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It's a question that gets asked of us more often than we'd like. Call it occupational hazard, but with Ultrabooks gaining more mainstream awareness, it's likely to crop up even more frequently. To settle this once and for all, we have decided to pit Apple's ultraportable laptop against some of its Windows competitors in this mini-shootout.
If you're completely clueless about Ultrabooks, you should check out our Ultrabook primer. But here's the short version--generally, they are slim, lightweight laptops that resume from sleep in a couple of seconds and promise at least 5 hours of battery such as Toshiba PABAS123 Battery , Toshiba PABAS155 Battery , Toshiba PABAS156 Battery , Toshiba PABAS178 Battery , Toshiba PABAS209 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A15 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A20 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A200 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A215 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A30 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A50 Battery , Toshiba Satellite R10 Battery life. As some would say, Ultrabooks are Windows-based laptops "inspired" by the MacBook Air.
Since Apple switched to using Intel processors in its computers and introduced Boot Camp, it has been possible to benchmark the hardware on a Mac like you would test a Windows PC. It means that we can compare the two of them directly. To ensure that we do get a level playing field in this comparison, we have assembled a number of Ultrabooks with similar configurations as our test MacBook Air, which is the Core i7 version. Here's how the Air stacks up against similarly configured Core i7 Ultrabooks.
The first thing we noticed is that the MacBook Air is actually priced competitively against these Ultrabooks, at least here in Singapore. We can't say the same for other parts of the world--for instance, in the US, a similar MacBook Air would go for US$1,599 while the Dell XPS 13 would be slightly less expensive at US$1,499. The Asus Zenbook is also more attractively priced in the US, with Amazon listing it at US$1,379. You should check with your local vendors on the prices for these laptops.
Looking at the hardware, the MacBook Air has a higher-resolution screen than the Ultrabooks (with the exception of the Asus Zenbook), though its Core i7 processor is clocked slightly lower than the Asus and the Toshiba models. The Toshiba also comes with more RAM and is significantly lighter than the Air.
In terms of ports and connector, all the laptops have at least two USB ports, though the Windows Ultrabooks have at least one, faster USB 3.0 version. On some of these models, you may need adapters for the video outputs. We also have to point out that the Toshiba Portege Z830 is one of the few 13.3-inch Ultrabooks with an Ethernet port, not to mention more USB ports than the rest, making it the best choice for users who require these features.
This is a subjective criteria, but given the number of MacBook Air clones in the market, it's probably fair to say that Apple has gotten it mostly right for its ultraslim laptop. In fact, one could say that the Asus and Dell have modeled their Ultrabooks after the MacBook Air. Both these laptops and the Air feature a tapered design with a liberal use of aluminum. Personally, we feel that the Dell XPS 13 is more likely to be mistaken for a MacBook Air, though we also liked that it has a more compact footprint.
However, if you really require an ultrathin and light laptop, the Toshiba Portege Z830 makes a strong case with its 1.13kg weight and slim, magnesium alloy chassis.
Boot Camp with Windows 7 was used on the MacBook Air in order to run the following benchmarks. We started with PCMark 7, which evaluates the overall system performance of these computers.
Despite the fact that these laptops are equipped with SSDs, the Toshiba Portege Z830, even with an extra 2GB of memory, was significantly slower in PCMark7. Further testing using CrystalDiskMark seems to indicate that Toshiba probably didn't outfit its Ultrabook with a speedy model. Meanwhile, the mSATA variant of the Samsung 830 SSD on the Dell XPS 13 is likely the reason for its better performance.
The SSDs are also mainly responsible for the quick startup recorded by these laptops, with the Ultrabooks all booting up between 15 to 16 seconds. The MacBook Air was almost as speedy when using Mac OS X (19.2 seconds), but it took around 48 seconds if using Boot Camp and Windows 7.