Acer Chromebook 14 review

Acer has a good track record with Chromebooks, so the arrival of a new, large screen model is an intriguing prospect. We take the Acer Chromebook 14 for a test drive to see how the new boy shapes up. Acer Chromebook 14 review.

PRICE WHEN REVIEWED

£199.99

ACER CHROMEBOOK 14 REVIEW

Large displays are an uncommon sight on Chromebooks. The vast majority of models available tend to feature an 11.6in screen that makes them a good option for everyday use while keeping them portable. Acer knows this, as its very popular R11 Chromebook proves. But those who desire a bit more real estate for their eyes could well be tempted by Acer's new offering: the Chromebook 14. So, does it have the performance to match its size and take on the perennial favourites like the Toshiba Chromebook 2 or Dell's Chromebook 11? We take a look

ACER CHROMEBOOK 14 REVIEW: UK PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

Acer offers two variants of the Chromebook 14: the one we're reviewing here costs an affordable £199, while upgrading to a full HD display, and doubling the RAM and storage, will take the price to £279.99. If you're shopping for a 14-inch screen in particular then the only other real alternative is the HP Chromebook 14 which can be picked up on Amazon for around £220, or its business suited brethren the HP Chromebook 14 G4, which matches the high end Acer's appointments and can be ordered directly from HP for £307.20.

If you don't mind stepping down a little in size then there are a range of good options at the 13-inch level. One of the best devices around, if you can find one, is the Toshiba Chromebook 2 which usually goes for around £270, HP's imminent Chromebook 13 is a pricier option that does look very cool, while the Asus C300M can still be picked for around the £200 mark at Currys/PC World

ACER CHROMEBOOK 14 REVIEW: DESIGN

If truth be told, Chromebook designs can be a bit on the basic side. Unless you go for the gorgeous but hilariously priced Google Pixel, then you're most likely looking at a mainly plastic chassis with a sparse amount of ports and connections. This is absolutely fine, as Chromebooks are simple beasts and this is one of the things that makes them so appealing.

It's a pleasant surprise then to take the Acer out of its box and find what seems to be a brushed aluminium lid. Scanning through the specs reveals that the chassis is listed as all-metal, with Acer describing it as an aluminium alloy. The effect is a premium looking device with gently rounded edges, and tapered sides that give the illusion of a wedge shaped construction. Yes, it does look like a MacBook Air.  

Strangely, it doesn't feel like one. The metal is smooth and smart but does have an air of plastic about it. We're not sure exactly why. Maybe it's very thin? But the solidity and cool to the touch aspect of our office MacBook Air is missing from this device. This is no surprise as it costs about a quarter of the price of the Apple laptop, so that's not really something to hold against it, and for the most part the Acer is a good looking machine that seems a cut above many of its rivals. 

With dimensions of 340 x 236 x 17mm the device is reasonably compact and slim, with the 3.5lb weight making it something that wouldn't kill your shoulders after a day of carrying it in your backpack.

The extra size of the body over its 11.6-inch rivals means there's room for a large trackpad. We're big fans of Chromebook trackpads in general, as their multi-touch support and smooth operation are always excellent, and this example doesn't blot the copybook in any way.

The keyboard is another area of strength across the Chromebook range, and while the Acer layout is the standard, spacious one we've grown to expect, the key response does feel a little shallow at times, making it less precise than we'd like. It's not bad, but it's not quite up to the high standards we've seen in other Chromebooks. 

Of course the 14in display is the big selling point of this device, so it's a shame that the panel itself is little underwhelming. Running at a resolution of 1366 x 768 is the norm on Chromebooks, but the larger display makes this lack of pixel density more telling.

Text is slightly jagged around the edges, and in this age of HD smartphones and tablets this is less acceptable than it would have been only a year or two ago. That's not to say it's a deal-breaker by any means, and the aforementioned MacBook Air suffers from the same issue, but it's worth mentioning.

A far more annoying problem is the viewing angles afforded by the display. Those who have used budget PCs before will know that you often have to tilt the screen several times until you find the optimum setting that doesn't wash out the colours or make the display too dark. This was a constant fiddle we had with the Acer Chromebook 14, especially when watching video content online.

