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Apple's latest notebook, the MacBook Air, is being hailed as the world's thinnest. At well under an inch at the thickest point, the Air offers a thin design coupled with an extremely lightweight package for a notebook that has the same basic footprint as the standard MacBook. The flip side to all of this, however, is the (some say inexcusable) list of features left out, with a staggering price tag that has wallets cowering in fear at the cost of the top tier configuration.
Build and Design
The design of the MacBook Air is nothing short of amazing, when you compare its basic shape and look to a standard notebook. It is so incredibly thin compared to anything else I have played around with, and seems paper thin during use. With the display open and the notebook laying flat on your desk the palmrest is a pencil eraser's height above the surface of your desk. The real beauty of this notebook though is its clean design with only one visible port connection, with the rest hidden by a magnetic latch cover. The body continues with its sleek look with all rounded and polished surfaces and not even a foot to catch when the notebook is being slid into a bag.
Build quality is nothing short of amazing, and hands down one of the strongest notebooks I have ever felt. When closed the display cover does have some mild flex (give it a break, it's thin), but the real strength is the palmrest and keyboard structure. Formed from a block of aluminum with the internal cavity CNC machined, it is super strong. No flex is present when mashing down on the palmrest, and picking it up with both hands to try to flex the body is futile. Comparing it to a known item like a Thinkpad, it would beat it hands down, with no plastic creaking to boot! You would need to move into the realm of Panasonic Toughbooks to find something that would be an equal competitor.
The downside to this beautiful design is the missing features that have been standard on notebooks almost since conception. User replaceable batteries, decent port selection, or even a docking connector are all missing. While you could get away with an external hub and USB devices on the road for additional hookups, not having a spare battery to swap in is a huge disadvantage. Combine this with a slow charging battery and you have the opposite of an ultimate road warrior.
Display
The screen on the MacBook is very nice, with vibrant colors and intense backlight. Black levels are nice and even with very little backlight bleed showing through even on very dark scenes in movies or games. Comfortable viewing brightness during my review was around 15-20%, matching 80% on my Thinkpad. 100% on the MacBook Air is close to the brightness levels that my desktop LCD can reach. Viewing angles of the LCD were above average.
Horizontal viewing range was perfect up until the screen was blocked by metal backing, but vertical viewing range was limited if you went 10 to 15 degrees up or down from straight on.
No screen defects were present on our online purchased model; this included stuck and dead pixels as well as backlight bleed.
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