US$750 Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air is a Apple Macbook Pro running Windows 10

Xiaomi has finally launched the Macbook Pro Killer of my dreams.

The laptop, called the Mi Notebook Air, actually runs on Windows 10 as reported in the article “Xiaomi's first laptop is the $750 Mi Notebook Air”, published 07.27.16 by Richard Lai, Engadget.

The US$750 Laptop, which looks surprisingly a lot like the Apple Macbook Pro, costs far less at US$750 and is set to launch in China on Tuesday August 2^nd 2016. It comes in two (2) screen variants, 13.3" and 12.5" and is sold in two (2) colours:

1.      Gold

2.      Silver

So aside from colour, how else do they differ?

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air - Apple Macbook Pro running Windows 10

Both are 1080p deals with a backlit keyboard, making this a typists and gamer's dream machine as pointed out in the article “Xiaomi's $750 laptop is like a MacBook Air with gaming hardware inside”, published July 27, 2016 by Aloysius Low, CNET News.

However, they differ in specs under the hood and is quite close and copies heavily from the Macbook Pro as opined in my blog article entitled “How Xiaomi's US$200 Mi Notebook is a Linux Ubuntu Laptop for Christmas 2016”.

The 13.3” variant, which costs US$750, is 14.8mm thick and weight in at 1.28kg. It has a dual core Intel Core i5-6200U “Skylake-U” processor that clock at 2.3GHz and goes up to 2.7GHz in turbo mode.

It also has an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX GPU with 1GB GDDR5 RAM but you can upgrade to an 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 256GB of SSD via PCIe plus a free SATA slot for expansion. There is also two (2) USB 3.0 ports with a USB Type-C charging port that can recharge the 40N battery from zero to 50% in 30 minutes, giving you 9.5 hours of untethered freedom. 

The 12.5” variant, which costs US$520 is 12.9mm thick and weighs in at 1.07kg, making it lighter and thinner than its 13.3” counterpart. It’s powered by an Intel Core M3 CPU, and allows Windows 10 to run on 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD via SATA. You only get 1 USB 3.0 port and one HDMI port, which translate to 11.5 hrs of battery life.

Still disappointed that Xiaomi didn't do a custom Linux machine that could work with Microsoft files, but that may have been a bit risky for them. I'm hoping they launch something to satisfy the Linux Community, as the value brand needs to make a product that appeal to the masses, especially as laptop sales are falling!