Xiaomi is known as the Apple of the East, and product launches such as the one here only make the case stronger.
Meet the all new Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air, which as the name (shamelessly) suggests, is Xiaomi’s Windows-powered ‘alternative’ to the Apple MacBook. The laptop was launched at today’s conference alongside the Xiaomi Redmi Pro.
It even comes with a full metal body, and is smaller and lighter than its inspiration. Xiaomi says that the Mi Notebook Air is ‘13% thinner and has 11% smaller body than the Macbook Air.’
Let’s delve into the specifics a bit. The Mi Notebook Air 12 comes in two screen variants — one with a 13.3-inch full HD display, and another with a 12.5-inch one, with the same resolution.
The Intel Core i5-6200U processor (up to 2.7GHz) along with the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics chip run the show on the first Xiaomi laptop (13.3-inch version), along with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD storage. All of this for an attractive 4,999 Yuan or $750!
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The 12.5-inch variant is more on the feeble side with an Intel Core M3 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD and no dedicated GPU. What this means is that you don’t shell out too much money (3499 Yuan/$520) and get a couple of hours of extra battery life compared to the 13.3-inch version.
MUST READ: 10 things you need to know about the Mi Notebook Air
Makers claim that the 40Wh battery can hold good for up to 9.5 hours of usage, while an included charger (using the USB Type-C standard) can charge it to 50% (from 0%) in a matter of just 30 minutes. Which is impressive!
The 13.3-inch version of the Mi Notebook Air weighs in at 1.28kg, while the smaller 12.5-inch version does so at 1.07kg.
While it’s clear that the Mi Notebook Air borrows a few design cues from the Apple laptop, it’s surprising that the Mi Notebook Air does not have a glowing Mi logo on the back.
There’s no word on global availability (of course), but the Mi Notebook Air will launch in China on the 2nd of August. Keep reading for more updates on the first Xiaomi laptop!
Update: A video about the Mi Notebook Air.
We need it with a “ñ”
Totally agree with you. There’ll be though, a combination of two different keys to get it.
You can put the laptop in any language on windows ans buy keyboard stickers that make the change seemless !
Uh, previous leaks were (almost) totally false.
$750 for i5-6200U + GF 940MX + 8GB RAM + 128GB SSD + 40Wh is a pretty good bargain. But we can also buy Lenovo Y700 for the same price : i5-6800 + GF 960M + 8GB RAM + 500GB HDD + 60Wh.
The biggest differences being the weight (1.28Kg vs 2.6Kg) and the after sale support abroad.
The difference is much much bigger.
The Lenovo is a proper laptop while this is shiny and much lower perf.
You don’t quite list the CPU properly but it’s likely a quad core while this is dual core up to 2.7GHz.
GTX 960M is also more of a proper GPU. The 940 has 384 Maxwell cores, the 960 has 640.
You dont get it – this is more like an ultrabook – something to compete with mac air , Hp spectre , Dell XPS etc.
A very light and portable alternative which has a solid build
Fast ssd etc.
This will be perfect for people at college or ones having specific needs at a much lower price
You dont get it. Whatever Xiaomi does realjjj will complain about and make it sound like it is the worst product in the world. He is the biggest Xiaomi hater on this site.
Don’t try to use common sense with him, it doesn’t work.
Haha agreed but everybody deserves a chance at retribution ))
It seems i was comparing a proper gaming laptop with an all-around lightweight laptop, my bad.
In the “all-around lightweight laptop” category, nothing’s sold under $1000, and specwise the 13″ model should cost at least $1400 if sold by Dell / HP / Apple /… so this Notebook Air is everything but overpriced.
It seems you’re not a buyer for this kind of product, and frankly me neither. But now we can have decent computing power in a thin, lighweight package, for a fairly low price, this is becoming interesting.
BTW, too bad there is no touch screen for any version, this could have disrupted the Core-M tablets market.
It will never stop being funny that they call it Air. Anyway, low perf, shiny and overpriced as expected.
The GPU is funny too, that’s a product aimed at people that have no idea what they are buying and think that it must be better if it has a GPU. A tiny outdated GPU on 28nm….
Note that the 12.5inch has SATA SSD and DDR3.It’s also thinner and the battery is slightly smaller.
Official specs http://www.mi.com/mibookair/specs/
It stopped being funny about 4 seconds after I read it. It’s not the first to copy Apple’s terminology and it won’t be the last.
Can someone say to Xiaomi to let Apple’s balls off? Seriously?
It’s not just Xiaomi they all do it, and so does Apple.
I’d like to disagree here. They do some really nice original stuff. And other comoanies rip Apple off all the time, but that still doesn’t mean it’s a cool thing to do. Where Xiaomi are right now, they need more originality if their dreams of going global are to be ever fulfilled.
