2016 MacBook Review Roundup: SSD Performance is Much Improved, Lack of Ports and 480p Camera Are Still Negatives

[Rigby]

The size is not nearly so close as the numbers may make it appear. http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-ativ-book-9-2015/

http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-ativ-book-9-2015/Actually it feels very similar to the Macbook in person, both in terms of size and weight. It has less taper toward the front, but you have to have room for the thickest part in your bag anyway.

And 6 hours of claimed battery life in Windows equates to 3-4 real world.

I doubt it.

 

[lowkey]

Well, Ive had my rev1 Macbook 1.1 base model for 2 days now. So far it is great.
Really nicely built. So light i hardly know if its in my bag or not getting to and from work.
Been using it for 7 hours today and still got 39% battery. Its not getting heavy use...just Word, Exel, Safari, Outlook and a bit of Indesign. All running smoothly.

Only negatives Ive experienced so far are:
-the poor camera for FaceTime...its really graining in low lighting.
-the power adapter design is a regression. No way to store the cable wound up as part of the transformer, the cable floats around in my bag uncurling itself and tangling up other things in there.

 

[smallcoffee]

Really annoyed that people keep mentioning that the "lack of ports" is a negative. It's like, after a year they still don't get it. Lack of ports is a distinguishing feature for the Macbook, not a "negative". That's like complaining that a 15 inch laptop doesn't have an attached 27 inch monitor. No ****!

 

[abhi182]

Gotta love the way how people end up branding people with a different use case than theirs as outright idiots ..
I have the 2015 rev 1 rMB (switched from a 2014 13 air).

My use case is 90% browsing when at home.
Maybe 5% on spreadsheets and 5% for watching a movie while travelling.
And it fits that need far better than anything else I can find on the market...

The screen is far better than the MBA, so is the keyboard
(After using this KB for a few weeks, the KB on the work laptop on which I am typing this feels as if I am prodding on a mushy porridge bowl)

Also totally love the fact that I can charge it with pretty much any powerbank (I brought a cheap Xiaomi 20AH battery pack for it) whenever I want!

I don't really experience any slowdowns although the i5 MBA felt a little faster to scroll on heavier webpages.
The only other gripe I have is that the wifi antenna is the rMB is somewhat weaker than the MBA

As for competing windows products, Windows ultrabooks are horrendously overpriced for whatever reason in India (where I live)

MAcbooks on the other hand are priced more or less at par with the US prices (esp if you wait for a good online deal- The rMB cost me ~1100 USD equivalent, the newer XPS 13s on the other hand goes up to 2000USD or more
Even the Asus UX 305 ends up being over 1000+)
I guess it is probably due to the fact that a) there is a very limited consumer (not business) market for premium windows laptops here...Majority of budget buyers end up buying the 500USD equiv laptops form Acer/Dell/Toshiba/HP etc
b) Whatever little market that does exists for premium windows machines is split between the major manufacturers
Thus the volumes end up getting so low that they can't really price them well

Oh, last but not the least, I was easily able to sell off a 4 year old 11" Air for 50% of the original purchase price.. No prizes for guessing what I would have got for a 4 year old XPS 12 or imilar (if at all I could sell it)