Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 VS Apple MacBook Review

Since Xiaomi released Xiaomi MI Notebook Air, it has been quite popular due to the high competitive price and advantages. In order to let you more details about Xiaomi MI Notebook Air, we compare it with Macbook Air to show what’s the difference on earth between MI Notebook air and MacBook Air and which one should be chosen.

Design

In fact, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air has much similarity to Apple MacBoo, such as 12inch screen, all metal body, Core M processor, non-electronic fan and light and thin design. Namely, one is mainly for common people, the other for office workers.

Apple MacBook has four colors, rose golden, dark grey, golden, and silver, and all metal design with sleek edge and fashion style. But Xiaomi MI Notebook Air only has silver and golden color, and stiff edge. In addition, Xiaomi MI Notebook air doesn’t have mi logo on the front design, but better for personal decoration. Macbook uses classic Apple logo, but the backligh logo changes metal gross design which is easier to cause scratch for long time use like the logo of iPhone 6.

Besides, although they both belong to metal body, metal sand blasting process still has big difference. Apple Macbook has more smooth and comfortable design, but Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 looks a little rough. Of course the real reason is the cost.

Let’s look their thickness. Apple Macbook has 13.1mm thickness according to official, but Xiaomi mi notebook air 12 has 12.9mm thickness to the maximum. Therefore, MI Notebook Air 12 will be slimmer than MacBOOK. In fact, Apple MacBook adopts thin front and thick back design, although the largest thickness has 13.3mm, the front design still is very thin with comfortable holding feel. But Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 side design seems very relatively uniform, the middle part keeps over 12mm thickness. As for beauty, Apple MacBook design looks more attractive.

In portability, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air has 1.07kg, but Apple MacBook has only 920g,  so both have less difference but good portability. Besides, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 is larger than MacBook although they both come with 12inch.

In screen, Apple MacBook uses 12inch IPS Retina screen with 2304×1440 resolution, 16:10 ratio, but Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 uses 12.5inch IPS screen with 1920×1080 resolution, 16:10 ratio, according to Xiaomi official, it has 7H screen hardness to avoid scratch.

Meanwhile, they both use glass cover in screen which is rare design. Because rare non-touch screen Windows devices use glass screen, currently most use mist side panel design. But glass screen will have high light transmittance, more vivid image, and higher hardness than mist screen.

Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 uses OGS screen in order to improve the screen brightness and accurate color. But Apple Macbook always uses its Retina screen with more exquisite design.

Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 has 5.71mm width about left to right frame which is more narrow than MacBook.

According to comparison, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air uses OGS design to lower the screen thickness, namely, Macbook has thinner thickness than Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 due to different cost.

Different Touch Feeling

Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 design uniformly due to the keyboard. In touch feeling, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 has nice touch feeling and moderate button pressing which is better than Macbook Air in general. So if you pay more attention to the keyboard, Xiaomi MI Notebook 12 is more excellent than Macbook.

In touch panel, Macbook has larger square than MI Notebook Air, and the former supports Force touch and MacOS to bring more gesture motion for better experience than mouse.

Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 also uses the glass touch panel which only most high-end devices have with exquisite touch feeling. And it also support gesture motions, equipped with Windows 10 OS for better use experience.

Different Connectivity

In connectivity, there is only one USB type C port on the left side of Macbook, but Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 has HDMI and 3.5mm earphone jack.

But on the right side, MacBook only has 3.5mm earphone jack, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 has USB 3.0 and USB Type C port.

In all, both support USB Type C, but Apple MacBook only has one USB port, therefore, an extra USB Type C converter will become necessary. Xiaomi Mi notebook Air 12 has extra USB 3.0 port and HDMI port which are good for daily office. If you think the port is not enough, you can still use a USB Type C converter. But compared with Macbook with only USB Type C port, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 seems more personalized.

Other Difference

Beside difference design, ports, although they both use Intel Core M3-6Y30 processor, MacBook improves the main frequency to 1.1GHz by TDP, but Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 inch with 900MHz belongs to the original standard. However, Macbook has 5W frequency, but Xiaomi mi notebook air keeps 4.5w. Of course, one runs Windows 10 OS, the other runs OS X, recently, Windows 10 OS takes dominance on the market. So we highly recommend trying Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.

Conclusion

They sell at different price, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 at 3499 yuan, $583, Macbook at 9288 yuan, $1548. Xiaomi MI Notebook Air is triple cheaper than Macbook, although Macbook has better design. But if you are looking for a decent notebook with high performance as Macbook, and similar to Macbook in design, but cheaper than Macbook, Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12 will still improve your personal status and help you work more conveniently.

Update on May 29, 2018