In this specific case, they could’ve just given it a slightly more original name. They’d still be using a similar design, but by calling it the Mi Notebook Air (MiBook Air?), they’re saying they don’t really care.
I’m not defending Xiaomi here just pointing out its industry wide. Doesn’t make it right but it happens with virtually every company.
Yes they all do. Even Apple. But Xiaomi more than other.
There is a difference between disruptive business model and plagiarism business model. Lately it seemed that Xiaomi took some distance with Apple but boom: Here we are back again.
Xiaomi should take exemple on Asus who is doing lot of efforts to have their own design language.
Hello How can I buy it. Nowadays I am in Cambodia. I want to buy it
Guess you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks, the usual resellers will have it by then I believe.
We need it with a “ñ”
Totally agree with you. There’ll be though, a combination of two different keys to get it.
You can put the laptop in any language on windows ans buy keyboard stickers that make the change seemless !
Uh, previous leaks were (almost) totally false.
$750 for i5-6200U + GF 940MX + 8GB RAM + 128GB SSD + 40Wh is a pretty good bargain. But we can also buy Lenovo Y700 for the same price : i5-6800 + GF 960M + 8GB RAM + 500GB HDD + 60Wh.
The biggest differences being the weight (1.28Kg vs 2.6Kg) and the after sale support abroad.
The difference is much much bigger.
The Lenovo is a proper laptop while this is shiny and much lower perf.
You don’t quite list the CPU properly but it’s likely a quad core while this is dual core up to 2.7GHz. -less for the cheaper model.
GTX 960M is also more of a proper GPU. The 940 has 384 Maxwell cores, the 960 has 640 so two thirds more. With the 960 you can actually play some AAA games at 1080p.
The Xiaomi is for casual PC users that like shiny things and pay a premium for thin.It’s not for someone that needs a proper laptop and needs computing power.
If it fits your needs or not, that’s up to you.
You dont get it – this is more like an ultrabook – something to compete with mac air , Hp spectre , Dell XPS etc.
A very light and portable alternative which has a solid build
Fast ssd etc.
This will be perfect for people at college or ones having specific needs at a much lower price
You dont get it. Whatever Xiaomi does realjjj will complain about and make it sound like it is the worst product in the world. He is the biggest Xiaomi hater on this site.
Don’t try to use common sense with him, it doesn’t work.
It seems i was comparing a proper gaming laptop with an all-around lightweight laptop, my bad.
In the “all-around lightweight laptop” category, nothing’s sold under $1000, and specwise the 13″ model should cost at least $1400 if sold by Dell / HP / Apple /… so this Notebook Air is everything but overpriced.
It seems you’re not a buyer for this kind of product, and frankly me neither. But now we can have decent computing power in a thin, lighweight package, for a fairly low price, this is becoming interesting.
BTW, too bad there is no touch screen for any version, this could have disrupted the Core-M tablets market.
Haha agreed but everybody deserves a chance at retribution ))
The lower priced model is going to make an excellent Ubuntu Air!
Took the words right outta my mouth
For those who only write in English, sure… not for the rest.
For their first laptop they probably figured English was the safest bet. Would have been too costly to produce a keyboard for every country.
I was writing with all these types of laptops/tablets in mind. Some keyboards are shared by countries (although not necessarily the best display), for example, Spain and France (and I think Germany too). But they just don’t want.
The only company I know of that has a separate keyboard for every country is Asus. The rest I find are hit or miss.
It will never stop being funny that they call it Air. Anyway, low perf, shiny and overpriced as expected.
The GPU is funny too, that’s a product aimed at people that have no idea what they are buying and think that it must be better if it has a GPU. A tiny outdated GPU on 28nm….
Note that the 12.5inch has SATA SSD and DDR3.It’s also thinner and the battery is slightly smaller.
Official specs http://www.mi.com/mibookair/specs/
It stopped being funny about 4 seconds after I read it. It’s not the first to copy Apple’s terminology and it won’t be the last.
Can someone say to Xiaomi to let Apple’s balls off? Seriously?
It’s not just Xiaomi they all do it, and so does Apple.
I’d like to disagree here. They do some really nice original stuff. And other comoanies rip Apple off all the time, but that still doesn’t mean it’s a cool thing to do. Where Xiaomi are right now, they need more originality if their dreams of going global are to be ever fulfilled.
In this specific case, they could’ve just given it a slightly more original name. They’d still be using a similar design, but by calling it the Mi Notebook Air (MiBook Air?), they’re saying they don’t really care.
I’m not defending Xiaomi here just pointing out its industry wide. Doesn’t make it right but it happens with virtually every company.
Yes they all do. Even Apple. But Xiaomi more than other.
