Some forward-looking features, from NFC chips to touchscreens to USB-C, are nowhere to be found. Some parts of the body are feeling ever more out of date when compared to the sharpest new laptop designs, especially the lower-res display and its thick screen bezel. While the MacBook Air no longer turns head like it once did, this remains a solid machine for work and play, and a staple of pretty much every airplane, coffee shop and conference room we've been in over the past few years. This is truly an all-day laptop, even under the most strenuous of workloads. Even on a secondary test streaming non-stop HD video from the internet, which is a challenge for any laptop, the system ran for 10:08.

For 2015, we're up to 1,080 minutes, or 18 full hours. The 2013 13-inch Air ran for 14 hours and 25 minutes in our video playback battery drain test, while the 2014 version added to that, running for 16:26 on the same test. We have yet to find a touchpad that comes close to this for multitouch gestures, although we strongly suggest going into the Preferences menu and turning on all of the tapping options for further ease of use. While you don't get the newer Force Touch trackpad found in both the 12-inch MacBook or the 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro, you'll hardly notice the difference. Other parts of the design are worth leaving alone, and that includes the keyboard and touchpad (which Apple calls a trackpad). It's a striking look, and makes it all the more obvious that parts of the MacBook Air design are well out of date.

Besides the other MacBook lines, which have moved to a slimmer bezel and edge-to-edge glass, laptops such as the aforementioned Dell XPS 13 have gone even further, taking the display nearly all the way to the edge of the lid, much like current 'borderless' televisions. On the Air, you have a very thick bezel, the dead space between the edge of the display and the edge of the lid, and the screen is inset underneath that, giving you a less-premium look and feel. The 12-inch MacBook is nearly one-third lighter, at 2.04 pounds, and the 13-inch Pro is a heftier 3.46 pounds (just under 1kg and 1.6kg, respectively). From the outside, the smooth aluminum still looks modern and minimalist, and it's a look since copied by others, including Dell's XPS 13 series, which we sometimes refer to as the DellBook Air.Īt 2.92 pounds (without the power cable about 1.3kg), this MacBook Air is unchanged from last year's version, and sits right in the middle of the current MacBook lineup. The MacBook Air has an almost universally recognized silhouette at this point, largely unchanged since 2010 and still substantially similar to the original 2008 version.

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