Our Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air arrived today, it’s the 12.5″ version. This one has an Intel Skylake Core M3-6Y30, 4GB of 1866Mhz dual channel RAM, 128GB Samsung SATA3 SSD and a spare slot to add another even. And because I’m impatient, I had this sent out with Windows 10 Chinese only, knowing all too well it will not allow me to change it over to English. But now there is an option to have English Windows 10 installed (but no valid key) and later being a proper fully licensed English version in the works coming asap.
I got this from Gearbest for $619 which is one of better prices but not as good as homeland China of $530. But again me being impatient I ordered DHL shipping and they had a field day on me with duty and taxes. If you’re in Europe, use the free or cheaper mail option to save on taxes. But it will take a while to arrive.
So here is the unboxing video with a more in-depth look at a few things like sound and even doing a clean Windows 10 install.
Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air video index:
02:51 – Just unbox it already!
04:27 – Weight
04:35 – Ports
06:31 – First boot
07:15 – Screen
07:48 – Keyboard and trackpad
08:34 – Speaker test
09:16 – Backlit keys
10:47 – Device manager, OS & free space
12:07 – Clean Windows 10 install & SSD benchmark
13:08 – First impressions
Further details on Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air:
- My clean install went perfectly, Windows update had all the drivers. No need for a drivers dump. (But I did make one just in case)
- Nice audio, loudspeakers. But they did distort a little with some of the bass tracks
- The 128GB SSD is a Samsung unit and my second test I go 540 MB/s reads and 490 MB/s writes. Which is more like it.
- Battery life looks to be the major con. Like all Core M3’s around 5-6 hours max at 25% brightness. Doing something demanding like multitasking and lots of Chrome tabs around 4 1/2 hours.
- The screen is really nice for a 1080p unit. Sharp, great blacks, contrast, and colors. Xiaomi selected very a nice panel. Shame there is no touch support.
- The type-c port is a USB 3.1 one, data, charging and display out work just fine at the same time.
- The USB 3 port runs my 1TB external hard drive at USB 3 speeds.
- Benchmarks are looks very good.
- Thermals also look to max at 70 degrees.
- The UEFI bios is completely locked down. No tweaking here…
I have to say I’m really impressed so far with the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air, this is a very nice unit. It’s without a doubt a premium device. Xiaomi has done a great job, now I’m more than ever interested in also review the 13.3″ more powerful Core i5 6200U & Nvidia 945MX version. If you have any questions feel free to ask below, better here than YouTube.