Macbook Air (Mid 2013) Review
UPDATE: I had this saved in my draft for three years... Go figure, better late than never.
I bought my Macbook Air this September for university and I thought after a few months of use it would be the perfect time to give it a review and to provide some of my thoughts on this device. I'm going to try and go into as much detail as I can, in order to provide a clear sense of understanding throughout this review.
Build Quality:
This is a no-brainer, the construction on this machine is absolutely amazing and the unibody enclosure is sturdy as everything is connected together by one single piece of aluminum. Also the aluminum helps to keep fingerprints off the device. The hinge is sturdy and the keyboard has no flex.
I bought my Macbook Air this September for university and I thought after a few months of use it would be the perfect time to give it a review and to provide some of my thoughts on this device. I'm going to try and go into as much detail as I can, in order to provide a clear sense of understanding throughout this review.
Sit back, grab a coffee and hopefully you will enjoy this review.
I still remember like it was yesterday when I walked into Best Buy to pick one of these up, the funny thing was I was dead set on the 13.3" model until I actually walked into the store and headed for the Apple booth. That was when I also discovered the 11.6" model, at first I had only seen this model online and my initial feelings were that it was too small, but after actually seeing it in person I felt that it wasn't so bad after all. Sure the keyboard was bit smaller, the screen was nice and wide though (in fact I think it would be a pleasant experience to watch a movie on it) but as weird as this may sound due to it's viewing angles, I found myself bending too much in order to look at the screen and while I can always get a bigger screen and still have some left over real estate, I wouldn't have that ability on the smaller model. In addition, I realized that the difference in price at the time was only $50 between the two models so picking up the 13.3" model was a no brainer..
Enough of my chit-chat let's get on with this review!
My 13.3 inch Macbook Air was the baseline model which came in at about $949 at the time and with student discount I managed to bring it down to $899..
The specs were as follows:
•4GB DDR3 RAM (1600mhz)
•128GB SSD
•Intel Core i5 running at 1.3ghz (Haswell)
•Intel HD5000 Graphics
•Mac OS X 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion)
•13.3" Screen (1440x900)
Performance:
Let me start off by saying that this is my first device with an SSD and this thing is FAST. Boot times are anywhere from 5-10 seconds and shut down times are around 2 seconds. The SSD makes reading and writing files extremely fast as well as increasing performance in general. I noticed that Final Cut Pro X works smoothly on this device as I had rendered a 3 minute HD video. The device can handle multi-tasking with ease and what really impressed me the most was the battery life on this machine. I get around 12hrs just doing word processing and roughly 9-10 hours while using the web, which I must say is quite amazing! If you want a device that will run you all day, you can't go wrong with the Macbook Air. Sleeping and waking the device takes roughly a second, although sometimes I have encountered a problem. (This will be discussed later) The speakers on this device are located below the keyboard, to be honest I didn't have high expectations given that this isn't a power machine, but I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the speakers! For the size of this device they are very good speakers (don't expect bass though). The trackpad on this device is by far one of the best I have ever used. It pretty much blows away any of the stock trackpad's on Windows laptops. The trackpad is extremely responsive and large enough for doing multiple gestures, it does take a while to get used to at first, but once you pass that stage it is a blessing to use.
The multi-touch trackpad is arguably one of the best on the market.
I have really liked Mac OS X Mountain Lion so far, in fact so much as to not upgrading to Mavericks. (This will be discussed in a later post). It seems like a more polished version of Lion, I remember running Lion on my Mac mini and it used to have a cumbersome problem with the wifi network in my house, luckily this problem does not seem to persist in Mountain Lion. This OS may be one of the more stable ones at the moment (alongside Snow Leopard), as Mavericks still has some kinks to work out. If you have used Lion there isn't a huge difference, as there is a notification centre added which is pretty handy in my opinion as well as the addition of iMessage. But other than that it has fixed bugs, a couple more new features and overall just feels more polished.
Build Quality:
This is a no-brainer, the construction on this machine is absolutely amazing and the unibody enclosure is sturdy as everything is connected together by one single piece of aluminum. Also the aluminum helps to keep fingerprints off the device. The hinge is sturdy and the keyboard has no flex.
