The current design of the MacBook Air was a big deal when it was unveiled back in 2010. Its construction and design were a major improvement over previous Airs, it was Apple's first Mac to go with solid-state storage across the lineup, and it came with a price drop that made them palatable to people who otherwise would have just bought a vanilla MacBook. The MacBook Pro soon imitated the Air by getting thinner, moving to standard SSDs, and dumping stuff like FireWire and the optical drive. And the new MacBook takes the qualities of the Air—thin, light, minimalist—to their logical extremes.
Unfortunately, as the rest of the MacBook lineup and the wider PC industry has shifted around it, the Air's design has stood still. Visually, there is absolutely nothing to distinguish the 2015 MacBook Air from the 2013/2014 model that preceded it. Functionally, the differences are relatively minor. You swap out Intel's Haswell processors for newer Broadwell equivalents, which provide a speed increase but not a big one. The Thunderbolt port now uses Thunderbolt 2. Battery life, the biggest improvement in the 2013 Air, is about the same.
There are a few notable things about this update—we ran the Air through our standard battery of tests and have all the data you need below—but unfortunately it doesn't do much to bring this once-forward-thinking design into an era where its best qualities have been co-opted and improved upon by other laptops.
2010's laptop in 2015
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Dell's latest XPS 13 fits a 13-inch screen into a substantially smaller body.Andrew Cunningham
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Its footprint is more similar to a 12- or 11-inch laptop, which is helpful on planes or other places where space is limited.Andrew Cunningham
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The two are of similar thicknesses—a little more than half an inch at their thickest points.Andrew Cunningham
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Apple still ships the same old reliable trackpad and keyboard, which is a good thing. The keyboard is a bit firmer and nicer to use than the Dell's.Andrew Cunningham
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Right side: SD card and USB 3.0 port for both. The Air has one Thunderbolt 2 port and the Pro has a full-size HDMI port.Andrew Cunningham
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Left side. Both laptops have a headphone jack and another USB 3.0 port. The Pro adds two Thunderbolt 2 ports.Andrew Cunningham
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The Air's tapered chassis makes it thinner than the Pro, though it has a larger footprint.Andrew Cunningham
| Specs at a glance: 13-inch 2015 Apple MacBook Air | |
|---|---|
| Screen | 1440×900 at 13.3" (128 PPI) |
| OS | OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite |
| CPU | 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-5250U (Turbo up to 2.7GHz) |
| RAM | 4GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 (soldered, upgradeable to 8GB at purchase) |
| GPU | Intel HD Graphics 6000 (integrated) |
| HDD | 128GB PCIe 2.0 x4 solid-state drive |
| Networking | 867Mbps 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0 |
| Ports | 2x USB 3.0, Thunderbolt 2, card reader, headphones |
| Size | 12.8" × 8.94" × 0.11-0.68" (325 mm × 227 mm × 3-17 mm) |
| Weight | 2.96 lbs (1.35 kg) |
| Battery | 54Whr |
| Warranty | 1 year |
| Starting price | $999.99 |
| Price as reviewed | $999.99 |
| Other perks | Webcam, backlit keyboard, dual integrated mics |
In many ways it's a credit to the 2010 MacBook Air's design that it has only really started to feel its age in the last 12 to 18 months or so. Certain elements remain class-leading: the keyboard is firmer and has a bit better travel than most chiclet-style keyboards in PCs. The trackpad is still accurate, and OS X and its trackpad gestures take good advantage of it. It's made well, as Apple's aluminum unibody notebooks always have been, though some people don't care for the way the hard metal edge of the wrist rest feels while you're typing. It's got a fine port selection compared to other laptops in the general size and price range, and Thunderbolt 2 is something few others offer.
Of the many PC Ultrabooks out there now, Dell's latest XPS 13 is probably the frontrunner from a design standpoint. A slim bezel around most of the display allows Dell to shrink the rest of the computer, delivering a screen the same size as the 13-inch MacBook Air's in a body that's closer in size to the 11-inch MacBook Air. Anyone trying to work on an airplane while the person in front of you is reclining knows that you don't always have a lot of clearance for a lid.
The XPS 13 doesn't actually weigh much less than the Air—something like a third of a pound—so you know Dell is still squeezing most of the same parts in there. Between that and the tricks Apple is using in the Retina MacBook, it definitely seems like Apple could shrink this thing down without an appreciable loss of functionality or quality.
The bigger problem is the screen. Retina screens (and desktops capable of 4K output) are slowly rolling out across the Mac lineup. The Airs remain stubbornly non-Retina, and unlike the other non-Retina Macs in the family the Air doesn't even use high-quality IPS panels. You're still looking at 1440×900 and 1366×768 TN panels. These are pretty good TN panels, and compared to contemporary laptops in 2010 and 2011 they were actually nice. Now they're the worst displays Apple ships in any of its products.
On the PC side of the fence, many of the Ultrabooks starting in the $800 or $900 range ship with 1080p IPS screens as a baseline, and offer QHD or QHD+ resolutions as upgrade options. Some of those systems, the XPS 13 included, give up battery life when you pump up the pixel density, an undesirable tradeoff. But Apple's battery life estimates for the Retina MacBook suggest that it could overcome that hurdle if it had wanted to.
The MacBook Air is still a good laptop. The problem is that its design has stood still while other laptops have evolved. The Retina MacBook addresses some of these complaints, but not everyone will want to give up performance and ports to get a lighter computer with a nicer screen. You give up something either way.
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