We take the all new 11in MacBook Air for a spin. Can the new Haswell chip really make this thin and light laptop last for a whole day on a single charge? Watch our MacBook Air video review to find out.
Apple makes great laptops. And years after Apple kick-started Intel's drive for ultraportability the MacBook Air remains at the pinnacle of thin-and-light, portable computing. Recently Apple updated its MacBook Air line with Intel's new Haswell, 4th-gen Core processors. Both companies believe that this generation of Ultrabook will be able to run for a whole day - 10 hours or more on battery. You can read our Apple MacBook Air 13in (Mid-2013) review for an in-depth overview of the battery life of that MacBook Air. Here we show you the 11in MacBook Air in all its glory.
New MacBook Air: build quality
The Apple MacBook Air sports the same supreme all-metal build quality that we've yet to see surpassed in other brands' laptops, styled with a wedged taper from rear to front edge. Apple seems to have taken several strategies to help eke out more runtime with the Apple MacBook Air notebook.
New MacBook Air: battery life
The larger factor is still almost certainly the shift in Intel processor from third-generation IvyBridge to fourth-generation Haswell. But unplugged operation is also helped by a slightly larger battery, up 10% in capacity from 49 Wh to 54 Wh, and perhaps the use of low-power memory too.
Looking over the internal specs, there are two primary and significant changes. Most notably, we can see Apple has made a brave move in marketing terms by specifying a lesser-looking processor. Memory for this generation and the last is 4GB as standard, configurable to order to 8 GB, and this is now low-power LPDDR3 SDRAM running at 1600 MHz.
