Macbook Air 11-inch

In ordinary usage, we found the new baby Air to be a delight. No netbook so far has felt as well-rounded and easy to carry. On the flip side though, the hardware seems to be only just about capable of running OS X; even the simple dock animations sometimes felt laggy. Ordinary tasks such as Web browsing work just fine, but graphics and CPU-intensive tasks performed in iPhoto and Garage Band can quickly bog this system down, so we wouldn’t recommend trying any heavy Photoshop or multimedia work. That said, the solid-state drive affords unbelievably fast boot and shutdown times, and resuming from standby takes barely a second. We didn’t benchmark the Air with our usual Windows-based benchmarks, since it’s unlikely that anyone will dual-boot with only 64 or 128 GB of hard drive space, and the Mac experience depends on tight hardware and software integration (which will be all the more apparent with the impending Mac App Store launch and also when OS X 10.7 releases next year with all its iPad-inspired touches).

The new Air could be representative of Apple’s entire future direction. Eventually, there will be no need for the current MacBooks to exist—if future CPUs get a lot faster without getting hotter, and if SSD prices reach somewhere near par with hard drives, consumers will all choose thin and light MacBook Airs while professionals will still have their beefy Pros.

For now, the 11-inch Air occupies a space that makes it way more than a netbook, but at a way higher price. If you’re looking for something ultraportable just for Web surfing, you’d have to really consider whether the Air is worth the money. On the other hand if you need a Mac for heavy work, the amount you’ll pay for decent upgrades will also get you a much more capable MacBook Pro. The new 11-inch Air is undeniably gorgeous and will win many people over purely for its looks, but is sadly just a bit too underpowered to be recommended wholeheartedly.