Following the success of the MacBook Air in 2013, recently launched Apple continues to upgrade the MacBook Air 2014 (11 inch). This ultraportable is not much different than its predecessor, the machine still slim design, lightweight, stylish, along with the screen and keyboard stand. Only Apple's strength is being upgraded, but also just a small upgrade. Will there ever be enough to convince users to invest or not? The following review will help you find the answers.
Design
Right from first glance we can see, the MacBook Air in 2014 there was no change in design compared to its predecessor MacBook Air in 2013. Maybe Apple thought that why to change the design of the machine while it is still the high level design is more and more users love rival is trying "to imitate" this design.
Like previous versions, there are Macbook Air 2014 ultra-slim design with aluminum shell and rugged elegance, this is a striking design that rivals will not be able to keep up. The top surface remains smooth metal ball with the logo "apple fruit" feels cool to touch hands, the edges and corners should be gently machine creature looked compact and easy to slip into backpack or bag. Considering the abundance of ports, the MacBook Air inferior to his opponent's XPS 11, Lenovo x240 and Surface Pro 2. In addition to the common connection on the opponents also have SD card slot, while only MacBook Air Thunderbolt port, 2 USB 3.0 ports and headphone port.
Also the 11 inch version of the MacBook Air in 2014 but size 299.72 x192, 02x2, 79 to 17.27 mm and weighs 1.01 kg. This allows users to wearing on shoulder constantly moving. With the size and weight, the MacBook Air 2014 is smaller and lighter than competitors like the Dell XPS 11 (299.72 x200, 66x15, 23mm, 1.13 kg) and size 12 inch Lenovo ThinkPad x240 (304, 79x208, 27x20, 32; 1.45 kg). Of course, Macbook Air competitors in 2014 and are larger than the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 size 10 inch size only 274.57 x172, 97x13, 46mm accompanying keyboard.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Apple continues to maintain design top keyboard for Macbook Air 2014 with island-style keyboard, the keys of moderate size, distance enough to glide your fingers on the keyboard, but not that tired, the bounce of the key feeling good but slightly shallow key may be due to limits on the thickness of the machine. Users will also appreciate the machine's backlight will work better in low light conditions.
The touchpad on the MacBook Air in 2014 continues to be the top choice, with a smooth surface, low friction so users will easily perform operations of multi-touch gestures, the scrolling, zooming and rotating images also easier to implement. Display
Undeniably 11.6 inch screen 1.366x768 pixel resolution of the MacBook Air is impressive, bright and colorful. But unfortunately it is still not equipped Apple Retina display for the machine, while the screen rivals like Lenovo x240 resolution similar, Surface Pro 2 is Full HD and the XPS 11 features a resolution Quad HD resolution (pixel 2.560x1.440) and all the touch screen, but the MacBook Air is not and this is a real disadvantage. 
With 293 lux brightness, MacBook Air's 2014 screen is brighter than the XPS 11 (265 lux), but not with x240 (325 lux) and Surface Pro 2 (389 lux). Performance
MacBook Air 2014 version evaluated in this paper uses an Intel Core i5-4260U clocked at 1.4 GHz, 4GB RAM and 128GB memory. This model is actually only a slight upgrade from last year's model with Intel Core i5-4250U clocked at 1.3 GHz, but once that is sufficient to meet normal demand of the majority of current users.
In performance tests measuring overall Geekbench 3, 2014 MacBook Air scored 5,392 points higher than the rival Lenovo x240 with Intel Core i5-4200U clocked at 1.6 GHz, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD ; 2 Surface Pro with the same processor but 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD; Dell XPS 11 with Intel Core i5-4210Y CPU clocked at 1.9 GHz. 
MacBook Air 2014 boots into Mac OS X Mavericks in 14 seconds, the time equivalent Surface Pro 2 to boot into Windows 8, Lenovo x240 need 13 seconds, while the XPS 11 need 11 seconds. 
Drive 128GB SSD MacBook Air 4.97 GB 2014 when copying data including multimedia files just 19 seconds to copy speeds of up to 268 megabytes per second, much faster than the Lenovo x240 (141.4 MBps) and Surface Pro 2 (154.2 MBps). Dell XPS 11 came in second place with 196 MBps in similar tests. 
Integrated Intel HD Graphics 5000 Graphics of the game enough to play the numbers game entertainment and a higher (lower setting). Experiment with the actual game "World of Warcraft", MacBook Air in 2014 that can be played with speed 48 frames per second (fps) when the effects in the game to auto, which is better than the Surface Pro 2 (46 fps), Lenovo x240 (31 fps) and XPS 11 (28 fps). 
But the increase in gaming performance to the maximum, MacBook Air in 2014 dropped to 27 fps, but still better than the Lenovo x240 (17 fps), XPS 11 (12 fps) and Surface Pro 2 (24 fps). Battery Life
Apple's MacBook Air battery that can surf the web in 2014 continuously up to 9 hours. In fact, with brightness set around 63%, the machine can last 9 hours 19 minutes of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi networks via the Laptop Battery test.
In the same experiment as compared with 2013 MacBook Air version with the screen brightness set at 40% only lasted 8 hours 53 minutes. Lenovo x240 lasted 7 hours and 40 minutes with 3-cell battery (but last up to 20 hours 28 minutes with a 6-cell extended battery), while Surface Pro 2 lasted 8 hours 02 minutes and XPS 11 is 8 hours 44 minutes. Pros
- Slim design, light weight and high mobility.
- Strong performance.
- Long battery life.
- High speed SSD.
- Comfortable keyboard and touchpad sensitivity.
Cons
- The display resolution is lower than the competitors.
- No SD card slot
More details and buy here.
0 Comments