Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 Intel Core i7-6500U Ultimate Edition Review

Xiaomi has released its first notebooks on July 27, 2016, they are Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 13.3 and MI Notebook Air 12.5, they have sold out 220,000 units in only three months. Recently, we have greeted mi fans festival, and both of them have been upgraded to Intel Core I7-6500U. Today we will make the review about Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 Intel Core I7-6500U 4GB 256GB Golden version.

Design

Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 doesn’t change in design after upgrading, it adopts OGS screen, 5.71mm ultra-thin frame, 330nit brightness IPS screen brings excellent color. On the bottom, there is a AKG speaker on the left and right, in addition, there is a SSD card slot for storage expansion. It has 29.20 x 20.20 x 1.29 cm / 11.5 x 7.95 x 0.51 inches dimension, 1.075 kg weight, it comes with 12.5 inch FHD IPS screen, which is quite compact and portable with superior quality. Check its unboxing to know details.

Performance

Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 has upgraded from Intel Core M3-6Y30 to Intel Core M3-7Y30, so what’s the real difference? In terms of specs, two processors use dual core 14nm processing, belonging to Skylake and Kaby Lake accordingly. The biggest difference is in frequency and GPU.

We can see Intel Core M3-7Y30 improves CPU lowest and highest frequency, and updates the GPU of higher frequency, so how is this Intel Core M3-7Y30 performance?

We choose three software like wPrime，Cinebench，3DMark to test.

The test scores between the Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 Core i7-6500U and MI notebook air 12.5 Intel Core m3-6Y30 Dual Core is as follows.

The lower score, the better in wPrime test, we can see m3-7Y30 is 5% to 10% higher than M3-6Y30 in three items. (The orange color is m3-6Y30, the blue one is m3-7Y30)

In GPU test, M3-7Y30 is 5% to 28% higher than M3-6Y30. (The orange color is m3-6Y30, the blue one is m3-7Y30)

From test software, the overall performance of M3-7Y30 is higher than that of M3-6Y30. As you know, M3-6Y30 is a powerful processor in balancing performance and power consumption. So M3-7Y30 will be definitely a superior one.

How is the real performance in games?

We choose ‘Hearthstone’ and ‘LOL’ to test.

In test, both can run Hearthstone game in 1080P resolution and mid-range image quality at full FPS.

Under 1080P screen resolution and mid-range image quality to run LOL game, the old version keeps around 40 FPS to 50FPS, the new edition retains 45 FPS to 58 FPS.

In daily use, whether playing games, watching videos, searching the Internet, doing office work, they both haven’t met stuck issue, they can perform very fluently, which can meet daily needs.

Battery 

Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 inch has 37Wh battery capacity, supporting 1C quick charge, the standard version has up to 45W power rate, （15V/3A、20V/2.25A）, meanwhile, it supports USB PD and QC2.0. The charging test is below.

We can see 45W power adapter is quite unbelievable, even if it has highest brightness screen-on, it can keep 10% power charging in 10 minutes, it takes 130 minutes to charge full which is faster than those smartphones with quick charge function.

We choose five tasks to test battery life, such as searching  the Internet, doing office work with WPS , watching videos, playing Hearthstone and LOL games. Check its performance below.

In five tasks test, each test takes half an hour, 2 hours 30 minutes in total, and it has 49% power left.

We can know in five task test, searching the Internet, doing office work and watching videos all consume 8% power each, playing games consumes 16% power.

So Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 inch Core Intel Core i7-6500U Dual Core 2.5GHz Version can play over 3 hours LOL game continuously, over 5 hours Hearthstone game, so it can be used in the whole day without problems.

Conclusion

Xiaomi MI Notebook Air 12.5 inch Core Intel Core i7-6500U still continues its old design with compact and portable style, it is a good trial to upgrade its processor to the latest and most powerful Intel Core i7-6500U processor, and its battery life and 45W quick charge have proved it is quite usable and reliable. Although the new version increases 100 yuan, $20 based on the old edition, we can still see the new version, MI Notebook Air 12.5 I7 processor edition will be more popular, do you think so?