Samsung’s new Series 9 shows some promise on that front with an aluminum build and very thin profile, but I will hold final judgement on that one until we review it. Perhaps it’s not really fair to compare the sub-$1,000 ultrabooks to the 13-inch Air on build quality - material costs are usually the first thing to be cut when going to a budget system - but even so, the Air still tops all the other current $1,100 and $1,200 options (like the Zenbook and U300s) on both portability and pure manufacturing quality. And yes, we have at least seven full-time MacBook Air users on staff.
It consistently irritates my wrists, but if you’re using my colleagues as a focus group, I’m in the minority on this one. The lack of an Ethernet port is joined by one other complaint: the sharp front edge.
That said, thankfully Apple added back the SD card slot in the latest revision of the Air Lenovo continues to leave this off its ultrabooks for some reason. The lack of an Ethernet jack (and a $29.00 price tag for the dongle if you get it through Apple) is a handicap Asus actually includes that dongle in the Zenbook UX31’s box. Apple has outfitted the machine with two USB ports, an SD card slot, a Mini DisplayPort / Thunderbolt port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. One place where the Air doesn’t compete with some of these newer ultrabooks - the Folio 13 and Portege especially - is on ports. The machine weighs 2.96 pounds, though it isn’t as light as the others, especially the 2.47-pound Toshiba Portege Z835. While the Asus Zenbook UX31 and U300s came close to matching the unibody build, the Air feels more tightly constructed: the lid and base are solid to the core, the screen hinge exhibits zero wobble, and there’s no flex to the keyboard.
(The Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, original Samsung Series 9, and Sony Vaio Z deserve honorable mentions for having unique designs with well-built chassis.) You’re almost certainly familiar with the Air, but I will say that in terms of build quality, the Air is the best thin-and-light machine on the market. In fact, it is so iconic and so deeply associated with how a thin-and-light laptop should look that nearly every ultrabook manufacturer has modeled their machines after the 0.68-inch thick aluminum unibody laptop. The MacBook Air’s design is beyond iconic at this point.
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