With the upgrading of manufacturing process and technology, low-voltage CPUs for ultrabooks can finally achieve high performance. Now, they can maintain a portable body shape and run some heavy applications. Performance improvement is naturally a good thing, and more usage scenarios are also the result that everyone is happy to see. But the positioning of the final product still has to be determined according to the needs of users.
For people who often run around and use computers only for office, Internet and other light application scenarios, the size, weight, and battery life of the notebook are more important than performance. The recently released RedmiBook Air 13 is a thin and light notebook that focuses on the pain point of compactness and portability. On the basis of ensuring that the performance is sufficient for daily use, it has reduced its size to 297.5mm×212mm. This is almost equivalent to the area of an A4 paper. The thickness of only 12.99mm and the weight are controlled at about 1.05kg.
In addition, the RedmiBook Air 13 comes standard with a good screen. A 13.3-inch narrow-edge full screen has a screen-to-body ratio of 89%, a color gamut of 100% sRGB, and a resolution of 2560×1600.
There are two versions of the RedmiBook Air 13. The main difference is the CPU model. This time, we received the i7-10510Y version with the highest configuration. But there is also an i5-10210Y variant. They are all part of the Ice Lake tenth generation Core manufactured by the 10nm process. They all have 4 cores and 8 threads, and the thermal design power consumption is only 7W, which is less than half of the traditional U-series low-voltage processor.
RedmiBook Air 13 Design
The front side of the RedmiBook Air 13 still uses the familiar all-metal + simple logo style.
The screen size of the RedmiBook Air 13 is 13.3 inches. The resolution is 2560×1600, and it has a 100% sRGB color gamut. The design of the three-sided narrow frame has a screen ratio of 89%. In addition, there is no front camera. The advantage is that the top frame is controlled more narrowly.
The left and right borders are only 3.35mm.
The power button is integrated with the keyboard keys and is placed in the upper right corner. The keys feel very crisp and the key distance is short.
The microphone of the RedmiBook Air 13 is hidden relatively, arranged at the bottom of the side.
The interfaces are mainly placed on the right side, – two full-function Type-C ports and one 3.5mm interface.
There is only an air outlet on the left.
The charging adapter has a maximum output power of 65W, compatible with multiple PD protocols, and can charge smartphones.
There is a horizontal row of heat dissipation grilles on the back. After all, the Y-series ultra-low-voltage processors do not generate much heat. So they do not require high air intake.
Disassembling the bottom cover, we can see the internal structure of the RedmiBook Air 13. The battery capacity is 41Wh. Apart from this, we can see a single heat pipe and a single fan dissipate heat, two air outlets, and the memory. It is welded and cannot be replaced.
The wireless network card is Intel AX200D2WL, which supports Wi-Fi 6, 2T2R, 160MHz bandwidth, and has a maximum wireless rate of 2.4Gbps.
The solid state drive is Samsung PM881. The laptop has a M.2 interface + SATA protocol, and the capacity is 512GB.
Performance
This RedmiBook Air 13 comes with an i7-10510Y processor and an UHD Graphics 617 with a frequency of 300MHz-1050MHz.
CPU-Z
The RedmiBook Air 13 scored 473.8 in single-thread and 1950 in multi-thread in CPU-Z.
Chess
The RedmiBook Air 13 has a performance multiplier of 20.56 in the chess benchmark test, with a score of 9868 thousand moves.
CineBench R15
In CineBench R15, the i7-10510Y of RedmiBook Air 13 scored 129cb in single thread and 517cb in multithread.
CineBench R20
In CineBench R20, the i7-10510Y of RedmiBook Air 13 scored 310cb in single thread and 839cb in multithread.
wPrime
It took 489.822 seconds for the i7-10510Y to run wPrime v2.1 1024M with multiple threads, while it took 36.761 seconds to run 32M with a single thread.
Overall, compared to the previous generation i7-8500Y, the i7-10510Y mainly lies in its multi-core performance. Thanks to the improvement of 4 cores and 8 threads, the multi-core performance has been significantly enhanced, while the single core has almost nothing compared to the previous generation. Variety.
Gaming
As an ultra-low voltage CPU, the performance of this core display of the i7-10510Y is actually more suitable for daily use in video decoding and system graphics interface rendering. But if you want to play heavy games, it is just impossible.
For the online game ‘League of Legends’ with lower configuration requirements, the RedmiBook Air 13 can run smoothly. However, due to the high native resolution of the screen, in order to increase the frame rate and adapt to the best display size of the 13-inch screen, it is better to choose a resolution of 1280×720 for the game. If you want to further increase the resolution, you can choose to reduce some of the image quality settings to achieve a smoother experience.
Screen
The screen color gamut of the RedmiBook Air 13 reaches 98% sRGB, and the color gamut coverage is slightly offset. So it does not reach 100%.
The screen gamma is 2.2.
The tested 100% brightness is 270nit, and the nominal brightness of the screen should be 300nit. The maximum contrast ratio is 1100:1.
The color accuracy is 1.19, which is generally less to meet the needs of professional drawing.
The RedmiBook Air 13 is equipped with PM 881. The M.2 interface’s continuous read and write speed is at the level of SATA solid state. But 4K random read speed is slightly lower.
The RedmiBook Air 13 comes with dual-channel memory with a frequency of 2333MHz, a read speed of 29932 MB/s, a write speed of 31753 MB/s, a copy speed of 296113 MB/s, and a delay of 73.4ns.
Endurance and Temperature
We used the PCMark 8 Work to test the battery life performance of the RedmiBook Air 13. Under the premise of 50% battery power, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi turned off, and battery management biased toward battery life, the battery life is 7 hours and 39 minutes.
Although the TDP is limited to 7W, the i7-10510Y still has about 20 seconds of turbo frequency time. During this period, the CPU power is maintained at about 24W, the full core frequency is 2.99GHz, and the temperature will reach 76°C.
After 20 seconds, the CPU power will be reduced to about 14W, and gradually reduce to about 7W within 5 minutes.
After running heavy apps for 30 minutes, the RedmiBook Air 13 can maintain 7W power. The temperature is only 54°C, and the full core frequency is 1.3GHz.
The Bottom Line
Performance is obviously not the most important element for ultrabook like the RedmiBook Air 13. For this kind of office notebook, making the body light and thin is the most important task. On the basis of lightness and thinness, the company has had to choose the right CPU.
Therefore, the configuration of RedmiBook Air 13 is a perfect fit for its positioning. It is lightweight and comes with an Intel chip. There is also a high color gamut screen with 2K+ resolution, which can ensure that you can feast your eyes on daily use such as browsing the web and watching videos.
Finally, Redmi’s notebooks have the best price as always, at a price of 4699 yuan ($680). It is a portable, light-weight laptop with a good screen and is light and portable.