There is a difference between disruptive business model and plagiarism business model. Lately it seemed that Xiaomi took some distance with Apple but boom: Here we are back again.
Xiaomi should take exemple on Asus who is doing lot of efforts to have their own design language.
I know i might be the only one but i would love it if this was a Chromebook
as i cant stand windows as you would get access to to the whole playstore
You still can install Remix OS on this laptop and enjoy Android apps. IMHO the real problem is the lack of touch screen…
Instead of Remix you can also install either Chromium which is what ChromeOS is based off of or you can use any number of ChromeOS clones like Solus. That way you get the wealth of programs/apps that Ubuntu/Fedora (based on what distro you use) offer.
I can’t stand chrome os with everything running with internet and super small hd.
Hello How can I buy it. Nowadays I am in Cambodia. I want to buy it
Guess you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks, the usual resellers will have it by then I believe.
I would have prefer less pretty , more powerful and less expensive .
Brand new Lenovo Air 13, very serious challenger for Xiaomi’s first laptop :
http://www.lenovo.com.cn/activity/marketing/air/index.html
aaand its spoiled :p !
I can’t see why, care to explain?
same specs, same price, but Lenovo has a few decades of experience in building laptops, unlike Xiaomi. And they’ll probably deliver massive batches from start, when xiaomi will struggle to meet the demand.
“it’s surprising that the Mi Notebook Air does not have a glowing Mi logo on the back.”
ok ?? so how useful is that ?!
is it a VITAL FEATURE ?! will it impact the performance of Mi Notebook ??
plz stop nit-picking
Nitpicking? Do you understand sarcasm?
nope… too excited about dual cams !
you want them to rip-off apple like hell and ensue YET another lawsuit , fam ?
calm down dude, it was sarcasm. Are you a Xiaomi employee?
nah .. i guess i pissed of Yash alot … and possibly Andi too , guess those Brexit jokes weren’t such a good idea now :/
ahah
well, if we can’t make fun of this joke, we can’t make joke of anything at all! I am French, and I work with English dudes, and there is not one day without a joke on it, and it goes well. No worries.
ikr …
dunno why Andi hasn’t talked to me in months :/
@yash3339:disqus u pissed at me or something ?
A lot of people on the internet unfortunately dont.
THANKYOU XIAOMI ! THANKYOU SO MUCH FOR FINALLY RELEASE SUPER BUDGET LAPTOPS !
this is IMMENSE and MASSIVE in the PC WORLD !
while not visible atm , this’ll move others to better price their products. a strong subliminal message Xiaomi are sending out to the Laptop/PC segment out there !
The lower priced model is going to make an excellent Ubuntu Air!
Took the words right outta my mouth
For those who only write in English, sure… not for the rest.
For their first laptop they probably figured English was the safest bet. Would have been too costly to produce a keyboard for every country.
I was writing with all these types of laptops/tablets in mind. Some keyboards are shared by countries (although not necessarily the best display), for example, Spain and France (and I think Germany too). But they just don’t want.
The only company I know of that has a separate keyboard for every country is Asus. The rest I find are hit or miss.
well, as i writed before (while everyone was thinking that it is gonna come with i7 for 300$ in China), this is just too expencive to order, pay tax and have it without warrenty in any other then China.
“The Intel Core i5-6200U processor (up to 2.7GHz) along with the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics chip run the show on the first Xiaomi laptop (13.3-inch version), along with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD storage. All of this for an attractive 4,999 Yuan or $750!”
for 600$ i have bought Lenovo Yoga 2, with same spec., but older proccesor, as it was one and half year ago.
This is actually amazing. Depending on reseller price I might go for one to replace my aging Samsung Series 9 NP900X3G.
I know i might be the only one but i would love it if this was a Chromebook
as i cant stand windows as you would get access to to the whole playstore
You still can install Remix OS on this laptop and enjoy Android apps. IMHO the real problem is the lack of touch screen…
Instead of Remix you can also install either Chromium which is what ChromeOS is based off of or you can use any number of ChromeOS clones like Solus. That way you get the wealth of programs/apps that Ubuntu/Fedora (based on what distro you use) offer.
I can’t stand chrome os with everything running with internet and super small hd.
Fantastic price, I will wait for a month to see the usability reports but I intend to buy the bigger one with the GPU. And it needs to run Linux for me (but no doubt that will be possible). Fantastic too that the SSD is upgradeable. Even the smaller one is a fantastic laptop but 500USD (+ EU tax + shipping) will make it too expensive for a secondary laptop.
Considering you can get QHD tablets for 250 USD (but with Atom), it is clear that Intel is the bottleneck, else we would have had cheaper laptops a loooong time ago
Definitively a no-no for me. I hate to be the man in the meeting room with a Macbook Air wannabe. Some phones and laptops can make you loose a contract. Trust me.
