The MacBook Air is a nice, lightweight notebook. But, does is the 3-digit price tag validated when you can buy a Chromebook for $700 less?
If you’re not familiar with the Chromebook, this is Google’s netbook. Actually, it’s Google operating system and it uses either the Acer or Samsung netbooks as its hardware. It comes with a full-sized chiclet keyboard and oversized trackpad. Essentially, it feels like a regular Sony Vaio laptop, but housed in a portable netbook body. If you like the Chrome web browser, you’ll love the Chromebook since that is what it’s operating system is based off of. It is also intended for heavy cloud users, i.e. Gmail, Google Docs, DropBox, or other cloud storage users.
Back to the matter at hand. Should you buy the MacBook Air or Chromebook?
- Design – The Air is still thinner and more of a stunner.
- Portability – The MacBook Air supports only 2.38 pounds while the Google’s netbook is heavier and bulkier.
- Apps – Download Chrome Apps or Apple store apps. No brainer here. Apple: another point.
- Screen – The Air is 1366 x 768 on an 11.6-inch screen and the Chromebook has a 1280 x 800 12.1-inch screen. Pretty equal, but the Chromebook has an anti-glare screen which the Apple lacks. One point for Google.
- Battery – You’ll get 6.5 hours on the Mac and just 5 on the Chromebook.
- Keyboard – A tie on this one with nice key spacing. But, Chromebook doesn’t have a back-light in the dark like the Air does.
- Internet – The Chromebook has the option of connecting to Verizon 3G’s network anywhere while the Air doesn’t.
- Storage – The Air comes with 64GB – 256GB of flash storage while the Chromebook doesn’t have any storage. But, you can get a 5GB free Google Drive or pay $5/month for 100GB to be shared among multiple computers.
The price for the Chromebook is definitely low starting at $350. It doesn’t fully stack up to the MacBook Air, but I think it’s a great option as a netbook that is peppy for web browsing and easier to type on than a standard netbook. That is if you’ve bought into the cloud support concept. Remember, there’s no hard drive support space on the Chromebook so you’ll need to save your files to the cloud. If you’re cool with that IT solution concept, then it’s a win-win.
