I’ve been looking for a couple of months now for a new lightweight laptop to replace my 15-inch Lenovo laptop (screen broke). My current laptop is a Lenovo Yoga Pro 3 and I’m very satisfied with it (except for the battery life and storage) but I need another lightweight laptop to carry with me to keep the Lenovo for home use.
I don’t use Photoshop or heavy software and I rarely play games on my laptop, but I tend to open a lot of tabs and files simultaneously and so I’m looking for a fast lightweight laptop (or a 2 in 1) with at least an i7 processor, SSD storage and long battery life.
My first choice was the new Microsoft Surface Book but it’s ridiculously expensive and starts at around $2000 if you want an i7. The Surface Pro 4 is also expensive and I’ve been reading a lot of mixed reviews about it. As far as Lenovo and other laptops are concerned, the Yoga Pro 4 is not yet out which leaves me with the Lenovo 900s which I’m still considering along with the Dell XPS 13 and the Asus ZenBook.
Of course there’s also the option of buying a MacBook, which I’ve never considered before, but was advised to by a couple of trusted friends, including Techie Dad who has the whole collection of Macs! Also I was checking the MacBook and MacBook Air prices on the Apple website and they’re cheaper than the Surface Book and Pro 4 which was quite surprising so why not give it a try?
The problem here is that I’m having a hard time deciding between the recently updated 12-inch Retina MacBook or a 13-inch MacBook Air. I’ve read tons of reviews online and there are four key points to consider:
– Ultra-thin 12 inch Retina screen vs 13-inch non-Retina screen: There’s a considerable difference between the two.
– Faster Processor & Better Upgrades (MacBook Air) vs Energy-efficient fanless (MacBook) processor.
– Battery Life: 13-inch MacBook Air offers more battery life (12 hours) vs 10 hours for the MacBook.
– Connectivity: MacBook Air has USB 3.0 ports, a Thunderbolt 2 port, 3.5mm headphone port and a SDXC card reader slot. Macbook has one USB Type-C port.
Price-wise, a MacBook with the highest specs (1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core m7, Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz, 8GB 1866MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM, 512GB PCIe-based onboard flash storage) costs $1,749 vs $1,549 for a MacBook Air (2.2GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz, Intel HD Graphics 6000, 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM, 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage).
All in all, MacBook Air wins in terms of connectivity, battery life and performance but the Retina screen is a deal breaker for a lot of people I’ve asked. So which would you chose?