Apple MacBook Air 11-inch 128GB Mid 2011

Apple's dinkiest and most desirable ultraportable is also its most affordable, but is it a false economy? Alan Lu finds out in our review.

IT Pro Verdict

The 11in MacBook Air is undeniably lovely thanks to its sleek and sturdy build, comfortable keyboard and multitouch touchpad. It's not worth buying the cheapest version which is too underpowered, but we're not wholly convinced by the priciest version on review here. Battery life, while good enough for most trips, is still a bit underwhelming and the small screen size won't suit everyone. The 128GB version of the 13in Air, with its larger screen, SD card reader and longer battery life, is a much better deal at just £100 more. Unless the extra weight and size are too much of a drag, we'd much rather have the 13in version of the Air instead of the 11in model.

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Battery life wasn't as long as we had hoped.

Battery life wasn't as long as we had hoped. It lasted a very respectable six hours and 36 minutes, just long enough to last a transatlantic flight, but the previous 11in Air lasted just under eight and a half hours. It also pales in comparison to some, admittedly larger, Windows-based ultraportables. We suspect this is due to the new Core i5 processor which has a higher TDP than the ageing Core 2 Duo used in last year's model.

The 11in Air misses out on the SD memory card slot found on the larger 13in model, but it does have a high-speed Thunderbolt port which can be used for connecting both storage and displays. Although we're still testing the first Thunderbolt peripheral to hit the market, the Promise Pegasus RAID array, we did manage to test the 11in Air's Thunderbolt connection in Target Disk Mode. This is where the internal disk of one computer can be accessed from another computer using nothing more than a Thunderbolt cable strung between the two. It's a feature previously limited to Firewire.

Sadly, Target Disk Mode is a poor demonstration of Thunderbolt's potential.

Sadly, Target Disk Mode is a poor demonstration of Thunderbolt's potential. When the Air was connected to a 13in MacBook Pro in Target Disk Mode, it could write large files at 47MB/s and read them at 70MB/s which are speeds we'd expect to see from a Firewire 800 connection. We saw almost exactly the same speeds when writing and reading small files, suggesting a flaw in Thunderbolt's Target Disk Mode.

Alan Lu
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