Again, it's not something that can't be lived with, and once you do find the right angle for the display it's bright, has reasonable colours, and the bigger size is definitely a bonus when looking at busy websites, social media or YouTube. Plus the twin speakers under the chassis offer a decent amount of volume and tonal range.

Naturally there's a headphone socket on the side of the machine if you prefer to keep your audio personal, and this is accompanied by two USB 3 ports, a HDMI output, and a security lock. Oddly there's no SD card reader, which is disappointing as it's a standard port on many Chromebooks, even smaller models. Still, the 100GB of free Google Drive storage offered with the Acer will soften the blow, and make up for the 16GB of internal storage. 

A HD webcam with a wide field of view is a nice touch, allowing groups of friends to get in the shot a bit easier, and on the whole it performs well for video calls using Google's Hangouts app.

ACER CHROMEBOOK 14 REVIEW: PERFORMANCE

Chromebooks are designed for general activities such as web browsing, social media, and email, so if your demands fall into this camp then the Acer will be a decent servant.

The Intel Celeron 1.6Ghz N3060 SoC may not be the fastest chip out there, but it can handle basic computing quite well. Including 2GB of RAM, rather than the 4GB found in a number of other Chromebooks, feels like a mistake though, and contributes to periodic slowness on the device.

Websites, even image heavy ones, load in quickly, and videos stream without any hiccups, but if you start to multitask it can become choppy. Navigating a website and clicking on links, will produce a stutter in any video or audio running in the background. It's not tragic, but it's there and can get irksome if you like to do more than one thing at a time. Gaming is also a challenge for the system, and probably best avoided, although this is often true with Chromebooks. 

Running the Acer Chromebook 14 through the standard benchmark tests gave us scores of 638.50 in Sunspider, 50.335 in Jetstream, 101.09 in Basemark 3.0, 3679.9 in Kraken, and 8576 in Google's Octane. This confirms our suspicions that the Acer is a decent performer, held back somewhat by the 2GB of RAM. With this in mind we'd strongly recommend moving up to the £279.99 version that comes with 4GB as standard. 

One area where the Acer excels is that of battery life. In our standard HD movie loop test the device notched up an impressive 11 hours and 13 minutes, which is worthy of praise. It certainly means that the Acer would get you through a full working day without needing to hunt out a power socket.

ACER CHROMEBOOK 14 REVIEW: SOFTWARE

Chromebooks run on Google's ChromeOS, not Windows or Apple's OSX, so there are a few things that you'll need to adjust to if you head down this route. Firstly there are some applications that simply will not run on a Chromebook. iTunes is one, Adobe Photoshop is another, and of course none of the PC games will be making the journey over to this platform.

For all of these though there are working alternatives, such as Google Play Music, Spotify, a number of simple photo editors, and a wealth of other free apps that make Chromebooks a real, viable option for people who want a simple and reliable computer for general computing duties.

Google's office suite - Docs, Sheets, Slides, and others - offers a usable alternative to Microsoft's Office, although you can still access the online version of the latter on a Chromebook. The announcement recently that Android apps will now run on ChromeOS opens up the possibilities even further, and we think the platform is in very good shape right now.

In use ChromeOS is in essence a browser, just like Chrome on Windows or OSX, but with some useful shortcuts and multitouch gestures that make navigating the basic OS a fluid experience.

Viruses are not a concern, and if you were looking to buy a computer for a relative or child who isn't particularly technically advanced then we'd recommend Chromebooks as a great place to start. The real advantage is that if they move onto a new machine after a while all they have to do is log in with their Goolge ID and everything on will appear magically and be in exactly the same as it was on the previous device.

OUR VERDICT

There's a lot to like about the Acer, including it's smart design, larger screen size, and impressively long battery life. These are offset by a few less than desirable components. The display is adequate at best, the keyboard is also average, and performance feels hampered by the low memory allocation. It's a solid machine, but the compromises may be too much for some. Stretch to the £279.99 version if you can and we think you'll be much happier.

Acer Swift 7 review

Acer has made an ultra-thin laptop that’s less than a centimetre thick yet squeezed in a Core m7 processor. A great start, but how does this laptop do elsewhere? We went hands-on in Berlin - read our Acer Swift 7 review.

