The design is revolutionary, but Apple's MacBook Air will appeal to a smaller, more specialised audience than the standard MacBook, thanks to a stripped-down set of connections and features.

Apple's new notebook, the MacBook Air, may not be the true ultraportable that many had hoped for, but it still easily breaks new ground for small laptops. Retaining the same 13.3in. display as the current MacBook line, it's only 1.94cm thick at its thickest part. Apple calls it the 'world's thinnest notebook', although some nitpickers say an obscure Mitsubishi notebook from 1997 was a hair thinner. However, two of the smallest current ultraportables — the 11in. Sony VAIO TZ series and the 12in. Toshiba Portégé R500 — are both slightly thicker, and neither tapers to 0.4cm as the Air does along its front edge.

As we've come to expect from Apple, the design and engineering that went into the MacBook Air is extraordinary, but it's certainly a much more specialised product than the standard 13.3in. MacBook and won't be as universally useful as that popular system. The biggest compromises, which have been well-documented, come in its connectivity: the MacBook Air finds room for only one USB port and doesn't include a built-in optical drive, FireWire, Ethernet or mobile broadband. And as with its other notebooks, Apple refuses to outfit the Air with a media-card reader or an expansion card slot. Offsetting its sparse connectivity are genuinely useful new features, including new touchpad gesture controls and the ability to wirelessly 'borrow' another system's optical drive.

Choosing the Air over the cheaper, faster standard 13.3in. MacBook, or the comparably priced MacBook Pro, will depend on your needs. Mobile professionals who want minimum weight but maximum screen space, and who live their lives via Wi-Fi hot spots, with little need for wired connectivity, will find the £1,020 (ex. VAT) starting price a reasonable investment for owning one of the world's premier bits of high-tech eye candy. And while the MacBook Air's specs are inferior to those found on the cheaper MacBook, they compare more favourably when you look at other ultraportables, where a price premium is always exacted. For instance, both the Sony VAIO TZ systems and Toshiba Portégé R500 cost considerably more than the MacBook Air and feature slower CPUs and half the RAM.

Although it shares a desktop footprint with the standard black and white MacBooks, the first thing you notice about the Air is its aluminium chassis — similar to the one found on the MacBook Pro, and much more fingerprint resistant than the standard MacBooks. Picking it up, the MacBook Air feels a little heavier than you'd expect from looking at it, even though it's only 1.36kg. At the same time, it feels very sturdy and solid, thanks in part to the aluminium construction, and we'd have no qualms about carting it around with us all day. By way of comparison, the VAIO VGN-TZ11XN/B features an 11.1in. screen and is only 170g lighter than the Air, while the Portégé R500 is 581g lighter than the Air with a 12.1in. screen.

The MacBook Air includes an iSight camera and microphone, and an LED backlit display that works with an ambient light sensor to adjust the screen brightness in response to the light in the room. The keyboard — the same full-size version found in other MacBooks — has backlit keys that are also controlled by the ambient light sensor, although we really had to adjust the room lighting a good deal to see any difference.

The revamped touchpad is large, measuring nearly 12cm diagonally, and it works with new multi-touch gestures. Other MacBooks let you do things like use two fingers to scroll through documents, but this one lets you use three fingers to go forward and back in your web browser history, and use your thumb and forefinger to zoom in and out of documents and photos — much like on the iPhone. The three-finger forward/back gesture was immediately useful, and we're already missing it when using another notebook. Apple tells us these new gestures won't be available on older MacBooks as a firmware upgrade, as the hardware behind the new touchpad is different.

Another noteworthy new feature is the remote disc function. Since the Air lacks an optical drive, you can instead remotely see the optical drives of other systems, PC or Mac, as long as they're on the same network. The setup was a little cumbersome for the 'host' PC, requiring us to insert the OS X disc that came with the Air, run a small setup program, and then find and turn on 'CD and DVD sharing' in the Windows control panel (the documentation could have been a little clearer on what you need to do to on the Windows side). Once we set it up, however, it worked like a charm. You won't be able to stream DVD movies or music CDs via remote disc, but it's fine for getting files and installing applications. A matching external USB DVD burner is available from Apple for £65 (inc. VAT), but any USB DVD drive should work.

The display offers the same 1,280 by 800 native resolution as the standard 13.3in. MacBook, but the Air's LED backlit screen means its lid is thinner with an image that was somewhat brighter, at least with both systems set to maximum brightness.

The real key to finding out whether the MacBook Air is right for you lies in its stripped-down set of ports and connections. Those who regularly use more than one USB device, or need FireWire, an SD card slot or an Express card slot, will find the single USB port too limiting. Likewise, we often say the telephone modem jacks and S-Video outputs on most notebooks are a waste of space, but the MacBook Air goes even further, removing the Ethernet port (a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor will run you £19) and offloading video output to a pair of included dongles (one VGA, one DVI).

If you live on Wi-Fi hot spots, use Bluetooth for your external mouse, and only need a USB port to occasionally sync and charge your iPod or iPhone, these limitations may not be a deal-breaker for you. Although most hardware vendors offer a choice of mobile broadband options, Apple continues to offer none, which is disappointing for a system so clearly meant for life on the move. Without an Express card slot, your only option would be a USB mobile broadband modem, but with the sole USB port under a tiny flap on the right-hand side of the system with limited clearance, you may need a small USB extension cable to get a bulky USB mobile broadband modem connected (similar to the problems people had with the iPhone's recessed headphone jack).

The 80GB hard drive included in the base £1,199 (inc. VAT) model may be smaller than you're used to, but the only other option is a 64GB solid state hard drive. With no moving parts, and advantages in heat, power consumption and reliability, SSD hard drives are certainly the way of the future. The future may have to wait a few years for prices to come down, however; swapping the 80GB platter drive for the 64GB SSD drive is a whopping £639 upgrade. The only other internal hardware option is a CPU uptick, from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz for £190. With the upgraded CPU and SSD drive, the £1,199 MacBook Air suddenly becomes a £2,028 notebook.

We are pleased to see that the MacBook Air comes standard with 2GB of RAM, but with a processor that runs at a much slower clock speed than the standard MacBook (2.0GHz or 2.2GHz), plus a 4,200rpm 1.8in. hard drive (as opposed to the standard 5,400rpm), it's not surprising that the MacBook Air is not as fast a performer as the 2.2GHz MacBook, which costs £1,039 (reviewed by ZDNet sister site CNET.com). Do note that the baseline £699 MacBook features a slower processor and half the memory of the MacBook unit reviewed by CNET.com.

And as we often point out, any modern dual-core CPU is going to be more than adequate for web surfing, multimedia playback and productivity tasks, and we were indeed able to surf the web, play videos and work on a document at the same time with absolutely no slowdown or stuttering. We're currently conducting additional benchmark tests and will update this review with new results as they're available.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the MacBook Air is the lack of a replaceable battery. While most notebooks will be obsolete before their batteries wear out, we are sensitive to the desire to occasionally carry an extra battery for extended field use. We're still conducting our standard DVD battery drain test on the system, and will report those scores shortly. However, in anecdotal testing the Air lasted for nearly 4 hours of mixed use, including video playback, software installation, web surfing and productivity tasks. That's reasonably close to Apple's 5-hour claims, but may not be enough for a full day of off-site use.

We're still not fans of Apple's nearly obligatory extended warranty upsell. The default warranty for the MacBook is one year of coverage for parts and labour, but toll-free telephone support is limited to a mere 90 days — well short of what you'd typically find on the PC side — unless you purchase the £199 AppleCare Protection Plan, which extends phone support and repair coverage to three years.

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