Shot on iPhone 7 Plus 2x Mode
Finally this is something that I have been waiting to review. For being a loyal Windows User for more than a decade , this definitely is a big switch. I've always been using Laptops or Desktops since school and college mostly for gaming. Im sure most of us definitely do that even today. The last system I had was my Alienware M14x and before that the M15x, and when it came to performance I don't think any laptop can beat that monster. Seriously, they are high performance laptops.
I had got my sister a Macbook Pro more than 6 years back and I kind of liked the way I could type at high speed , especially since I have this habit of banging my fingers on the keypad lol. One of the reason I sold my Alienware was because firstly it was way too bulky to carry, with all that high gig RAM, 2 Gigs of graphics it was too heavy. In fact that also led to reduction of battery life on the Alienware. It used to give me about 4-5 hours of battery life.
Shot with iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode
Overview & Design
Considering all the above factors I decided to go in for a MAC. I thought of going in for the pro but then came again the issue of bulky laptop, and way back then the Mac Pro used to be pretty heavy. So instead I decided to pickup a Mac Air in 2014 along with my friend from a local dealer. This was the 13" Mac Air 128 GB SSD model. It has a really sleek design, something that probably if you keep it on a desk or your bed it looks pretty small. Best part about is that, its really lightweight and weighs just 1.35 Kgs or 2.96 pounds. Trust me it feels like way lighter.
The edges on both the sides are pretty slim . On the left hand side you have the Magsafe 2 Power port, a USB 3.0 port for data transmission upto 5 Gbps( I've never seen this on any machine) and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. You also get dual mics as you can see on the image on the right beside the headphone jack. Yeah so one major DRAWBACK of this design is that when you have your power adapter plugged in you cannot insert a big pen drive, as there is not enough space to fit it in.
On the right hand side of the laptop you get a thunderbolt port with data transmission speeds upto 10 Gbps. I normally use this for projectors, like plugin a thunderbolt to VGA or HDMI connector. You also get another USB-3 port. So 2 USB - 3 ports on this MAC. Apart from that you also get a SD Card slot. I don't know why its there, because I never found this a really useful design. I normally have external multi port SD card readers, which works much better.
The Air has pretty big bezels all along the edges that takes about 10-15% of the screen size. But thats fairly ok considering you get a really good display quality. You can also note that there is a 720P Facetime HD Camera , which is useful if you do a lot of Facetime overseas or in your country.
Specifications
The Macbook Air comes in two variants so basically you can opt for either the 128 GB or the 256 GB flash storage. The 256 GB storage is upgradable to 512GB flash storage, but its pretty expensive. If you go in for a SATA based hard drive the cost would be probably 20% lesser, as compared to a SSD thats because SSD offer faster data transfer speeds and memory management is far more efficient. Those who use XCode or CPU intensive tasks will definitely find it to be very fast as compared to probably a mac mini with a SATA drive.
The screen is a 13" LED backlight yes backlight, and not LED screen and the max resolution supported is 1440 x 900 pixels. It comes with a 1.4Ghz dual-core Intel i-5 processor with Turbo Boost upto 2.7 Ghz and a 3MB shared L3 Cache. This capability is expandable to i-7 processor with Turbo Boost upto 3.3 Ghz.
It comes with 4GB of 1600Mhz LPDDR3 RAM and expandable to 8 GB of RAM. 4GB RAM model would be more than sufficient for day to day usage and even programming. It comes with Intel HD Graphics with 1.5 GB of Video Memory and I have not tested any high end games as this laptop is not really for gaming. The thunderbolt port on this device supports DVI, HDMI and VGA outs.
So why did I go for the Macbook Air??
Coming to the main point of all this explanation of specs. I do not really go in depth into specs, as most of us are pretty smart enough to Google everything we want including picking up stuff from Amazon, Flipkart and sites like that.
One thing that I did not speak about is why I switched to the Air from my Alienware, and that is BATTERY LIFE. Yes, battery life. I think this feature is the most underrated feature on electronic gadgets. If a device cannot even give 6-8 hours of battery life its not worth going for such a gadget. This one gives me about 12-13 hours straight on a regular usage! Yes its insane but it does. If I do lot of programming or coding it drops to 50% but yes thats considerable. Many machines would conk off by even an hour with programming or heavy CPU work.
Second reason is the light weighted-ness makes it supremely easy enough to carry it around without any problems. I think light weight, ease of carrying my gadget and battery life are big ticks in my book for any gadget. So if your a guy that does a lot of traveling this is a perfect choice for you. Do not even think of getting the 2016 Macbook air with all those fancy touch panel features.Its not because its not that great, its because the price is not justifiable and is way too much than an average Mac user could afford.
I got this machine for about 75,000 INR way back in 2014 , and the 256GB variant costs about 85,000/- and Apple does not give any discounts. So considering in 2016, with the latest launches nothing is less than 1,25,000 - 1,35,000/- INR and you would not want to pay 50-60 grands of your money for just a touch bar or even a sleeker design. No doubt its good, but always think of pricing as well.
Hope this clarifies my purchase of the Macbook Air and yeah it is my daily driver for the last 2 years. I do not plan to change it till the next 2 - 3 years probably. What do you guys think? Leave your comments in the comment section and let me know your views.
If you want to buy the same models I am leaving links for Amazon or Flipkart from where you can get them.
Amazon
Flipkart
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