PRICE WHEN REVIEWED

€1,299

ACER SWIFT 7 REVIEW: HANDS-ON WITH WORLD'S THINNEST LAPTOP

Technology companies love a bit of one-upmanship. At IFA 2016 Acer has announced the Swift 7, the world’s thinnest laptop. When closed, its thickest edge measures 9.98mm, which makes it the first laptop to be under 1cm thick. A fine achievement, but does it warrant you one? We went hands-on - read our Acer Swift 7 review. 

ACER SWIFT 7 REVIEW: UK PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

Acer has priced the European release of the Swift 7 at €1,299, which at the time of writing is £1,090. This makes it more expensive than Apple’s thin as a pancake £1,049 MacBook, so Acer is firmly in premium territory. Then again, the Swift 7 has an Intel Core m7 processor whereas that MacBook at that price has only an m3.

The exact UK price and release date for the Swift 7 are to be confirmed but it’ll be out at some point in October 2016.

ACER SWIFT 7 REVIEW: DESIGN AND BUILD 

It’s thin. Really, really thin. While Acer has gone all-out with the ‘world’s thinnest’ marketing line, you can’t ignore the fact this laptop is a design marvel. 9.98mm at its thickets point when closes means the Swift 7 will slide into a bag like a magazine. It’s got a 13.3in screen with Gorilla Glass, which is great but unusual for a laptop, along with a clever hinge design that displays two performance indicator lights when open or closed. It’s actually a shame that this aspect of the design isn’t utilised a bit better to give the user more information – it’s just two tiny lights.

The lid is a metallic black while the base is a metallic gold. This is currently the only colour option, and follows the lead of Apple and HP (with its Spectre ultrabook) by introducing gold into its premium range of laptops. That gold base houses a full size keyboard which at first glance looks like the keys might be too far apart. Happily, we spent a fair few minutes typing on the Swift 7 and there are no issues. The keys have great travel and their quality reinforces the high-end nature of the product.

The Swift 7 also has a huge trackpad, at 72mm to be precise. We’re not sure why it’s so huge, but it means navigation through Windows 10 is an absolute breeze so we can’t complain. Overall we can’t really fault the design, though if compared to other ultrabooks like Dell’s XPS 13, the bezel around the screen is quite wide, and it doesn’t feel as disappear-in-your-bag portable as the MacBook, but that’s a slightly unfair comparison given Apple’s laptop has a smaller 12in screen.

If you like the Acer Swift 7’s design at first sight, then none of this will matter anyway – and it is gorgeous. 

ACER SWIFT 7 REVIEW: FEATURES AND SPECS

The Swift 7 has a 13.3in full HD IPS display that reproduces colours very well, and pages are readable even on the lowest brightness setting. As we mentioned previously, it has a Core m7 processor, Intel’s current highest spec Core m chip. That’s paired with 8GB RAM and a 256GB solid state drive. The combination should prove very effective, and we are looking forward to putting it through its paces in a full review soon. 

Acer has also taken the USB-C jump, giving the Swift 7 two of the ports for charging, data transfer and external display connections. There are no other ports besides a headphone jack.

ACER SWIFT 7 REVIEW: SOFTWARE 

In the least surprising news, the Swift 7 runs Windows 10. Windows 10 is really good, so no need to worry on this front.

OUR VERDICT

After the initial good impressions of this laptop’s exquisite design, we feel it can live up to its billing. The fact the Swift 7 has a Core m7 at the price point works in its favour, and it has the potential to fall into the laps of business users and consumers alike. We reckon the full dimensions could be a little smaller but that is nit-picking. Acer has done superbly to create such elegant hardware and it stands up well next to its rivals.

13-inch MacBook Air (early 2015) review

Our 13-inch MacBook Air (early 2015) review discusses the changes Apple has made to its portable laptop line-up (such as enhanced specs and performance) and the things Apple has decided to keep the same (such as physical design). We'll also cover UK pricing and availability, and briefly consider whether this strikes us a value-for-money upgrade. Now we have spent some time with review samples, we have expanded our original preview into a full review and verdict.

Update: Since we wrote this review, Apple updated the 13-inch MacBook Air so it now has 8GB of RAM as standard

Who has iPhone 7 in stock? Find out where to order an iPhone 7 today. .

