Air Time: Apple Macbook Air

The new version of the MacBook Air is cheaper, and with a nicer screen. A small update, but it’s all good

If you bought last year’s MacBook Air refresh, you can skip this bit. This is a nearly identical machine, with the price lopped off and some small tweaks made. But anyone else looking for a thin and light machine should pay attention, because Apple knows what it’s doing.

Like last year’s version there’s a dual-core 1.6GHz processor at the heart here, which can hit 3.6GHz in Turbo Boost for short periods of time. There’s more raw power in some of the laptops in our round-up on p90 for similar prices, but they also draw a lot more power – Apple quotes 12 hours of life for the Air, but in lighter usage (writing, emails and browsing) we were losing just a couple of percentage points per hour. It also holds charge well while on standby, so can last for a few days overall.