Here is a very quick look at the internals of the Mi Notebook 13.3″ version. You’ll see the single heat transfer pipe which has to deal with the Core i5 6200U and the Nvidia 940MX, Xiaomi should have at least used twin heat pipes I feel to help transfer more heat. After all, this kind of power in a 14mm slim notebook is asking a lot with only one pipe. Sure it has two fans which is great. But louder too when gaming. And if you saw my review, it certainly gets hot when you game on it. Even if it wasn’t designed as a gamer, people will still do it. And it can game, 40-50 fps GTV V with low settings at its native 1080p. Now that isn’t bad considering it’s only a 1GB 940MX which is low end.
So there is also a spare SSD bay, this is where you can install an additional Sata3 SSD. It has to be Sata3, PCIe or NVMe doesn’t work there only one 4 x PCIe lane is supported on the Core i5 6200U. Otherwise, two PCIe’s would mean running the slots at half the bandwidth. My NVMe Samsung 950 Pro worked just fine, 1800mb/s and 980 writes. Faster than the stock Samsung SM951 256GB, which has sequential writes at 300mb/s max.
There is another M.2 slot, 22 x 42 one, labeled WWLAN1. As expected my 256GB M.2 2242 SSD didn’t work, seems only wireless and modems work here. So maybe there was or is a plan to release a Mi Notebook 13.3 4G version? You could use another wireless can, but I find the included Intel Wireless AC one works perfect, so no need.
Now to open it is just like the 12.5″ version. 8 x T5 Torx there is one under the middle rear rubber foot. And it just pulls off the rear alloy cover. Not hard to get into. The Mi Notebook Air 13 is current priced @ $924 for the English version.
