any case, you can always get a 500GB portable drive for like Php3USD 0.05INR 4EUR 0.05CNY 0.37.5k.

The battery life is also a bit disappointing but that’s what you get when you get more CPU muscle.

The very slim, 13-inch Samsung Series 9 has a very similar specs compared to our unit and it retails for Php79,990USD 1,363INR 115,554EUR 1,298CNY 9,927. The variant we reviewed has a Php59,990USD 1,022INR 86,662EUR 974CNY 7,445 price tag (the 13-inch is Php65,990USD 1,124INR 95,329EUR 1,071CNY 8,189). At least we get to see how this product category fares against other competitors in the market.

With this new upgrade on the Macbook Air series, these sexy little babies have somewhat gone mainstream especially the 13-inch variants thanks to the Core i5 ULV processors (and Core i7 options if you really want it). It could very well replace the original Macbook (notice the Apple Online Store doesn’t sell the Macbook anymore).

The Macbook Air 11.6″ is now being sold in stores with a starting price of Php49,990USD 852INR 72,216EUR 811CNY 6,204 (for the 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD). You can also request for custom specs (like 256GB SSD and Core i7) but that will take about 3 weeks to deliver.