Review and Compare Apple MacBook Air vs. Microsoft Surface vs. Google Chromebook

With the wide variety of high-quality laptops available in the market today, it’s quite the challenge picking the best from the bunch. In fact, it would be fair to say that there is no “ultimate” laptop to rule them all. Different companies have different perceptions of what the user should be using and while you may adhere to the design choices of one company, you may disagree with the practices of another. So, at the end of the day, it all comes down to personal choice.

Compare the Top Laptops on the Market

macbook-airimagesChromebook-logo

The Apple Macbook Air, Microsoft Surface laptops and Google Chromebooks all offer solid, satisfying experiences. But they couldn’t be any more different from each other. All three use different Operating Systems and consequently, different application software. What you end up buying will be determined by those factors (among others).

Side note: For Chromebooks, I’ll be using the Chromebook Pixel as the major example to level the playing field. Some links will forward to other websites.

Laptop Comparison

Operating SystemScreen SizeResolutionThicknessWeightPriceEditor Comments
MacBook AirOS X11.6 inches1366 x 7680.68 inches2.38 pounds$889The Air is a battery sipping machine. I cannot tell you how awesome this is - if you are working remote, the Air is a must.
Surface Pro 3Windows 812.0 inches2160 x 14400.36 inches1.80 pounds$975Remember when we longed for a PDA, MP3 Player and Camera in one? Surface is like that - with computers. A tablet, computer and drawing pad in one.
Chomebook PixelChrome OS12.8 inches2560 x 17000.63 inches3.35 pounds$1299Nice, super high quality - but too expensive. But - there are great chromebooks available for $300 or less. If price is an option...look here.

Laptop Reviews

Apple Macbook Air

macbook-airThe Macbook Air is one of the finest ultra-portable laptops ever made. Because of its uni-body design, it is incredibly thin (0.68 inches) and amazingly light (2.38 pounds). The build quality is simply exquisite. What sets it apart though, is its battery life. The 13″ model can last up to 16 hours of continuous usage and that really is an incredible feat for any laptop.  It runs the macOS.

The Surface Pro 3, on the other hand, lasts 9 hours of web browsing. On Google’s end, almost every Google Chromebook can last up to 8 hours with the exception of the Pixel which can barely beat the 5 hour mark.

The Air uses Mac OS X. Unlike Windows 8.1, it doesn’t have full-screen “Metro” apps that clash with the desktop experience. OS X is home to certain stellar applications such as Garageband, not available in other Operating Systems. For musicians, that may very well be the deciding factor.

Apart from that, the default productivity apps that come with the system are actually useful and if you’re part of the Apple ecosystem (as in, you own an iPhone or iPad), activities on your phone (for example, if you’re working on a word document on your notebook) get instantly synced with your iPad and vice versa.

In terms of internal hardware, all three use a Core i5 processor and 4 to 8 Gigabytes of RAM. All in all, the $999 Macbook Air is worth every cent and it’s ideal for students and office-goers alike. When bench-marked (iTunes encoding and Multimedia multitasking), however, the Macbook Air comes on top with slightly better performance, making it faster than both the Chromebook Pixel and the Surface Pro 3.

Microsoft Surface

surface-pro-3Microsoft’s forage into the tablet scene began in earnest with the advent of Windows 8 and its inclusion in the Surface line of products. While previous versions of the Surface felt out of place with their ARM processors and high price tags, the Surface Pro 3 feels right at home alongside the competition. It’s a notebook/tablet hybrid, allowing you two take off the keyboard. More than anything else, it feels like a premium device while being both slightly lighter (1.8 pounds) and thinner (0.36 inches) than the Air and Pixel.

The defining feature of the Pro 3 is its display – 12″, 2160X1440 display and it’s extremely sharp and the Pro 3’s display supports multi-touch. It’s certainly much better than Macbook Air’s measly 1440X900 resolution display. It doesn’t, however, beat the absolute beauty of Pixel’s 12.85″ 2560X1700 resolution awesomeness.

So, it can effectively be used like a Windows tablet. This feature makes it incredibly versatile, not to mention, useful in various situations. As if that weren’t enough, it also comes with a stylus, making note-taking an actual viability in classroom sessions.

The Surface Pro 3 has the added advantage of being able to run native apps including the 150 thousand “Metro” apps available in the Windows Store. This is in contrast to the 20 thousand apps available in the Mac App Store. Granted, most of the apps on the Windows Store aren’t exactly great but having the option is still a plus point. It also comes with 15 Gigabytes of OneDrive cloud storage compared to Apple’s 5 Gigabytes. But both of those numbers pale in comparison to the 1 TB of free storage you get if you buy a Chromebook Pixel. Lesser Chromebooks only give you 100 Gigabytes of free storage.

There are several versions of the Surface Pro 3. The $999 version (not including the keyboard which is another $129) is equipped with a 1.9 GHz Core i5 and 8 Gigabytes of RAM (the Mac Air only has 4 Gigabytes of RAM and the clock speed is just 1.6 GHz). But as mentioned above, despite the superior hardware, Mac Air is slightly faster when it comes to multitasking. The Surface Pro 3 did, however, outperform the Mac Air when bench-marked using Photoshop. Comparisons with the Pixel and other Chromebooks cannot be made as Chrome OS does not support third-party software such as Photoshop.

Chromebooks

chrome-pixelGoogle’s Chromebooks are niche products meant specifically for people who just need to browse the web and do simple tasks. In other words, they’re ideal for parents and students who don’t require powerful hardware and are content with web applications that do the job (for the most part). Chrome OS, the OS powering Chromebooks, do just that. The OS itself consists of Google Chrome, Google apps (Gmail, Picasa, etc.) and a basic file manager. There are no other third party apps to be bought though you can buy games and apps on Google’s Play Store. Speaking of which, the Play Store has a plethora of online applications that greatly increase the number of things you can do with a Chromebook. Having said that, those same applications are available on either the Air or the Surface, albeit at a higher price.

Absolutely everything runs on the browser and so you don’t need powerful hardware to run processor intensive applications. This allows Google to make notebooks that are incredibly cheap, ranging from $180 to $350. On the downside, the build quality of a lot of these laptops fall on the poor side when compared to either the Air or the Surface Pro 3. But that’s to be expected when you’re cutting corners to increase affordability. The only exception here is the Chromebook Pixel which is just as pretty as either of the products being used for comparison.

If you’re thinking of buying a Chromebook, make sure you won’t need to use software such as Microsoft Office or Photoshop. If all that you need from your computer is a browser and Google’s web applications, Chromebooks are the way to go.