The Apple Macbook Ok air 11 inch is Apple’s smallest premium notebook and the little brother of the new 13-inch MacBook Air. Compared to the 13-inch model, the 11-inch model has a less powerful CPU, no SD card slot, more minor function keys, a narrower trackpad, and a smaller battery. But, on the other hand, it lets for significantly more compact dimensions and a weight of just 1.06 kg.
The MacBook Air 11 can remain configured to a certain degree in the Apple online store. There’s an optional processor with 200 MHz more power, 4 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB SSD. Only the SSD can theoretically be upgrade later, as the processor and memory are solder directly onto the motherboard.
Table of Contents
Chassis of Ok air 11 inch
The small subnotebook is attractive thanks to its simple and timeless design. Due to the abundant use of aluminium, the Air feels cool and high-tech. The usual shiny or patterned surfaces are not found on Apple’s aluminium notebooks. The slim build of the case mainly dominates the overall impression. Since it gets thinner towards the edges, the entire laptop looks lighter from the sides.
The small 11-inch MacBook Air chassis is made from a single piece of aluminium, just like the more prominent “Pro” models. However, what’s new is that the display lid is now also made using the monobloc process, which results in a higher level of stability. Therefore, the strength is excellent despite the slim structure of the base and the display lid. In addition, the metal chassis can be flex minimally with a lot of effort, and the creaks and other sounds associated with different plastic laptops are absent from the MacBook Air.
Connectivity of Ok air 11 inch
Compared to its 13-inch predecessor, some changes have been made to connectivity. These are no longer behind an awkward cover and have been extend significantly by adding a second USB port. Compared to the white MacBook, a LAN port and Kensington are the only things missing.
Compared to Netbooks of similar size, it’s not bad, especially since it also has a high-quality DisplayPort (mini) that can connect to 30-inch monitors with 2560 x 1600 pixels. However, many monitors require expensive adapters (such as DVI, HDMI, and VGA). According to Apple, the DisplayPort can also transmit digital audio using an HDMI adapter (only the most expensive ones). In addition, regular headphones can also use the headphone combo port with the appropriate adapter.
Input Devices
Keyboard
The integrated chiclet keyboard on the 11-inch MacBook Air is similar to current Apple keyboards, with one minor exception. The row of function keys has been remarkably compress and now includes the switch button.
As with all current MacBooks, the black keyboard can impress with its good properties. Despite the short travel of the keys, it is possible to work with them without a break. As the keys directly adhere to the monobloc chassis, any annoying flexing or looseness is prevente. The structure adheres to the usual Apple style and might take some time to adjust for Windows users.
Touchpad
The glass trackpad has thankfully found its way to the MacBook Air models. It impresses exceptionally good gliding properties and for notebooks with its enormous dimensions. However, for the 11-inch model, the height was slightly reduce to make room for it in the smaller chassis. Apple touchpads do not have dedicated buttons, but the entire pad surface (up to the top edge) can be press mechanically. Thanks to the clever software in Mac OS X, the trackpad can also be used as a traditional touchpad with dedicated buttons. In addition, various multi-touch gestures(including the useful inertial scroll) with up to 4 fingers allow efficient use of the large surface.
Screen
The reflective 11.6-inch screen has a relatively satisfactory resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and thus offers plenty of virtual space. As Apple’s first laptop, the 11.6-inch Air receives a 16:9 display.
The widescreen display is very bright, with a measured average brightness of 296 cd/m². However, illumination of just 69% is below average. Regardless, only minor deviations can be recognised with single-colour backgrounds – the limit viewing angles of the TN display are much more noticeable here.
The representable colour space remains more or less the same as that of the white MacBook from 2010 and that of the 13-inch MacBook Air. Therefore, it is significantly smaller than the sRGB colour space and the colour space of the MacBook Pro models.
Performance of Ok air 11 inch
Apple is currently unhappy with the performance, resource pool or drivers for the integrated graphics card in the new Core-i processors. Thanks to this, Apple’s choice to design the new Air models has been limited to the old Core 2 Duo processors combine with the high-performance Nvidia graphics card or the modern Core-i processors with a dedicate graphics card. Unfortunately, the second of these options appear to have been unfeasible due to the limited space availability in the new Air models.
Processor Performance
The Core 2 Duo SU9400 was introduce by Intel 2 years ago and belonged to the Ultra Low Voltage class of energy-saving processors. It offers two processor cores running at a maximum frequency of 1.4 GHz. The processor performed significantly better in our test using Windows 7 (Bootcamp) than the usual Intel Atom processors in this weight class. An N450 (such as Eee PC 1008P ) provides only 25% of the performance compared to the SU9400 in Cinebench R11.5. However, the Core i5-520UM in the Alienware M11x R2 is 25% faster. The 520UM can even stray by a hefty 63% on the Asus PL80JT withEasyNote Butterfly S.
In the 3DMark CPU test, the distance to the i5-520UM is a bit less at 12% (21% to the Asus PL80JT), and the N450 is also a bit closer at 39%.
Considering that only Atom notebooks (Sony Vaio Z) invade the weight class of the 11-inch MacBook Air, the processing performance is still considerable.
System Performance
Thanks to the fast graphics card chipset and SSD system drive, the 11-inch MacBook Air can shine in PCMark Vantage and even outperform the 13-inch MacBook Pro (with conventional HDD). It confirms the perceived fast application performance during use. In addition, the low processing speed of the dual-core processor only rarely becomes a performance impediment.
Battery Duration
Apple states that the battery life of the 11-inch MacBook Air is up to 5 hours with productive work. Without Flash ads/videos and using reduced brightness, this can happen. With the power-hungry features we mentioned (lots of YouTube videos, Flash-rich web pages using WLAN ), we reached a reasonable 3.5 hours using maximum brightness in our practice test. With the optional external DVD drive, the Air lasted about 3 hours playing a DVD video (also at full brightness, but without WLAN). If you want to play StarCraft 2, it’s possible to do so for over 80 minutes (using Mac OS X).
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