Here's the original review:

Apple's MacBook line of laptops has been updated. As well as introducing an entirely new model - the super-slimline 12-inch MacBook - Apple has added significant upgrades to its 13-inch MacBook Pro (but not the 15-inch Pro: that's unchanged) and to both the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs. In this review we're looking at the updated 13-inch MacBook Air; you can read our review of the 2015 11in MacBook Air here.

(Month's later, Apple has now updated the 15in MacBook Pro, read our review of the 2015 15in MacBook Pro here and our New 2015 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display specs and UK pricing story)

Read more Apple MacBook laptop reviews and read our Which Mac Buying Guide

Plus why not read our MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro comparison review and read our comparison review of the MacBook Air and the MacBook.

13-INCH MACBOOK AIR (EARLY 2015) REVIEW: INTRODUCTION

Little has changed in the design of the Apple MacBook Air, launched in its current form in late 2010 with its sharper wedge-shaped unibody case, and now refreshed into its new Early 2015 form this spring.

There are still two screen sizes from which to choose, 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch, and following the example set by the last generation, the MacBook Air specification in every other aspect is identical between models.

But wait, is it really? In fact this time around there is an important internal difference that puts clear space between the two sizes of Air models in performance terms. In short, the 13-inch notebook has a flash drive that is three times faster than the best the Windows world can deliver. The 11-inch meanwhile remains only 50 percent faster than Windows laptops, more on this below.

Let's focus first on where they overlap. All MacBook Air notebooks are based on the same platform taking identical processor, graphics, memory and wireless adaptors. They also share the same port and connector layout, namely two USB 3.0, one each side; MagSafe 2 power connector; 3.5 mm headset jack; and SDXC card slot.

In addition, all MacBook Air (Early 2015) models now feature Thunderbolt 2, a single port here specified to 20 Gb/s in place of the original standard’s 2x 10 Gb/s.

The processor du jour is from the fifth-generation of the Intel Core i5 series – codenamed Broadwell – which comprises what the chip maker calls a ‘tick’ update. That is, a shrink of the microarchitecture from the 22 nm of the preceding Haswell and Ivy Bridge series, to the new record-breaking die size of 14 nm.

As standard 2015’s MacBook Air series takes a 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5-5250U dual-core processor, able to automatically overclock to 2.7 GHz on demand through Intel Turbo Boost technology. Optionally you can configure any model with a 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7-5650U (3.2 GHz Turbo) dual-core processor, for an additional £130. More on the processor below.

Memory is the same as last season, with 4 GB DDR3 RAM clocked at 1600 MHz, configurable at time of purchase only to 8 GB, for an extra £80. Note that Apple has maintained the same low-power memory chips, even though Broadwell processors can take advantage of slightly faster 1867 MHz memory – an opportunity that has already been taken with the Early 2015 refresh of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. We would guess the 1600 MHz memory was preserved for the Air for reasons of budget, both financial and battery economy.

13-INCH MACBOOK AIR (EARLY 2015) REVIEW: STORAGE

When it comes to storage, we find a remarkable breakthrough in storage technology. The MacBook Air was the first mainstream notebook computer to take advantage of a more direct PCI Express attachment for its solid-state flash drive with the Mid-2013 model; the MacBook Pro with Retina display didn’t catch up until its refresh later that year in October 2013.

That first PCIe-attached flash drives broke records for their incredible sequential transfer speeds, no longer held back by the constriction of the ageing Serial ATA Revision 3.0 interface. PCIe-attached flash drives allowed speeds to jump from around 500 MB/s under SATA to greater than 750 MB/s. That 50 percent improvement was the biggest lift in storage performance since the hard disk became sidelined in favour of solid-state storage.

For the 13-inch MacBook Air, Apple has provided the same upgrade as the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, by doubling the number of PCIe data lanes from two to four. In our tests this allowed a two-fold increase in maximum sequential read speed over the last version, with a top speed now exceeding 1500 MB/s.

For small file transfers, we measured 4 kB random reads and writes at 36 and 87 MB/s; and using data sized from 4 kB to 1024 kB we saw incredibly high averaged figures of 450 and 503 MB/s.

