Xiaomi bites Apple with thin, light and gorgeous Mi Notebook Air

Someone’s taken the Apple MacBook and Photoshopped off the logo there.

Behave. This is the brand new Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air, the Chinese company’s first foray into the world of laptops. And it simply happens to look a lot like an Apple product.

I’m sure it’s just a big coincidence, yep. Metal body, gold and silver finishes, and a 13.3in screen…

The Mi Notebook Air is, as its moniker suggests, pitched as a rival to the 13in MacBook Air. The screen is the same size but, thanks to an ultra-thin bezel, Xiaomi’s laptop is 11 percent smaller body-wise. It’s 13 percent thinner too, and a little lighter in weight: 1.28kg as opposed to the MacBook Air’s 1.35kg.

Apple really needs to update the MacBook Air range, and soon.

Agreed. But let’s get back to the Mi Notebook Air. It’s a Windows 10 machine, with an Intel Core i5 2.7GHz processor, 8GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU, and 256GB of SSD storage. The full-size keyboard has individually backlit keys, while the screen’s got a respectable full HD resolution.

There’s a USB Type-C port that’ll charge that battery from 0 to 50 percent capacity in half an hour, and at full capacity Xiaomi says you can drag as much as 9.5 hours of power out if it. There are also HDMI and USB 3.0 ports, too.

And if 13.3in is too big for your little lap, there’ll also be a slightly smaller 12.5in edition that’ll boast 11.5 hours of battery life, Intel Core M3, 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD.

And how much are we talking here?

In line with Xiaomi’s prior releases, these notebooks are set to be very affordable: 4,999 yuan (£570) for the 13.3in version and 3,499 yuan (£400) for the 12.5in version.

Super cheap for those specs. When’s it out?

Here’s the disappointing part: we don’t yet know if the Mi Notebook Air is even coming to the UK. So far it seems destined only for China. We’ll let you know if that changes.

[Source: Xiaomi via The Next Web]