PC Magazine reviews Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Air: Astonishing, astounding; Editors’ Choice

“Road warriors and jet travellers rejoice, we’ve found a laptop that will last all day and well into the night,” Joel Santo Domingo reports for PC Magazine.

“The newest Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Mid-2013) lasted an astonishing 15-and-a-half hours on a battery test that makes most current mainstream ultrabooks and ultraportables cough and die after four to six hours,” Santo Domingo reports. “The fact that the system gives up very little if any day-to-day performance is astounding.”

Advertisement: Apple’s new MacBook Air. All the power you want. All day long. Starts at $994.

Santo Domingo reports, “This isn’t a low-powered slate tablet that gives up computing performance in exchange for battery life. With the latest MacBook Air 13-inch, you have a fully functional ultraportable laptop with extremely long battery life, as it should be. If you need to do real work on a plane, train, or out in the field, get a MacBook Air 13-inch. It’s our new Editors’ Choice winner for mainstream ultraportable laptops.”

Read more in the full review here.

Related articles:
Engadget reviews Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Air: Stunning 12+ hour battery life – June 13, 2013
Hands-on with Apple’s new MacBook Air: True all-day battery life – June 13, 2013
Why the MacBook Air didn’t get a Retina display – June 12, 2013
Apple brings all day battery life to MacBook Air – June 10, 2013

9 Comments

  1. Ironically, while reading a computer-oriented website on my relatively new computer with current OS, clicking a link to pcmag.com for a computer review, the link is broken.

  2. freaking impressive for a laptop (without an hideous supersized battery that protrudes out the back) has longer battery life than even iPad 2 (which can last a full transpacific flight)

    i’d take battery life anyday over some retina display (i’m not trying to read a novel or do pixel-level photoshopping on it) if i must choose

  3. It is interesting. Samsung is a semi-conductor company that routinely built components for other companies’ products than took the other company designs and made their own competing products. This created a market for them that covers everything from phones to washing machines, all of it built on ripping off former customers. Eventually they make it cheaper and make things well.

    Apple is a company that uses other company’s components to build their own spectacular versions of things others have done poorly, with terrible interfaces and ugly presentations. They continue to make them look better, work better and cost more. When everyone screams for them to drop the price, (Big shout out to the DOJ) they cannibalize the product and move on to the next market disruption. I think what is clear is that Apple is preparing to become an energy market disrupter. They are squeezing unbelievable battery technology that they are innovating into smaller and smaller spaces. They are building solar farms and fuel cell farms to build out their data center power needs. They are learning the roots of alternative fuel business. They are designing and using state of the art factories to build computers, phones, tablets, music players, TV players. These products are shiny jewels that catch the attention, but it is the manufacturing process that is Apple’s future. Apple will one day make batteries that will run those factories and others, as well. Unlike Samsung they will not just rip off former customers.

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