Testing the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air
13.8.2019
Translation: Patrik Stainbrook
Do you enjoy small packages at a high sheen? Then the 13.3-inch Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air could be perfect for you. Its sleek design and more than impressive tech specs will be sure to impressive.
Be it smartphones, e-scooters or even notebooks – the Chinese manufacturer isn't pulling any punches, offering high-quality hardware at fair prices. Will the Mi Notebook Air continue this legacy? Read on and find out.
All the specifications:
- Intel Core i5-8250U
- Nvidia GeForce MX150 2 GB
- 8 GB of RAM (SanMax M471A1K43BB1, SO-DIMM, DDR4-2400, 1 x 8 GB)
- 256 GB SSD (Samsung MZVLW256HEHP-00000, M.2 PCIe 3 x4)
- 13.3" Full-HD IPS-Display (mirror finish)
- US keyboard layout
- Touchpad with integrated fingerprint scanner
- Loudspeaker, microphone and front camera (1 megapixel)
- 4-cell, 40 Wh lithium polymer battery
- Windows 10 Home
A timeless and sleek design with few yet simple ports
The notebook's design appears minimalistic and without frills. There isn't even a logo on the front. What makes this dark-grey surface even better: after closing it far enough, the cover slides down softly, similar to a toilet seat. The bare-bones design is more Razer or Apple's thing, even though their logos do tend to get in the way. The Mi Notebook Air weighs in at 1.3 kg. It's 31 cm wide, 21.1 cm long and 1.5 cm high. The perfect size for everyday use.
The left side of the notebook houses one HDMI and one type A USB 3.0 port with an audio jack for microphones and headphones. The right side contains a USB-C 3.1 attachment which doubles as the DC port as well as a second type A USB 3.0 slot.
The darkest of displays
The 13.3-inch ISP-enabled display projects at 1920 x 1080. The edges measure 1.2 cm at the top, 2.2 cm at the bottom and 8 mm on either side. Something I personally enjoy is the highly reflective surface. This does improve colour quality, but only if your workspace is free of bright mirroring lights. Forget about working under direct sunlight. But even without all this mirror finish nonsense it couldn't cut it outside. This is what you'll see in the brightness test.
I inspect the light intensity or illumination, the colour space coverage and the panel's contrast using the x-rite i1Display Pro colour scaling system.
It manages an average of 180 cd/m². Bad. On top of that, the light intensity dips in the bottom right corner. Still, you don't really notice it when working or watching movies. I think the colours are vibrant – in darkened rooms, you can even use this thing in cinema mode. However, the colour display isn't meant for any professional uses. When it comes to colour space coverage, I get 79.1% with sRGB, 57.8% with Adobe RGB and 64.5% with DCI P3. On the flipside, the angle stability is top-notch – don't attach anything to it. The display's static contrast comes in at 703:1, the dynamic at 2054:1.
A neat keyboard and touchpad with a fingerprint sensor
I'm afraid this notebook is only available in a US layout. The chicklet keys have a 1.3 mm key stroke. Typing is very silent with a precise trigger point and is pleasantly springy. Writing on this keyboard is very comfortable. On top of that it possesses one-tone backlighting.
The glass touchpad is nicely sized at 110 x 67 mm. It's precise even with the quickest fingers and supports gesture controls with multiple fingers. It contains an integrated fingerprint sensor at the top right which always worked on the first try in my case.
Bad loudspeakers... what else is new?
Both loudspeakers are on the bottom of the laptop. The sound isn't very satisfying, as with most notebooks. The highs are way too dominant, mids are barely audible and bass simply doesn't exist. Get your music fix elsewhere.
Battery performance: Youtube autoplay and the office/stress test
I open up Youtube, begin autoplay and set the display's brightness in the middle. Automatic shutdown occurred after 5 hours and 52 minutes. A modest result. In this contest, the HP Spectre x360 remains unbeaten at 8 hours and 47 minutes.
I also perform a stress test, just to bring all the hardware to its limits. To achieve this, I load up HeavyLoad and FurMark and turn brightness to the max. At full blast, the battery taps out around 1 hour and 10 minutes.
