First Impressions: MacBook Air 11″

I’ve had the MacBook Air 11″ over 24 hours now and I suppose that’s enough time to form some first impressions of the machine. To make this quick, I’m going to adopt the spaghetti western approach. I’m excluding anything to do with SSDs, because my old MacBook has an SSD too.

The Good:

• This is one of the cheapest Macs I have ever bought, yet feels the most expensive
• It’s really light, but still feels sturdy. The original MBA felt a flimsy with those flaps
• The screen isn’t as small as you think. It’s the same res as a 13″ MBP and looks good
• Coming from an old GMA 950, graphics in general are much faster on 320M
• In fact, I’ve been doing my “70% stuff” (web browsing, email, twitter client, iChat, Skype) and not noticed any speed issues at all. I’m sure if you are coming from an i7 Quad Core you’d feel it, but I haven’t.
• Full size keyboard and trackpad. Thank you.

The Bad:

• Missing the backlit keyboard. It’s okay on my old MacBook with white keys, but with black keys it’s nice to have
• Doing my initial network Time Machine back up, I missed an ethernet port
• 64GB is just that little bit too small. I realise an iPad replacement, but they should have gone for at least 80GB as a differentiator
• You have to wonder why Apple put an eject key on the keyboard

The Ugly:

• Space is an issue and I’m happy with the USB port on the right. BUT. Apple should have put the MiniDisplay Port on the left so an Apple Cinema Display is neater, rather than having cables attached on either side
• TRIM still not enabled by default on these machines. Wait for Lion I suppose

My advice? If you are looking for a ridiculously mobile, capable machine with no fuss, look no further. Buy one today.

If you are an extreme gamer or a developer or a designer or a video professional or anyone like that, then I doubt you are even reading this review. Not recommended as your main machine.

[UPDATE: 27/11/2011] You may be interested in reading my First Impressions of the MacBook Air 13″ (2011)