Reviews £749
inc VAT
Apple MacBook Air 11in (2015)
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apple.com/uk
Specifications
11.6in (1344x756 resolution, 226ppi) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display; OS X Yosemite; 128GB PCIebased flash storage; 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache; 4GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory; Intel HD Graphics 6000; 720p FaceTime camera; 802.11ac Wi-Fi networking; 4 IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n compatible; Bluetooth 4.0; 2x USB 3.0; Thunderbolt 2; MagSafe 2 power port; 3-17x300x192mm; 1.08kg
T
he 11in MacBook Air, the smallest of all Apple Macs, received a modest update in spring 2015, at Apple’s Spring Forward launch event for the Apple Watch. Like its 13in counterpart, the little notebook computer gained a new Intel Broadwell-series processor and Thunderbolt 2 connectivity. But in contrast to the original-size MacBook Air with 13.3in screen, the entry-level Mac notebook keeps the same two-lane PCIe-attached flash drive as before. In all other respects the early 2015 MacBook Air is the same laptop as the last main refresh of October 2013. (Although there was a minor upgrade in April 2014, when the main Intel processor received a running upgrade from 1.3- to 1.4GHz.) Still, it remains a compelling deal: at £749 this is the cheapest Mac portable you can buy.
Design and build quality Let’s look at physical design first of all, which won’t take long because of the lack of change here. Like the 13in Air, the early 2015 11in Air has the same chassis as we saw in the previous generation. That means exceptional build quality and stunning looks, admittedly, but it’s hard not to be a little disappointed by the lack of
change on these machines when the 12in MacBook got such a radical rethink (see page 62). We have the same sturdy yet lightweight chassis milled from solid aluminium, and an 11.6in TN LCD screen, which stands apart from all other Macs and displays – it’s the only 16:9 widescreen display in the range. All other Macs made in the past nine years have had 16:10 aspect ratio, a shape that’s more versatile for both productivity and entertainment. Like the 13in option, it has one USB 3.0 port on each side, plus MagSafe 2 and headset jack on the left; and Thunderbolt 2 port on the right. One minor difference in specification is the absence of an SD card slot, which can be found on the 13in MacBook Air. The 13in MacBook Pro mostly embodies the same cautious design ethos, with one exception: it did at least get the new Force Touch trackpad. The new Air doesn’t even get that – or the ‘butterfly mechanism’ keyboard from the new 12in MacBook, for that matter.
Display The Air’s screen, too, is in essence unchanged, even though there have been endless rumours about Apple adding Retina-class displays to this line. The 11in model actually has an 11.6in screen, to be precise, with a
resolution of 1366x768 pixels and a pixel density of just over 135ppi (pixels per inch). (Apple doesn’t list pixel density on the Airs’ tech specs page, which one might take as an indication that it’s not terribly proud of it. We had to work it using the Pixel Density Calculator.) Our sample 11in MacBook Air included a display from Samsung, with very similar performance to the LG/Philips panel we found in our sample of this year’s 13in model. Colour gamut indicated by a Datacolor colorimeter was limited to just 40 percent sRGB and 30 percent AdobeRGB, but we did find a just-better contrast ratio of 440:1. Colour accuracy was almost the same, with an average Delta E figure of 5.4, just below and thereby better than the 5.9 Delta E we measured on the 13in version. It’s not an particularly impressive display when set against the Retina panels on more expensive Macs, although the key contrast-ratio figures are strides ahead of budget displays on Windows laptops, which often come in at 100:1 or worse.
Processing speed tests The standard processor for all MacBook Air models is now the 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-5250U, a low-power variant from the dual-
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