Glad to still see options for small portable laptops on the market, but nothing out there has drawn me away from the 2015 11" MacBook Air. Good keyboard and trackpad, and single core speed is comparable to the newer (albeit lower TDP) Minibook. It's enough for everyday use, and the fan allows for better sustained performance (though it's rarely needed).
My main pain point is RAM (even with zram), but considering the MacBook Neo was just launched with the same amount I don't think I'll need to stop using it unless it finally decides to kick the bucket. A lot of laptops like the Minibook are better on paper but the build quality isn't there.
A 2011 mb air weighs almost half a pound more than this and is slightly larger. Also you are forced to run on 1) MacOS (which I like but is a limitation for many) and 2) since it’s unsupported will have many (especially modern) apps and such not work.
I love my 2016 MBpro. Can still render edit and render 4K video, pulls solid work. But it’s limited. Can’t even download Final Cut on it anymore because Apple won’t let me pull the latest supported version of the app. Luckily resolve does.
Apple hasn't provided a security update in years, let alone a proper MacOS release. But just about any modern amd64 Linux distro works out of the box on these machines. With a few small tweaks battery life is decent as well.
As for size and dimensions, the difference is under 200 grams, with the MBA being smaller than the 2009-ish era netbooks the blog post compares the Minibook to. Everything is a matter of trade offs.
My main pain point is RAM (even with zram), but considering the MacBook Neo was just launched with the same amount I don't think I'll need to stop using it unless it finally decides to kick the bucket. A lot of laptops like the Minibook are better on paper but the build quality isn't there.
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