Hardware
The 2012 MacBook Air still has the great tapered aluminium design as the older models. This design has an incredible feel and is incredibly solid. The only gripe we have about this design is that it can get scratched up easily, so we recommend you buy a case for it. The hinge to open the laptop also opens very smooth and we had no problem opening it with one hand. The MacBook Air also keeps its incredible thinness in its tapered design. At 0.11 inches at its thinnest, the MacBook Air is still incredibly thin but it is not the thinnest laptop in the world anymore. Even though there are thinner laptops out there, they usually have faults in certain areas (ex. battery life, peripheral quality, build quality, etc.). Overall, the design of the MacBook Air is a great and premium design.
Even though Apple probably had to cut on ports to make it this thin, it does not mean that they put a bad selection of ports on it. On the 13 inch model, there is are two USB 3.0 ports, one Thunderbolt port, a headphone jack, a SD card slot, and the MagSafe 2 charging port. The only difference between the ports on the 13 inch model and the 11 inch model is that the 13 inch model has a SD card slot, while the 11 inch model does not. We have already made our opinion on the new MagSafe 2 charging port in our hands-on with the MacBook Pro with Retina display but we will say it again, we like the new design but it it makes everyone's old charging cables useless. Overall, Apple gave us a good selection of ports on the MacBook Air, but they just gave us the bare minimum.
Since this is a laptop, you may wonder how the keyboard and trackpad are. We can definitely assure you that this is the best trackpad and keyboard combo on any laptop. The keyboard is very responsive, has plenty of depth, has a lot of travel, and is just a great keyboard. On most small laptops or day we say "netbooks" (the air isn't a netbook), the keyboard is usually very cramped but this is not true on the air. The MacBook Air has a keyboard that is very roomy and is sometimes roomier than laptops of the same size. Apple also put their great glass trackpad on the MacBook Air along with the great keyboard. This glass trackpad is absolutely the best trackpad that we have ever seen on a laptop or have ever touched. There is no resistance on it, it registers hand gestures well, and it does not pick up unwanted taps. Speaking of the hand gestures, we absolutely love what Apple has done with the hand gestures. We have not handled Macs too often, yet we knew most of the gestures naturally. The gestures are read incredibly quick and work fluently. Overall, Apple has put the best keyboard and trackpad on a laptop on the market.
Display
The 2012 MacBook Air has the same resolution screen that was on the 2011 Air. On the 11 inch model you get a 1,366 x 768 LED backlit glossy widescreen display, and on the 13 inch model you get the same kind of display except with a pixel count of 1,440 x 900. When the 2011 model came out with this kind of display it was an admirable display, but now in 2012 it is only a good display. Today, there are many laptops out there with 1080p displays like the ASUS Zenbook Prime and many others yet the MacBook Air still has the same display as last years model. A 1080p display would have definitely made a big dent in battery life, but they could have at least bumped up the resolution a little. Colors still are appropriately saturated, blacks are black, whites are bright, text is very crisp, and viewing angles are great. Overall, the new MacBook Air has only a good display, not a great display.
Performance
Along with the MacBook Pro with Retina display, Apple updated the MacBook Air to Intel's new Ivy Bridge processor. On the 11 inch model, you can get a dual-core 1.7GHZ Core i5 processor (with TurboBoost it's up to 2.6GHZ), or you can get one built-to-order with a dual-core 2GHZ Core i7 processor (with TurboBoost it's up to 3.2GHZ). On the 13 inch model the standard is a dual-core 1.8GHZ Core i5 processor (with TurboBoost it is up to 2.8GHZ), or you can get yours built-to-order with a 2GHZ Core i7 processor (with TurboBoost it is up to 3.2GHZ). Both the 11 inch and the 13 inch models come with 4GB of 1,700MHZ DDR3 RAM, but you can always get yours built-to-order with 8GB of RAM. With the new Ivy Bridge processor, the MacBook Air is incredibly fast. We put the air under everything we could and it still was very smooth. We opened up our website in Safari and it loaded our content-heavy page quickly, even though we were on relatively slow WiFi. The hand gestures we made on the trackpad were registered very quickly, pinch to zoom was butter smooth, and scrolling was a pleasure to do. If you are a heavy video editor or play many graphic intense games, you should buy the Retina display MacBook Pro over the Air. The Air is fast, however, it can not handle heavy video editing or graphic-intense games as well as the Retina display MacBook Pro. Overall, the new MacBook Air is an incredibly fast laptop, but if you have a lot of graphic intense needs, we suggest buying the Retina display Pro.
Software
As we said in our hands-on with the Retina display MacBook Pro, the Mountain Lion update came out when we were testing this but our unit still hand OS X Lion. Despite our unit's lack of the current OS X, Lion was still very fluid. Throughout our testing, we experienced no lag with the operating system and everything was as smooth as butter. We are primarily a Windows user (Vista and 7), but we still like OS X very much. We used to be big opposers of Apple's operating system, but we now like OS X very, very much. We absolutely love the helpful hand gestures that work flawlessly, come naturally, and they are very productive. As we said in our Retina display MacBook Pro hands-on, the average consumer probably will prefer Windows over OS X. Practically everything is compatible with Windows, while only most things are compatible with OS X. Yes you can install Windows on a Mac, but the average consumer does not know how to do that or does not want to do it, and it usually hinders performance and battery life. Most major programs are on Macs, but we have seen countless times when the conversion to view it (ex. a powerpoint) does not work right. This is only our gripe with it, but we are also speaking for the people who want the absolute best they can buy but are somewhat "electronically challenged". Overall OS X Lion is great, but some people may have compatibility issues.
Wrap-up
It is the MacBook Air and we can definitely say that this is the best ultraportable laptop that you can buy. The Air offers great performance, a great keyboard, a great trackpad, great software, and the great Apple customer service. These attributes make the MacBook Air a fantastic laptop and probably the best. However, this is not the only great, thin laptop out on the market. Let us remind you that there is the Asus Zenbook and Zenbook Prime that offer great design, a 1080p display on the Prime, and great performance. The only fault in these is that the trackpad is bad on both and the regular Zenbook has a flat keyboard (the Prime has a better keyboard but it is still okay). The Samsung Series 9 is also a great Windows Ultrabook with its speedy performance, dependable keyboard and mouse, and its great battery life. The Series 9 only sort of falls short, because some people debate over whether the Series 9's display is a little better than the Air's or vice versa. We personally favor the Air more, but you would be satisfied with either laptop. Overall, the MacBook Air is definitely in the running for the top two ultraportables along with the Sereies 9.
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