Earlier in July this year, Chinese upstart Xiaomi first took the wraps off its laptop offering called the Mi Notebook Air and expanded beyond the scope of smartphones, smart home products, and accessories. Fast forward five months, the company has now introduced an upgraded lineup of its Macbook rivals with 4G LTE connectivity in tow.
The naming for this new range of laptops has been kept fairly simplistic and they’ve been christened ‘Mi Notebook Air 4G’ to exclusively sell the new connectivity feature. Xiaomi has collaborated with telecom carrier China Mobile for the launch of this variant and will provide users with instant access to the company’s network without the need of a SIM card.
The primary idea behind this refresh is to offer the customers an even better option than the previous Mi Notebook Air, which has sold over 200k units since launch. The new variants all imbibe the same aesthetics but offer a sleeker design, upgraded processors, and immediate 4G wireless connection. Some of these changes have only been introduced in the 13-inch variant rather than the smaller 12.5-inch variant.
As for the 12.5-inch variant of Mi Notebook Air 4G, Xiaomi has decided to stick with the known internals, features and add just connectivity options to it. You’ll still be treated to a full HD 1080p display with slim bezels, a 1-megapixel webcam, a metallic finish, a backlit keyboard, a USB Type-C charging port to prove its own courage with respect to Apple’s new MacBook Pro. The internals of the laptop pack
The internals of Xiaomi’s laptop pack an Intel Core M3 processor coupled with 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, 128GB SSD (SATA) with a second SSD expansion slot and an HDMI port for TV connections. It also includes other features including AKG stereo speakers, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and Dolby Digital surround sound support. The battery life of the same stands at 11.5 hours.
As for the 13-inch variant, the internals of the Mi NoteBook Air have also been upgraded in this refresh. Instead of the Intel Core i5-6200U processor, which can be clocked up to 2.7 Ghz, the new notebook now has a 13.3-inch display and packs in the sixth-generation Intel Core i7 processor. This, the company claims, will provide a 10 percent improvement over the previous processing power. Other internals including Full-HD display, an Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU with 1GB of VRAM, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 256 GB of SSD remain the same.
These 4G variants of the Mi Notebook Air have received a price bump due to the added connectivity option. The 12.5-inch variant now costs CNY 4,699 (approx Rs. 46,500) whereas the 13-inch variant will be available for CNY 6,999 (approx Rs. 69,500) and come bundled with free 4GB of 4G data per month. These upgrades are currently only available in China, with no tentative launch dates for India announced yet.