Highest sequential write speeds approached 700 MB/s, averaging 685 MB/s for 2-10 MB data, while sequential read speeds averaged 1512 MB/s.

13-INCH MACBOOK AIR (EARLY 2015) REVIEW: PROCESSOR PERFORMANCE & SPEED

The speed of the processor in the MacBook Air range (all MacBook Airs share the same processor as standard) has been bumped from 1.4 to 1.6GHz: not a huge improvement, but potentially more significant than the MacBook Pro's increase from 2.4 to 2.6GHz because in lower-specced machines processing power is more likely to become the performance bottleneck. As in the new Pro, these are Intel's new fifth-gen Broadwell chips so they should be more power-efficient too - although it's hard to get too excited about Apple managing to keep battery life at the same (admittedly excellent) level rather than improving it.

We tested the standard issue MacBook Air with its 1.6 GHz Core i5 processor. As an indication of raw processor and memory speed, the Geekbench 3 benchmark test scored the 13-inch MacBook Air with 2912 points in single-core mode, and 5821 points multi-core. That puts it 4.9 and 7.8 percent faster than the outgoing Mid-2014 model with its 1.4 GHz Haswell-generation processor (2777 and 5400 points).

In Cinebench 11.5 the new Air scored 1.18 and 2.80 points for single- and multi-core mode operation, putting it 4.4 and 8.9 percent ahead of 2014’s standard MacBook Air. But it was Cinebench 15 that showed a higher return on the Broadwell dividend, moving from 97 to 110 points single-core; and from 239 to 260 points for both cores. That’s a 13.4 and 8.8 percent improvements respectively for the two modes of operation.

Any increase in performance is likely from the small uplift in processor clock frequency though, rather than optimisations to the processor pipeline, for instance, as we’d experience in a ‘tock’ update in Intel’s leapfrogging design cycle.

In fact, with the change from 1.4 to 1.6 GHz in baseline processor clock, we have a 14.3 percent increase in cycles per second – but benchmark score increases ranged only from 4.4 to 13.4 percent. Remember, the process shrink of Broadwell is more about reducing wasted heat by increasing processor efficiency.

13-INCH MACBOOK AIR (EARLY 2015) REVIEW: GRAPHICS

This year’s MacBook Air gains an Intel HD Graphics 6000 integrated GPU, replacing last year's HD Graphics 5000. The stronger graphics setup lead us to expect this year's Airs to be better gaming machines, indeed, according to iFixit's calculations, we expected 20 to 25 percent better gaming performance than the Intel HD Graphics 5000. Now we have spent some time with a review sample we are able to confirm our own findings - it wasn't as impressive as we had hoped.

The Intel HD Graphics 6000 in the 2015 MacBook Air is an integrated GPU, piggybacked on the Core i5 -5250U main processor. This has a 50 percent higher baseline clock speed (300 MHz versus the 200 MHz of HD Graphics 5000); and a fractionally lower peak clock of 950 MHz, when compared to the 1000 GHz of the last chip. Execution units have also been increased in the ‘6000 graphics, up to 48 from last year’s 40.

As it turns out, we didn’t see much difference in graphics performance from the previous model, when running our usual Mac action game tests. Using the Batman: Arkham City benchmark test, both last year’s and the new 2015 MacBook Air averaged 29 frames per second (1280 x 800, Medium detail); and 24 fps when set to High detail.

In the Tomb Raider 2013 game, at the same resolution and with Normal detail selected, the 2014 Air averaged 22 fps while the 2015 Air played at 21 fps. Moving up to the laptop’s native resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels, at Normal detail the new MacBook Air averaged 18 fps against 19 fps for last year’s model.

So not only is there no net improvement apparent here with the new graphics chipset, but we see a tiny loss in gaming performance. It’s possible that the performance shortfall in the Early 2015 model may be a result of the different operating system – 10.10 Yosemite now against last year’s better optimised 10.9 Mavericks. Or Apple may be applying new GPU power-saving schemes to reduce heat and battery drain.

Turning to other graphics benchmarks, Unigine Heaven returned effectively the same results between machines (19.3 fps for 2014; 19.9 fps for 2015, at 1280 x 800, Medium), while the OpenGL tests in Cinebench did show a small benefit for the new MacBook Air. In Cinebench 11.5, framerate moved up from 23.5 to 25.8 fps, while Cinebench 15 returned the only appreciable change in framerate, a notable jump from 18.8 fps to 26.3 fps.

