The latest addition to MacBook Air has arrived, the 11″ model complements the earlier 13″. However, despite its appearance, the new Air is not comparable to typical netbooks in terms of price, feature, design and quality of construction.

The new notebook has a thickness between 0.3 and 1.7 cm, an impressive figure when you consider all the technologies it integrates and, it includes a decent battery that can run for up to 5 hours and also 30 days standby.

As always, Apple has worked hard to design and deliver an excellent mobile device. It integrates all components in absolutely the most optimized way possible. For example, the memory chips are integrated on the motherboard to reduce the size and optimize the design. And as for the battery, it is available within the unibody chassis, completely integrated into the aluminum casing. Among the innovations that you may see in this new Macbook Air is the presence of two USB 2.0 ports located on both sides of the notebook for better accessibility.

Speaking of ergonomics, it is important to note that the integrated keyboard is identical in size to the rest of the MacBook family, although it is not backlit. This means that we can work and write long texts with ease. Also, the trackpad has multitouch support to improve overall usability.

The 11″ display is presented in widescreen format and glossy finish. Like the rest of the MacBooks, the screen display quality is very good, although perhaps you won’t appreciate the lack of backlighting on the sides of the screen. It provides a high enough resolution for its size (1,366 X 768 pixels), allowing us to comfortably view websites, documents and productivity applications.

The hardware may not be particularly powerful for a notebook in this price range, but it is understandable in the light of its size and weight. The Core2Duo processor may not be adequate to smoothly power very demanding applications, but enough for common office tasks. The RAM, in turn, can be expanded to 4 Gb upon request at the time of purchase. The Nvidia GeForce 320M graphic card has 256 MB DDR3 VRAM, which is about twice faster than the Geforce 9400M found in earlier Macbook Air. SSD is used as the primary storage, which ensures faster performance, quiet operation and low power consumption, it is available in 64, 128, or 256 GB models.

Pros

+ Minimum thickness of the casing and screen

+ Large and very comfortable keyboard with full-sized trackpad

+ Up to 5 hours of battery life and 30 days standby

Cons

– The processor is bit outdated and a little slow for some tasks

– Non-backlit keyboard and inadequate screen backlighting

– Mediocre hardware for the price range