When performing office tasks, it lasts 7 and a half hours without charging. So bring a cable with you for your next full office day.
CPU
The Intel Core i5-8250U 64-bit quad-core x86 microprocessor was introduced in mid-2017, being used among others in the Microsofts Surface Laptop 2 (in German). It's based on improved Kaby Lake micro-architecture, produced using the advanced second generation 14 nm+ process. It possesses a 1.6 GHz refresh rate and a 15 W TDP. The turbo boost manages to reach 3.4 GHz.
The chip also contains Intel UHD Graphics 620 at 300 MHz, revealing a maximal dynamic frequency of 1.15 GHz.
Graphics card
The Nvidia GeForce MX150, a true beginner GPU for mobile users, is based on a GP108 chip with Pascal architecture. The version built into this notebook features 2 GB of GDDR5 video RAM. It's manufactured using the 14 nm process and possesses a 937 MHz frequency. This cards TDP is reportedly under 10 Watts. Its performance is very modest, depending on your specific cooling system and case among other variables.
Performance: Cinebench R15 and R20
Cinebench by Maxon allows you to test your processor when rendering 4D cinema content. A new version of this popular benchmark was recently released. To better compare with previous reviews, I ran both the new and old version.
This is how the Xiaomi notebook fares under Cinebench R15:
560 points in the multi-core benchmark is a good result for an office laptop. This places it on a same level as the Asus ZenBook 14 (569 points), easily passing other notebooks with similar form factors, such as the Lenovo Yoga S940-14IWL (533) or the Acer TravelMate X3 (543 points).
Depending on what you're doing, graphical output is up 40 per cent compared with the SoC-integrated UHD Graphics 620. A high of 78.15 FPS is similar to the Asus Zenbook 14 (81.04 FPS), which also uses the Nvidia GeForce MX150.
Now, what about Cinebench R20?
Performance: Geekbench 4
Geekbench 4 is a platform-crossing benchmark. It runs on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android and iOS. In its current patch, 4000 points represent an Intel Core i7-6600U at 2.60 GHz. Next to simulated real scenarios to the CPUs (single- and multi-core), Geekbench can also detect your GPU performance when it comes to image processing and artificial recognition. Thanks to the Geekbench-Browser, you can compare results with other systems.
The Xiaomi notebook's results:
We can again compare our result (41753 points) with the Asus ZenBook 14 (41825 points). However, when it comes to the processor, the Zenbook races ahead, both with single-core (433 points higher) and multi-core performance (1408 more points).
In case you want to inspect these benchmark results closer:
Performance: PCMark 10
3DMark's brilliant PCMark 10 allows you to test PCs and notebooks in various tasks around your workplace – except for getting coffee. It's an office benchmark for any devices with which gaming benchmarks are useless due to weak hardware.
The Xiaomi notebook achieves 3658 points in this benchmark. Comparing the result on 3DMark's homepage clearly shows that this gadget is better than your average office PC, but still too weak to pass as a gaming PC.
Verdict
The Mi Notebook Air doesn't just look neat; you can also feel it. From a design viewpoint I have no complaints. Furthermore, for a 13.3-inch device, it has enough processor power and even a dedicated, if weak, graphics card. Not enough to game, but still useful when processing images.
Speaking of image editing and Photoshop: don't use this device if you're a professional (graphic artist). Its colour space coverage is just not up to par. There's also a mirror finish display, which only produces a measly light intensity of 180 cd/m² and is annoyingly reflective when confronted with other light sources. The bad loudspeakers and mid-range battery runtime, insufficient for an entire workday, are also sub-optimal.
Aside from these complaints, what you've got here is a nice piece of hardware at a fair price. If you want the same performance and form factor without the weird display, take a gander at the Asus Zenbook 14.
Martin Jud
Senior Editor
martin.jud@digitecgalaxus.chI find my muse in everything. When I don’t, I draw inspiration from daydreaming. After all, if you dream, you don’t sleep through life.
