Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 12.5 Inch

As you may know, I use the Gigabyte Aero 15xfor editing 4K videos when I’m travelling to events like CES or Computex. It’s quite a powerful machine and can dopretty much anything I want, the problem I have with it though is at 15” when I’mtravelling and I’m on a plane or a bus and cramped on a seat for hours at a time, itis actually a bit too big for what I need. Prior to the recent virus issues I would actuallytravel every month or so and do smaller one or two day trips, so I wanted something thatwould be more portable so i could still get some work done during those trips. All I’d be using the laptop for is basictasks like writing scripts, replying to comments, watching YouTube videos, the occasional excelspreadsheet to make the graphs for my videos, nothing too special.

I probably would have been perfectly fineusing a Chromebook to be honest, but in the end I decided that I wanted a Windows systemjust in case I needed to run the odd application that would need it. In the end, I settled on buying the XiaomiMi Air 12.5” for $590 USD. I actually paid more money to get the smallersize and lower specs. The 13.3” version was cheaper and had highertier hardware like the i5-8250U. But my priority was on size and weight firstand foremost. So with my use case in mind, let’s get intothe rest of the review. For the specs mine has an 8th gen dual coreprocessor, only Intel HD graphics here due to the smaller size, there’s 4gb of LPDDR3memory in dual channel. Mine has a 128GB SATA SSD for storage, andthere’s a 12.5” 1080p 60Hz screen. There’s WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.1 for networkconnectivity, however it’s far too thin for an ethernet port so you’ll need a dongleif you want that. The Mi Air has a silver finish, and thereare no sharp corners or edges anywhere. The whole body is metal, so it actually feelsquite sturdy given its size.

I really liked that there’s no logos or anything on the lid, all we’ve got is the small mi logo below the screen, other wiseit’s very clean. The weight is one of the main reasons I boughtthis, it’s listed at 1.07kg online and mine was basically spot on with this. With the small 45w type-c charger, the total weight rises to just 1.26kg, so it’s quite lightweight for travel. As a 12.5” laptop it’s on the smaller side at less than 1.3cm thin, so quite a portable package. This allows for 9mm thin screen bezels onthe sides, though the chin was larger. Despite the smaller bezels, the 720p camera is found above the display, no Windows Hello support though. The camera and microphone aren’t too bad,especially when you consider I have had more expensive laptops with much worse.

The keyboard has white backlighting which illuminates all keys and secondary key functions, although the coverage was a bit patchy. The brightness can’t be adjusted, only turnedon or off with the F10 key. I found the keyboard alright to type with,though the presses felt a bit shallow, which I suppose is expected from a thinner machinelike this, other than that, no issues to call out, here’s how typing sounds to give youan idea of what to expect. There was some keyboard flex while pushingdown hard, but I never had any problems with the stability during normal use. Interestingly screen flex was extremely low,the metal lid did an excellent job and was very solid. The synaptics touchpad clicks down anywhereand worked ok for the most part, however the far left side would only properly click downif I press a little harder which was annoying at times, but clicking in the middle was fine. The 12.5” 1080p IPS screen has a glossyfinish, and I thought it looked alright given the lower colour gamuts. I’ve tested it with the Spyder 5, and got69% of sRGB, 49% of NTSC, 51% of AdobeRGB and 51% of DCI-P3. At 100% brightness the screen got above 300nits, so decent enough results and ok contrast ratio. It’s worth noting that after my clean Windowsinstall I wasn’t able to adjust brightness until I manually installed the Intel graphicsdrivers, Windows update never grabbed them for me. There was a little backlight bleed in thisworst case scenario, however I’ve never actually noticed it with my own eyes duringnormal use, but this will vary between laptops and panels. For I/O, on the left there’s a HDMI portup the back, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack right down the front. The HDMI port only ran my 4K monitor at 30Hz,so it must be version 1.2. On the right there’s just a USB 3 Type-Aport, and a USB Type-C port which is also used to charge it.

The small dot at the end is a status LED. There’s nothing at all on the back, andthe front just has a groove for getting your finger in to open the lid. Fingerprints and dirt are difficult to seedue to the silver finish, however it was easy to clean with a microfiber cloth as the finishis smooth. There’s nothing really underneath, no airintakes. The bottom panel was a little tricky to remove,you need to take out 8 TR5 screws and there’s one hidden at the back in the center behindthe rubber foot. Once inside we can see why there’s no airintakes, there are no fans, it’s all passively cooled as it’s using a lower wattage CPU,just a 5 watt TDP for the m3-8100Y. WiFi and memory are soldered to the motherboardand cannot be upgraded, however I was very surprised to find two SATA M.2 slots for storage. Seriously, this is a 12.5” laptop and it’sgot two, I’ve had 17 inch laptops that only have one. The speakers are found towards the front leftand right corners, and despite the size they weren’t too bad, they still got fairly loudat maximum volume, and the latencymon results looked good. The Mi Air is powered by a 36.5wh battery. Despite not being that large, it lasted foralmost 8 hours when just watching YouTube with the screen on 50% brightness and keyboardlighting off, quite a nice result in this test compared to others, especially when youfactor in the battery size. This is due to the lower powered specs, whichmeans as a result it wasn’t possible to run the gaming test. As for thermals, in my 21 degree Celsius roomit was cool at idle, and even under CPU stress test it was only peaking at 60 degrees. This is because PL1 gets set to 4.5 watts,and the two cores were clocked at around 1.3GHz under this workload. Here’s what the CPU performance was lookinglike in Cinebench. Just for comparison, a modern i7 based laptopwill score higher than the multicore speed of this dual core chip in single core, sowe definitely won’t be winning any races with the m3. As for the areas where you’ll actually betouching, it was quite cool at idle. When the CPU stress test was going it wasstill quite cool, barely a little warm towards the back in the center, absolutely no issuesat all, and as there’s no fans it remains silent regardless of the workload. I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the128gb SATA M.2 SSD, and the speeds were about what I’d expect from a SATA based drive. For updated pricing check the links in thedescription, as prices will change over time.

When I bought this notebook in November 2019,it was $590 USD, today it’s a little bit more, but I think still a fair price for whatyou’re getting. More premium alternatives like the MacbookAir or XPS 13 are not only larger and heavier, but also more expensive. Something like the Xiaomi Mi Air is for thosethat really value portability and are able to get by with more basic functionality, youwon’t be editing video or doing anything resource heavy here, but if you just needto get basic tasks done then I can easily recommend it for travel. Just set your expectations appropriately,it is only a 5 watt TDP dual core processor machine with 4gb of memory, but for what Igot it for, it works well.

Yes, I’m fully aware they’re a Chinesecompany. Rather than using the Chinese version of Windowsthat came installed with various Xiaomi apps, I instead installed a fresh version of Windows. For the tasks I’m using it for, I’m perfectlyhappy to accept any further risks. A lot of people seem overly paranoid aboutbuying a laptop from China, which is kind of ironic when you consider how many otherlaptops and components come from there. In any case, if a nation state actor wantsto blow some hardware based exploit t. So what did you think about the Xiaomi MiNotebook Air 12.5” model? Is it something you’d consider? Or would you pay more money for somethinga bit more powerful and only slightly less portable?