When comparing MacBook Air vs ASUS ZenBook UX330UA-AH55, the Slant community recommends ASUS ZenBook UX330UA-AH55 for most people. In the question“What are the best laptops for programmers who travel/digital nomads?” ASUS ZenBook UX330UA-AH55 is ranked 10th while MacBook Air is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose ASUS ZenBook UX330UA-AH55 is:
It can last for up to 8 hours on a single charge, making it a good choice for people who don't have easy access to a power plug during their day and need to use the laptop for extended periods of time.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Solid build quality and elegant design
Macbook Air has a high quality all-aluminum body that looks great and is sturdy enough that worries of accidentally damaging are mostly alleviated. It has a robust lid, well-spaced back-lit keyboard and an excellent button-less trackpad.
Pro Great keyboard
The MBA has a well-spaced, back-lit keyboard with convex keys and placed in way that the resting arms on the sides of the trackpad is comfortable.
Pro Good battery life
The 11" model lasts up to 9 hours and the 13" model up to 12 hours. Great for programming on the go as you don't have to worry about the battery dying.
Pro Best-in-class trackpad
MBA has an excellent button-less muti-touch trackpad that's highly accurate and comfortable to use.
Pro OSX is developer-friendly
OSX is based on XNU (Darwin) kernel, it's certified Unix and arguably a lot more developer friendly than Windows. Development for Unix is native on OS X.
There's a large selection of great development tools available for OSX. The operating system itself comes bundled with a powerful terminal emulator, called Terminal. Additionally, Apple provides tools, like Xcode, an IDE that contains a comprehensive collection of tools for developing OSX and iOS software, for free.
Pro Great battery life
It can last for up to 8 hours on a single charge, making it a good choice for people who don't have easy access to a power plug during their day and need to use the laptop for extended periods of time.
Pro Slim and sturdy build
All metal, 2.6lbs, 0.5" thin chassis that feels solid and well built through and through. Screen hinge is also very strong.
Pro Excellent linux support
Elementary OS and Linux Mint both work without issues. The only thing that doesn't seem to work is the fingerprint scanner.
Pro Inexpensive for the great build and specs
Slim, light, metal build, strong hinge, large battery, great keyboard (soft, good key-travel) 7th gen core i5, 8gb RAM, 256gb SSD, 1080p IPS display and back-lit keyboard for $700.
Cons
Con Low resolution screen
Depending on the model, the MBA has either a 1366 x 768 or 1440 x 900 screen and that's behind the expected 1080p screens of most modern ultrabooks.
Con Display is decent, but could be better
1080p IPS that isnt reflective nor touch screen. Enables lower brightness in bright rooms and saves battery life, but quality of screen could be much better.
Con The touchpad is good, but not great
The touchpad might work perfectly fine in Windows, but in Linux, it is not that great.
Con Occasional fan noise and coil whine
At times there can be some coil whine (as is common in ultrabooks), but it isnt terrible. The fan isnt and issue in normal browsing or document editing, but in anything remotely intensive it will spin up and is noticeable.
Con Bezels thicker than some modern designs
When compared to new screen designs on phones or the XPS line, the bezels are quite "old school" in comparison.