Well it’s for personal use, I ain’t a salesperson so it doesn’t matter to me.
If what you say is true, you shouldn’t show up with an Apple laptop (the original in your words) in the meeting room either. Apple even has a loud Apple logo on the lid that lights up to show to people that the owner of the laptop is cool 🙂
This society reeks.
I read linux doesn’t run in certain socs and processors…. I don’t know which ones for sure, but some of them are in tablets and think laptops.
I would have prefer less pretty , more powerful and less expensive .
Brand new Lenovo Air 13, very serious challenger for Xiaomi’s first laptop :
http://www.lenovo.com.cn/activity/marketing/air/index.html
aaand its spoiled :p !
I can’t see why, care to explain?
same specs, same price, but Lenovo has a few decades of experience in building laptops, unlike Xiaomi. And they’ll probably deliver massive batches from start, when xiaomi will struggle to meet the demand.
“it’s surprising that the Mi Notebook Air does not have a glowing Mi logo on the back.”
ok ?? so how useful is that ?!
is it a VITAL FEATURE ?! will it impact the performance of Mi Notebook ??
plz stop nit-picking
Nitpicking? Do you understand sarcasm?
nope… too excited about dual cams !
you want them to rip-off apple like hell and ensue YET another lawsuit , fam ?
@yash3339:disqus u pissed at me or something ?
A lot of people on the internet unfortunately dont.
calm down dude, it was sarcasm. Are you a Xiaomi employee?
nah .. i guess i pissed of Yash alot … and possibly Andi too , guess those Brexit jokes weren’t such a good idea now :/
ahah
well, if we can’t make fun of this joke, we can’t make joke of anything at all! I am French, and I work with English dudes, and there is not one day without a joke on it, and it goes well. No worries.
ikr …
dunno why Andi hasn’t talked to me in months :/
THANKYOU XIAOMI ! THANKYOU SO MUCH FOR FINALLY RELEASE SUPER BUDGET LAPTOPS !
this is IMMENSE and MASSIVE in the PC WORLD !
while not visible atm , this’ll move others to better price their products. a strong subliminal message Xiaomi are sending out to the Laptop/PC segment out there !
well, as i writed before (while everyone was thinking that it is gonna come with i7 for 300$ in China), this is just too expencive to order, pay tax and have it without warrenty in any other then China.
“The Intel Core i5-6200U processor (up to 2.7GHz) along with the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics chip run the show on the first Xiaomi laptop (13.3-inch version), along with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD storage. All of this for an attractive 4,999 Yuan or $750!”
for 600$ i have bought Lenovo Yoga 2, with same spec., but older proccesor, as it was one and half year ago.
This is actually amazing. Depending on reseller price I might go for one to replace my aging Samsung Series 9 NP900X3G.
Will we able to use a non english keyboard?
You will be able to connect an external one but I doubt that is ok on a laptop. Lets hope maybe you can choose between global and UK standard keyboard type.
I don’t need a uk keyboard, I need one in my first language!!!! but that never happens…
NO, and that happens with ALL tablets/laptops. Welcome to my world… fucked because of the keyboard.
Fantastic price, I will wait for a month to see the usability reports but I intend to buy the bigger one with the GPU. And it needs to run Linux for me (but no doubt that will be possible). Fantastic too that the SSD is upgradeable. Even the smaller one is a fantastic laptop but 500USD (+ EU tax + shipping) will make it too expensive for a secondary laptop.
Considering you can get QHD tablets for 250 USD (but with Atom), it is clear that Intel is the bottleneck, else we would have had cheaper laptops a loooong time ago
Definitively a no-no for me. I hate to be the man in the meeting room with a Macbook Air wannabe. Some phones and laptops can make you loose a contract. Trust me.
Well it’s for personal use, I ain’t a salesperson so it doesn’t matter to me.
If what you say is true, you shouldn’t show up with an Apple laptop (the original in your words) in the meeting room either. Apple even has a loud Apple logo on the lid that lights up to show to people that the owner of the laptop is cool 🙂
I read linux doesn’t run in certain socs and processors…. I don’t know which ones for sure, but some of them are in tablets and thin laptops.
This society reeks.
Will we able to use a non english keyboard?
You will be able to connect an external one but I doubt that is ok on a laptop. Lets hope maybe you can choose between global and UK standard keyboard type.
NO, and that happens with ALL tablets/laptops. Welcome to my world… fucked because of the keyboard.
I don’t need a uk keyboard, I need one in my first language!!!! but that never happens…
That obsession with thinness… repulsive
That obsession with thinness… repulsive
I just want it asap!
I just want it asap!