While the screen could be sharper, the updated 11-inch MacBook Air is a very light ultraportable that offers great performance and battery life for the price.
Design: Same as it ever was
Like the larger, 13-inch model, the design of the 11-inch MacBook Air has remained the same for several years now. There's nothing wrong with it -- it's spawned countless imitators -- but given that the 12-inch MacBook is at least available in a few colors, we'd like to see the Air's design updated.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The Air's backlit keyboard remains as excellent ever. I much prefer it to the ultra-shallow keys on the MacBook; it's more comfortable when typing long documents.
Display
The Air's 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 display also remains the same. For an 11-inch display, this resolution still works for me. However, if you're opting for a larger display, you deserve more pixels. While I don't necessarily require the 2304 x 1440 panel of the MacBook in a 12- or 13-inch screen, I do like to see at least a 1080p display, as on the Dell XPS 13 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X250.
With a brightness of 370 nits, the 11-inch Air outshines the MacBook (322 nits) and the XPS 13 (298 nits), but was slightly dimmer than the X250.
However, the brightness of the Air's display can't make up for the fact that it can show only 67.4 percent of the sRGB color gamut, making it a less colorful screen than those on the XPS 13 (91.7 percent) and the MacBook (101.8 percent). Still, the X250's display was even worse, at just 64.3 percent.
The Air's color accuracy also leaves something to be desired. With a Delta-E score of 4.2, it's less accurate than the MacBook (1.2) and the X250 (1.18) -- numbers closer to zero are better -- but is much better than the (nontouch) XPS 13's score of 8.1.