Xiaomi Releases Mi Notebook Air: New Laptop Compared to Powerful MacBook Air; Specs; Price; Release Info

By Nazrene Lagrimas, CP Contributor Thursday, July 28, 2016

Along with its latest smartphone launch, Xiaomi surprised the audience as they unveil the company's first ever laptop line, the Mi Notebook Air which is said to be a MacBook clone and competitor.

The Mi Notebook Air was launched alongside Xiaomi's latest OLED phone Redmi Pro. The Notebook Air is designed as a lightweight notebook that runs Microsoft's Windows 10 Home. While the Chinese company is known for producing price-friendly smartphones, they have as well entered the laptop market just as when the consumer laptop market is shrinking.

It is reported that the newly-unveiled laptop is a part of the "Mi Ecosystem" product, built by Xiaomi in partnership with local manufacturers. The company said they wanted to produce a product that will balance performance and affordability.

Key Features and Specs
Xiaomi launched the Mi Notebook Air in two sizes, a 13.3 inch and a 12.5 inch. The slim, metallic design of the laptops are a plus, for it almost resembles the Apple MacBook Air, only without a logo on its exterior part.

The flagship 13.3 inch Mi Notebook Air weigh 1.28 kg, measures 309.6 x 210.9 x 14.8 millimeters and is only 14.8 mm thick. It also has Intel Core i5-6200U "Skylake-U" processor and an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX GPU which includes 1GB GDDR5 RAM. One of its best features is the 40Wh battery which lasts up to 9.5 hours, and charges 50 percent in just 30 minutes with its Type C USB charger. The laptop also has two USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI interface. The device is also packed with 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 256GB of SSD and a free expandable SATA slot.

On the other hand, the flagship 12.5 inch model is only 12.9mm thick, and weighs 1.07 kg. Although the model is made slimmer and lighter, it also only has an Intel Core M3 CPU. Also it only has a 4GB of RAM and just a 128GB SSD. Compared to the larger model, this model only comes with one USB 3.0 and one HDMI ports. But despite its minimum storage and port capacity, its battery, however, lasts longer than the 13.3 Notebook Air. It has 11.5 hours of battery life, which makes it much more convenient to users.

The Notebook Air models feature a high quality 1080p display and also come in two colors, gold and silver. The models also have a Mi Cloud Sync feature that allows users to sync their files with their Xiaomi smartphones.

The Mi Notebook Air products are set to be sold in China on August 2, with price ranging from RMB 4,999 ($749) for the larger model and RMB 3499 ($524) for the smaller model. Xiaomi hasn't made any announcements yet about its international release.