The Xiaomi Air 12 featured in this review is one of the best compact laptops available in 2016, being lightweight, versatile with a good overall performance

The Xiaomi Air 12 is one of the best choices for users searching for a lightweight laptop with a modern and efficient hardware setup.

The Xiaomi Brand

The Xiaomi brand has been founded in 2010, and despite being a relative young company, they are already ranked as the world’s 4th smartphone manufacturer. The company is headquartered in Beijing and has quickly expanded its markets outside of Chinese borders.

Recently Xiaomi entered the laptop market with its beautiful Xiaomi Air, which is now available on 13.3 and 12.5 inch versions.

Xiaomi 12 Air: Overview

The Xiaomi 12 Air is definitely one of the most interesting releases among lightweight high-performance laptops in 2016. With a very appealing design and compact dimensions, the model became quickly popular in most global markets.

This laptop also feature interesting hardware components, often found in models at higher price ranges. It includes SSD storage and a low energy consumption Intel M processor.

Its powerful yet energy efficient hardware allow this Xiaomi laptop to have a battery of up to 11.5 hours according to the manufacturer.

Xiaomi 12 Air: Design

One of the highlights of this laptop is definitely it is design. It’s full metal body and a high-end finish give this laptop a very refined aspect. If you like clean metal body laptops like the ASUS ZenBook or the Dell XPS series, the Xiaomi Air 12 will definitely please your taste.

This laptop dimensions are definitely impressive, being 12.9 mm thin and with a weight slightly above 1 kg. If you need a device that is highly portable, the Xiaomi can be easily transported, even if you need to move it around on a daily basis.

Finally, it also includes a backlit keyboard, which is extremely important if you work on poorly lit spaces.

The Intel m3-6Y30 Processor

The Core m3-6Y30 is a very energy efficient dual core processor released by Intel in Q3 2015. It allows this laptop to have an extremely low energy consumption, as its TDP is of just 4.5W. Even if this processor has a low energy consumption, it performs very well. It has a decent benchmark and responds well when multi-tasking on Windows 10.

You can check this post for more details on the Intel m3-6Y30 laptop processor.

Storage

The storage is a critical part on any lightweight laptop and another positive point on the Air 12. While many compact laptops have insufficient or slow storage capacity, this laptop has a 128 GB SSD. It will be more than enough to run Windows 10 and its functionalities with all the speed that SSD provide.

In case you need more storage you can buy an USB Type C stick. This will extend your storage capacity while still accessing data at a fast speed.

Display

This version of the Xiaomi Air has a 12.5 inch screen, which can be a good option betwen 11 and 13.3 laptops. Despite its compact size, it has Full HD resolution and an IPS panel. This specs will guarantee hours of entertainment if you like to watch movies and videos on your laptop.

It also as an edge-to-edge glass protection, which is certainly an advantage, especially if you move your laptop often.

Verdict

On its price category, the Xiaomi Air 12 is certainly one of the best choices. There are very few models with similar technical specs as this laptop, as its hardware is usually considerably above the competition.

It would be nice to see this model with more RAM though, as the 4 GB DDR3 are sufficient, but not optimal for Windows 10 usage.

Xiaomi Air 12 Laptop 12.5 inch IPS Screen Intel Core m3-6Y30 Dual Core 4GB RAM 128GB SSD Front Camera

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Processor	Intel Core m3-6Y30
Display	12.5 inch Full HD IPS
RAM	4 GB DDR3
Storage	128 GB SSD