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Apple has just launched a new 12-inch MacBook, which has a radical look and wants to pose a serious threat on the market to Microsoft’s laptops.
One of the most important changes to the new MacBook is the high-resolution “Retina” panel. The 12-inch display features a resolution of 2304×1440 and has an aspect ratio of 16:10. That’s a big improvement since the MacBook Air, which features 1440×900 panels.
Brightness, image quality and the display’s performance will be also improved with the new 12-inch screen, but Apple’s new product still has some catching up to do, most of his competitors having displays with larger pixel counts, like the 13.3-inch Dell XPS13, which has an option for a 3200×1800 panel with 5.7 million pixels or the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro.
The new MacBook will use a fanless design and pack an Intel’s Broadwell-based Core M chips. It also has an option for the 1.1GHz Core M. Core M processors generate less heat that the Broadwell U chips that are used in many recent PCs. The absence of the fan might be a plus, but it has a negative impact on performance. Apple is not the first company to try this, the Asus Zenbook UX305 had a 25 performance drop while graphics performance also suffered greatly.
The 12-inch MacBook’s has very interesting batteries, which Apple said it had built in layers, maximizing the physical amount of battery capacity into the case. The new product, which is thinner than it’s predecesor, the 11-inch MacBook Air, has a larger 39.7 watt hour cell, and Apple claims it can sustain 9 hours of browsing.
This is a big step forward considering that the original MacBook Air has a 1 megapixel display at 1366×768, while the new MacBook has improved it’s pixel count by three times.
Compared to laptops, the new Apple product is still behind ind battery power. The Zenbook UX305 has a 45 watt hour battery while the XPS13 is packing a 52 watt hour cell, while HP’s new Spectre x360 is at the 56 watt hour level.
The price of the new Apple MacBook is higher than it’s PC competitors. The starting price is $1,300 with a 1.1GHz dual-core processor and a 256GB SSD. Users may chose a $1,600 version, with 1.2GHz dual-core processor and a 512GB SSD. Both models feature the same 12-inch high-resolution screen and 8GB of DDR3L/1600 RAM.
By comparison, for only $699 you can get an Asus Zenbook UX305 with its Core M, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. HP’s Spectre X360 and it’s huge Core i7, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and 1920×1080 screen costs $1,150.
Image Suorce: Macrumors