13-INCH MACBOOK AIR (EARLY 2015) REVIEW: DISPLAY/SCREEN

The Airs still aren't Retina-class: like the mid-2014 13-inch MacBook Air, the early-2015 Air has a 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with a resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels and a pixel density of roughly 128ppi (pixels per inch).

That's pretty low on the sharpness scale by today's standards (for comparison, the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro has a pixel density of 227ppi), and those who are used to Retina or better displays may find the Air a touch fuzzy, although it certainly isn't a bad screen. We do think Apple will add a Retina display option to the Air line-up at some point in the near future, but we don't get that upgrade here.

Here's what you need to know about the 13in display on the 2015 MacBook Air:

The 13.3-inch LCD screen of the MacBook Air has the same core specification listed as the last few models – a 1440 x 900 pixel display with gloss surface, based on twisted-nematic (TN) technology.

This type of screen has poor off-axis viewability and restricted colour gamut, but is chosen for its low cost and reduced power requirement when compared to the higher-performance IPS technology used on iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro with Retina display.

We didn’t have the Mid-2014 model of MacBook Air to compare alongside to spot any subjective visual differences, but from memory the new Air screen did not look conspicuously any better or worse.

We ran some basic tests to see if its lab measurements had changed, and discovered a reduced contrast ratio of 400:1, compared to the decent 680:1 contrast ratio that we measured for the Mid-2014 version of the 13-inch MacBook Air.

Colour gamut was also reported with a lower figure, now 41 percent sRGB and 31 percent AdobeRGB, where last year’s Air measured at 63 and 47 percent respectively. Colour accuracy was reported as better though, with an average Delta E figure of 5.88 that’s below the 8.39 Delta E of last year’s model.

The differences could be explained by the use of a display from a different manufacturer, rather than a general decline in component quality – like most manufacturers, Apple will source from different OEM suppliers, each of whose product may differ slightly in specification and performance. This particular model featured a LP133WP1-TJA7 display made by LG, although we don’t have on file the type used in the Mid-2014 sample we last tested.

13-INCH MACBOOK AIR (EARLY 2015) REVIEW: BATTERY LIFE

Battery economy is where the new 14 nm-based processor should really pay its way, although our video rundown test did showed little difference here.

Our cross-platform laptop battery test uses a looped MPEG-4 film, played over Wi-Fi from a NAS drive, with screen set to 120 cd/m^2. The Mid-2014 MacBook Air survived for 12 hr 38 min in this test, but the Early 2015 counterpart played for 12 hr 49 min.

Exceeding 12 hours remains a laudable achievement, a battery runtime that comfortably exceeds almost every notebook computer on sale today, although we were anticipating even more – especially after the nearly doubling of battery life we experienced with the Broadwell-powered MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)

13-INCH MACBOOK AIR (EARLY 2015) REVIEW: DESIGN

It would be easy to dismiss the MacBook Air update because of the lack of change in this most visible of departments. The early-2015 Air has the same chassis as the previous generation, with the same (extremely high) build quality and the same (stunning) looks.

The Air doesn't even get the one physical change we got in the updated 13-inch Pro, the Force Touch haptic touchpad. The keyboard is unchanged too. (The Air doesn't get the new butterfly-mechanism keys that appear in the new 12-inch MacBook, although it's too early to say whether that's something to mourn or celebrate; some early reviewers have complained about a lack of tactile feedback on the butterfly keys, saying it's almost like using a touchscreen.)

OUR VERDICT

After some extensive testing, we found the MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) to be little different overall to the 2014 model. The Thunderbolt 2 update will prove useful for connecting to high-resolution UHD displays, and a few percent of added processor power is never unwelcome. But hoped-for improvements in graphics performance and battery longevity did not arise in our testing, in spite of a new Intel processor which was expected to shepherd benefits in both areas. Launched at the same price as last year’s model it still deserves attention as one of the finest ultraportable laptops available - doubly so now that its flash-drive speed has shot up another 100 percent - and it will remain the more affordable option in lightweight notebooks when the new MacBook launches this month.