Special Edition Tech Talk: Christian’s Macbook Air 2.0 Review

Posted by: mar247advice on: October 31, 2008

• In: Tech Talk
• 63 Comments

Note: Macbook Air 2.0 Review conducted by Mar’s BF – Christian Bibay. Questions about the Macbook Air 2.0? Leave a comment here and Christian will respond.

Early Take: Macbook Air 2.0 (revision B) / Late 2008 Macbook Air

(cue Robert Downy Jr.’s voice)

“Well it is finally here… the first Macbook Air to beat the Macbook Air. Introducing the new Macbook Air 2.0 (revision B).”

The model that I will be reviewing is the new NVIDIA Based Macbook Air 1.86 Ghz 128 GB SSD (Solid State Drive)

Hardware

Upon first glance of the notebook, one would not be able to tell the difference between this generation Macbook Air and the first. It still has the same gorgeous screen as the first generation. The only real way that I can tell that this is the new Macbook Air is the mini-display port that is now installed on recent Macs. The first generation Macbook Air sported a Mini-DVI port that is now gone from this revision. Both still share the same large trackpad and button design. Sorry folks, no glass trackpad like our big brothers, the Macbook and Macbook Pro. Although, present is the new four-finger swipe for expose and to easily change programs. A nice added useful feature that I am sure to use frequently. Swipe down for expose and swipe left or right to change to any other open program. Also present are the new NVIDIA based graphics card (more on that in a moment) and better processor and DDR3 RAM.

After all the software updates as of 10/31/08 with the 128 SSD model you start off with 95.37GB of free space. The capacity of the SSD is 112.68 GB with 17.3 GB being used by the operating system and stock programs.

Boot Time using the SSD

Here is a video on how fast the new Macbook Air boots up using the SSD. I am very impressed with the results. The time it took from when I turned it on to the desktop was 25 sec.

Boot up SSD

Xbench results

As requested by the someone on the Mac Rumors forum here are the Xbench results with all the latest software updates installed: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=316751

Heat / Fan / Core Shut Down?

A very big problem in the first generation Macbook Air that I witnessed first hand was the Core Shut Downs and heat. Upon using it for about 1 hour, I could barely hear any fan noise and the Macbook Air was barely warm.

Graphics

The graphics card in the new Macbook Air is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M. It claims to provide this second generation Macbook Air up to 4X better graphics performance. Let us test this theory with a 1080P trailer and a HD iTunes TV Show. Gaming on the new Air is also an interesting question that I will look into later. Results look very good!

1080P trailer on Macbook Air 2.0

iTunes HD tv show

Early review looks very promising. I can definitely tell that this is a more powerful machine than the first generation MacBook Air.

MORE TO COME!

Tags: Macbook, Macbook Air 2.0