Xiaomi's laptop- Notebook Air
Speculations about Xiaomi opening another front in its battle against Apple and Lenovo Group have been doing rounds since quite sometime.
The news comes courtesy DigiTimes which is claiming that Taiwan-based contract notebook maker Inventec will manufacture Xiaomi's 12.5-inch laptops at its Shanghai factory and that the laptops will be ready for shipping by April 2016.
The Chinese company threw in a huge surprise by launching its first-ever laptop line, the Mi Notebook Air, running on Windows 10. It comes in two sizes -- the powerful 13.3-inch and the portable 12.5-inch -- and both feature a slim body, a 1080p display with slim under-glass bezels (while still managing to fit in a 1-megapixel webcam), a backlit keyboard, a USB Type-C charging port plus a minimalistic metallic design -- in gold or silver, naturally -- with no logo on the outside. The best part of all? The top-spec model costs just 4,999 yuan or about $750.
The flagship 13.3-inch model comes in at just 14.8mm thick and 1.28kg heavy, which is pretty good given that you get an Intel Core i5-6200U "Skylake-U" processor (dual core, base frequency at 2.3GHz, turbo up to 2.7GHz) plus an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX GPU (with 1GB GDDR5 RAM). Of course, Xiaomi just had to point out that this is thinner and lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air, though it doesn't use a wedge design so it's still bulkier. You also get 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 256GB of SSD via PCIe and one free SATA slot for expansion (but only serviced by Xiaomi). The 40Wh battery should be good for up to 9.5 hours, and it can go from zero to 50 percent in just half an hour using the bundled USB-C charger.
The smaller 12.5-inch model is even slimmer and lighter at 12.9mm and 1.07kg, respectively, but you'll have to make do with an Intel Core M3 CPU, no dedicated GPU, just 4GB of RAM and just a 128GB SSD via SATA -- though there's one free PCIe slot if you don't mind letting Xiaomi do the upgrade for you later. And instead of two USB 3.0 ports, you only get one here; but you still have an HDMI port. The upside of this model is that you get two more hours of battery life.
Unveiled at a press event here in Beijing alongside the dual-camera wielding Redmi Pro phone, the 13.3-inch Mi Notebook Air was designed to fill a niche, Xiaomi's CEO Lei Jun said. Similar ultraportables, such as the Razer Blade Stealth, lack discrete graphics and rely on Intel's integrated graphics to do the legwork, which means their gaming capabilities are limited. Xiaomi says you can play games like Dota 2 at 85 frames-per-second at full-HD resolution on its Notebook Air. So what will the Mi Notebook Air contribute to Xiaomi's business in the long term? While it doesn't run on MIUI (Xiaomi's customized Android ROM), it does come with "Mi Sync" software (tentative name translated from Chinese) which should somewhat boost Mi Cloud usage.
Clad in aluminium, the device lacks any exterior logos. It's a very clean look. Only when you open up the laptop do you find a Mi logo. While Xiaomi is selling the Mi Notebook Air under its own branding, the laptop is actually made by a partner called Tian Mi.
Xiaomi's making an interesting bet in the laptop segment, though. IDC Research analyst Bryan Ma isn't too optimistic about the Chinese notebook market, saying that IDC "expects China's consumer notebook market to contract by 10.4 percent this year versus the -7.7 percent in the US and -9.3 percent worldwide."
The laptop can also be automatically unlocked when your Mi Band is within a close proximity. The Mi Notebook Air is launching in China on August 2nd. Again, there's no info regarding global availability for it just yet, so stay tuned for future updates.
The Chinese company threw in a huge surprise by launching its first-ever laptop line, the Mi Notebook Air, running on Windows 10. It comes in two sizes -- the powerful 13.3-inch and the portable 12.5-inch -- and both feature a slim body, a 1080p display with slim under-glass bezels (while still managing to fit in a 1-megapixel webcam), a backlit keyboard, a USB Type-C charging port plus a minimalistic metallic design -- in gold or silver, naturally -- with no logo on the outside. The best part of all? The top-spec model costs just 4,999 yuan or about $750.
The flagship 13.3-inch model comes in at just 14.8mm thick and 1.28kg heavy, which is pretty good given that you get an Intel Core i5-6200U "Skylake-U" processor (dual core, base frequency at 2.3GHz, turbo up to 2.7GHz) plus an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX GPU (with 1GB GDDR5 RAM). Of course, Xiaomi just had to point out that this is thinner and lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air, though it doesn't use a wedge design so it's still bulkier. You also get 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 256GB of SSD via PCIe and one free SATA slot for expansion (but only serviced by Xiaomi). The 40Wh battery should be good for up to 9.5 hours, and it can go from zero to 50 percent in just half an hour using the bundled USB-C charger.
The smaller 12.5-inch model is even slimmer and lighter at 12.9mm and 1.07kg, respectively, but you'll have to make do with an Intel Core M3 CPU, no dedicated GPU, just 4GB of RAM and just a 128GB SSD via SATA -- though there's one free PCIe slot if you don't mind letting Xiaomi do the upgrade for you later. And instead of two USB 3.0 ports, you only get one here; but you still have an HDMI port. The upside of this model is that you get two more hours of battery life.
Unveiled at a press event here in Beijing alongside the dual-camera wielding Redmi Pro phone, the 13.3-inch Mi Notebook Air was designed to fill a niche, Xiaomi's CEO Lei Jun said. Similar ultraportables, such as the Razer Blade Stealth, lack discrete graphics and rely on Intel's integrated graphics to do the legwork, which means their gaming capabilities are limited. Xiaomi says you can play games like Dota 2 at 85 frames-per-second at full-HD resolution on its Notebook Air. So what will the Mi Notebook Air contribute to Xiaomi's business in the long term? While it doesn't run on MIUI (Xiaomi's customized Android ROM), it does come with "Mi Sync" software (tentative name translated from Chinese) which should somewhat boost Mi Cloud usage.
Clad in aluminium, the device lacks any exterior logos. It's a very clean look. Only when you open up the laptop do you find a Mi logo. While Xiaomi is selling the Mi Notebook Air under its own branding, the laptop is actually made by a partner called Tian Mi.
Xiaomi's making an interesting bet in the laptop segment, though. IDC Research analyst Bryan Ma isn't too optimistic about the Chinese notebook market, saying that IDC "expects China's consumer notebook market to contract by 10.4 percent this year versus the -7.7 percent in the US and -9.3 percent worldwide."
The laptop can also be automatically unlocked when your Mi Band is within a close proximity. The Mi Notebook Air is launching in China on August 2nd. Again, there's no info regarding global availability for it just yet, so stay tuned for future updates.
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