We know Apple isn’t too keen about the Chinese knockoff Apple retail stores selling real Apple products, however this knockoff unibody MacBook Air is getting painfully close to the real thing. Well, at least in terms of first impressions of the design, that is. MIC Gadget just posted a lengthy review of this $499 MacBook Air clone running Windows, which might for a second fool some into thinking it’s a genuine Apple product, but quickly shows its shortcomings upon further inspection.
Known as the AirBook, it doesn’t actually feature an aluminum construction, rather a “silver plastic unibody” with matte finish. MIC Gadget notes the faux aluminium finish is even used on the plastic interior. It comes with a 13-inch LED backlit, glossy display (1366 x 768) and measures 13.1 inches by 8.83 inches. As for thickness, the AirBook goes from 0.2 inches at its thinnest to 0.75 inches on the other end. Compare that to the 13-inch MacBook Air’s 0.11-0.68 inch height.
It obviously doesn’t have near the fit and finish of an actual MacBook Air, which is most notable looking at shots of the flimsy keyboard and display. You will, however, find a SD card slot, USB 2.0, mini-HDMI, headphone/mic jack, and a “MagSafe-like” power connector. You can check out the full review if you’re interested in seeing how the AirBook’s 1.8GHz Atom dual core processor and 4GB of RAM performed in MIC Gadget’s tests. Not so surprisingly, the genuine MacBook Air significantly outperformed the AirBook in every test. Check out the video below showing off the “design” of the AirBook:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xb1eDOesRpI]
