Apple Macbook Air 13.3" Ultrabook Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,607 words · ~8 min read
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haha right you guys saw the title where I said I'm unboxing the MacBook Air
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clearly that was a lie this is the ASUS
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Zenbook 13.3 in Ultra I no I'm just
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kidding I actually am unboxing the MacBook Air but before you hit the
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dislike button it's for a very good reason it's so that I can compare it
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against the ASUS Zen book so the Mac
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book air yes it's been out for a little while this is the second generation
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product let's have a look at the overall spec of the machine that I have here in
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the lab today this is uh you know what
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it's not going to be quite a fair comparison between the MacBook Air and
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the ASUS Zenbook because in terms of the overall spec the MacBook Air is actually
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not quite up to Snuff it is a core i5
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versus a core i7 processor on the Zenbook
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it has they both have 2 56 gig ssds um they are both similar in terms
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of the size in terms of the form factor
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the amount of RAM but the MacBook Air
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has Thunderbolt which the Zenbook does not and what was the other thing that
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was sort of missing that I felt was not
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quite as good about the MacBook Air yeah I think that was pretty much it so
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basically um yeah it's got only a core i5 instead of a core
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i7 and yeah has a built-in FaceTime
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camera which I think what they mean to say is webcam and then software called
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FaceTime pre-loaded on the machine but
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you know I just just nitpicking right um
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okay so hello inside the MacBook Air we find um typical Apple documentation very
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simple very slick very beautiful they're so good at this congratulations you and
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your MacBook Air were made for each other I really hope I wasn't made for a
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MacBook Air because I think that's really you know um selling myself short
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a little bit here uh you can click anywhere you can pinch to zoom you can
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rotate images you can scroll up or down switch between full screen apps using
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three fingers and um Mission Control using three fingers up so yes you have a
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multi-touch touchpad with gestures and all kinds of good stuff like that
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excellent so here's ready set up go and
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life with your MacBook Air and problem meet solution neat
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okay well you know what let's just put that aside for now what else we got here we got your Apple onee limmited warranty
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um that's another thing that's not going to be quite as good about the MacBook Air is the warranty is not as long of a
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period compared to the ASUS notebook all right I believe the battery is 90 days
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but go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong on this one here guys it's a one year on
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the product itself and then 90 days on the
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battery I really wish I could find it this is taking so long yes
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no yes I think so okay whatever all
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right what else we got here um this is another thing apple is so good at and
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that is creating power bricks that don't
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suck um although I'm a little bit confused by
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this oh cool okay so you can either see
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I I really don't know Apple products that well so I apologize here guys but
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check this out you can do this one of two ways so you can plug the wall wart
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directly into the wall which would be not ugly very elegant very nice and then
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you plug in your little magnetic connector to your MacBook Air which is
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also very elegant very beautiful or you can go ahead pop this baby out throw
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this in here and you can plug it into the wall you have a nice long cord now
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more reminiscent of a of a PC style cord
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but we're going to go with the more the more elegant solution since that's
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clearly what today is all about because we are doing a MacBook Air Unboxing so
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part of the unboxing process is the removal of the plastic so let's go ahead
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and unpeel this bad boy so here we see
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Apple's trademark gorgeous aluminum finish and
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really not enough can be said about it if you've seen an apple you pretty much
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know what I'm talking about so you got that beautiful anodized aluminum
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aluminum remember is lighter than most metals but still retains the necessary
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strength for use as a building material in
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consumer electronics magnesium is another option um in fact that's been
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done in the past I think tashiba did it maybe it was Panasonic one of them's
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done it with a with a thin and light style notebook but the problem with
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magnesium is highly flammable so aluminum does not have that particular
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drawback here we have a little piece of paper protecting the 13.3 in screen and
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uh you know what Let's do let's do overall form factor a little bit things that Apple does right well everyone
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loves the chicklet keyboard personally I don't but everyone else seems to love
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the chicklet keyboards I like a little bit more tactile feedback but I am not
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the mass Market they do their layout right though so their delete key is wide
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their shift is wide their return is wide their other shift is wide their tab is
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wide everything is wide they have properly laid out arrow keys and the
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overall keyboard feel and spacing is
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excellent that is why people buy these machines another thing Apple has figured
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out that no one else seems to be able to is huge touchpads that are somewhat
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proportional to the size of the screen in terms of their shape so we've got a
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nice widescreen large size multi-touch touchpad that is going to make your user
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experience better we've also got our web I mean sorry Facebook uh FaceTime
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FaceTime camera up here and uh let's go
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ahead and check out the overall thinness oh yeah oh this is going to be even better than usual I'm going to do my
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iPhone thickness comparison so there is my thickness comparison on the uh top so
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that is the screen and then here is my iPhone thickness comparison to the
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bottom of the MacBook Air just like that then we're going to take the whole thing
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and do the thickness comparison just like so so the whole thing is very very
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thin the form factor is outstanding as
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you guys are probably already aware since I am not the first person on
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YouTube to check one of these out here we have an SD card reader we've got a
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USB slot and we've also got a I believe
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that's a Thunderbolt Port moving along to the back we've got a nice black slick
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looking hinge we've got some rubber well
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more like plastic plastic feet here they're going to keep you the uh the
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rounded bottom from scraping along the table we've got our power connector a
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USB 2 port a headphone port and that is
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pretty much it not a whole lot to this thing is
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there very easy to open up the cover though due to the
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uh the shape of the lip right here so you can just pick it up just like that
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and let's uh go ahead and turn it on if I can figure out how to do
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it sweet I love how they still make that
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noise all right so actually one more thing I wanted to go through really
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quick is the spec comparison between the MacBook Air I have and the Zenbook I
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have so the Zenbook is $150 cheaper and instead of a 1.7 GHz dual core Core i5
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processor uh this one has a
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wow if I can find it uh 2677 M i7 I
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don't even know what frequency that is
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um yeah I got nothing here guys so it has a 256 gig SSD it has a wireless land
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Bluetooth this guy has 4 gigs of RAM 256
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gig SSD 13.3 in LED back lit 1440 by 900
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display they both have integrated HD graphics built-in webcams I'm assuming
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this one has a webcam too English for the main language PR the return ke okay
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headphone Port Thunderbolt Port Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.0 yeah they both have
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Bluetooth backlit keyboard and ambient light sensor pre-installed Mac OSX and
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iif and size and weight is here cool
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okay so that was pretty much my unboxing of the MacBook Air don't forget to
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subscribe to lineus Tech tips more unboxings reviews and other computer videos especially if you want to stay
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tuned for my Zenbook coverage coming soon okay so we have the specs now the
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core i7 is actually just 100 MHz faster
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so that's a 1.8 GHz regular speed and a 2.9 GHz turbo and actually one more
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thing the weight so the ASUS is 1.3 kg
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and the MacBook Air is 1.35 kg so the ASUS um Ultrabook is
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actually lighter as well as its other advantages