Xiaomi notebook air specs windows 10#

Some degree of adjustment to the backlight duration once you stop typing while running on battery power would be handy, but that's a very minor niggle. Visually, I prefer Xiaomi's silver keys to Apple's black, though using a white backlight on silver keys can present readability issues. Meanwhile, the backlit US-International keyboard features good sized, well-spaced keys that have a positive if slightly shallow action. This is traditionally a terrible place to put speakers in a laptop, but the AKG-branded speakers sound surprisingly good, even with the laptop placed on a lap or table. On the underside of the Air 12 are two small speaker grilles. At 1.07kg (2.36 pounds) it weighs 150g (about a third of a pound) more than a MacBook, but it still feels very light. Measuring 292mm x 202mm x 12.9mm it is a few millimetersВ wider and deeper but also a fraction less thick than the Apple machine. There's surprisingly little to choose between the MacBook and the Air 12 in terms of size, despite the Xiaomi's display being half an inch longer between the corners. So too is the packaging, and the one-piece, two-pronged power supply it comes with. The brushed aluminiumВ exterior is well made, and the design of the lid hinge, the cut-out in the front of the base to aid lid-lifting, and the shape of the central one-piece touchpad are all very Mac-like. If you can see past the barriers to entry, the Air 12 is a very usable, handsome laptop. My experience installing Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 was fuss-free, and everything worked from the get-go bar some fiddling with the touchpad control panel. Handily the Air 12 takes to Linux just fine. Of course, you can always refuse the offerings of Microsoft in favour of something open source.

Xiaomi notebook air specs windows 10#

Windows then checks the machine for a bona fide activation code, finds the one that shipped with the laptop, and bingo: a new, English, and entirely vanilla version of Windows 10 is activated. You need to log the into your Microsoft account on the Air 12, make a Windows 10 USB installation stick, overwrite the Chinese version of Windows with an English version, and then hit the вЂњtroubleshootingвЂќ button on the Windows activation screen. This makes the Air 12 all but unusable out of the box-unless you can read Chinese-but the fix is straight forward. The version on offer at ВЈ400 comes with the Chinese iteration of Windows 10 Home installed, which means there isn't an option to swap the system language into English. Unfortunately, DHL charged another ВЈ19 of import duty before delivery, bringing the total cost to just shy of ВЈ420. My review sample came from Chinese reseller GearBest, which, at the time of writing, wants just under ВЈ400 ($490 in the US) for an Air 12. Buying one means dealing with grey importers and sucking up the associated ramifications regarding import duties and after-sales support, or lack thereof. Xiaomi hasn't officially released the Air 12 (or its 13-inch big brother the Air 13) in the UK, US, or other western markets. It's almost too good to be true.Д«uying an Air 12 is not a wholly risk-free undertaking. Not only does the Air 12 feature a remarkably similar industrial design to Cupertino's offering, it boasts similar specs too. Chinese gadget maker Xiaomi wants to change all that with the Xiaomi Air 12, a MacBook-style laptop that retails forВ a third of the price. While there are Windows alternatives to the MacBook-Microsoft's Surface and Dell's XPS 12 spring to mind-few are based on the same compact 12-inch laptop form factor, or cost substantially less money. Unfortunately, while the MacBook is a desirable piece of kit, its starting price of ВЈ1,250 for a mere Core m3 processor and 8GB of memory is hardly what you'd call good value. If you're in the market for a compact laptop and have an eye on style there's one obvious choice: the Apple MacBook. As such, you will likely receive less customer support if things go wrong. Instead, you will most likely have to import it. You cannot directly buy the Xiaomi Air 12 in the UK, US, or indeed many markets outside China.