MacBook Air 1.86GHz review - Page 4

The question is this: Is it worth spending between £1,299 and £1,799 for a MacBook Air, as opposed to between £949 and £1,149 for a MacBook? In addition to the £250-£650 price difference, you’ll give away an extra USB port, an optical drive, some graphics performance, a removable battery and easily-accessible hard drive, and a whole lot of storage space and processor power. (The £1,149 MacBook earned a Speedmark score of 212, 22 percent faster than the £1,799 MacBook Air’s score of 174.) But you will get back a 0.68 kilos in weight.

If weight is an overbearing issue then the MacBook Air may make sense to you, otherwise you should stick with the regular MacBook

There’s no right answer to the question. If you’re someone who cares about the size and weight of your laptop more than anything else, or don’t really need top-of-the-line performance, or don’t care about the price of your laptop, the MacBook Air was designed specifically for you. And this new model is definitely faster than the original MacBook Air, with increased storage space that makes it less of a sacrifice to migrate to an Air.

In January, when the original Air was announced, the need for its existence was stronger. Today the MacBook is a better buy for all but the most extreme devotees of thinness and lightness. It’s not that the MacBook Air is a bad laptop. It’s just that Apple has made a faster, cheaper, and almost equally attractive model that costs hundreds less and only weighs 2.04 kilos.