Air on a shoestring? Sounds good to us
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple must be feeling fairly smug right now. Here’s the latest rival product that, at first glance, looks like an Apple clone except for the missing fruit-shaped logo. It’s even made of aluminium, not plastic, just like the real thing. Surely no coincidence?
On closer inspection, however, the Chillblast Helios is no MacBook Air. It has a few too many blobs and wiggles where Apple’s chief designer Sir Jonathan Ive would have insisted upon straight lines. Inside, though, this lightweight laptop is more than a match, with twice the RAM and flash storage, and a higher-resolution screen than the 13in Air, which costs £150 more. In fact, in most respects it beats Apple’s top-end £999 model.
At 1.8cm thick and 1.4kg, the chassis is just a fraction bulkier and heavier, but still easy to slip into a bag when out and about. And you don’t need to rush back home either: we measured battery life at nine hours 18 minutes (of moderate use), not quite the Air’s 12 hours, but excellent for a Windows machine.
And there’s enough processing power to get through your work. The dual-core Intel Core i5 processor will handle everyday documents, web browsing and photo management with ease, and a generous 8GB of memory lets you keep lots of windows open. As with the Air, sacrificing the high capacity of a hard drive for the speed of an SSD cuts out the little pauses that can slow a PC down.
While the Air currently uses Intel’s HD Graphics 6000, the Helios comes with the cheaper 5500, but there’s probably only a 10 per cent difference in their respective performances. Still, we’re not sure the sticker on the lid (bearing the slogan ‘The power to play’) is justified. You’d struggle to run the latest games on this laptop, and even older ones will require compromising tweaks in their settings. It would also struggle to carry out anything more than basic video editing. But a slimline system is not designed for such resource-sapping tasks.
Rather than the Air’s two USB 3.0 and two ultra-fast Thunderbolt 2 ports, the Helios has one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, an Ethernet and an HDMI port for connecting to a TV or monitor. That’ll save you a few quid in Thunderbolt adapters. The latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi is built in, so it’ll work at top speed with wireless networks, and there’s an SD card reader too.
The keyboard, with black tile keys (like a certain other computer), is nicely spaced and satisfying to type on. Just watch out for the power button, which sits invitingly next to the Delete key at the top right. Nobody makes touchpads quite like Apple’s, and although we managed fine with swiping and clicking, gestures such as two-fingered scrolling felt a bit clunky and unresponsive. You can adjust the sensitivity, which helps.
Despite the Retina displays on many of Apple’s products, the MacBook Air has an old-fashioned 1600x900 pixels. The Helios provides 1920x1080, the same as a Full HD TV, so it looks sharper. But Windows 8.1 treats it as a standard-resolution screen rather than Retina, so everything appears slightly smaller. The display is bright and shows colours fairly accurately, and the matt coating means reflections are less distracting than on Apple’s shiny screens.
One thing Chillblast can’t match is the MacBook Air’s lovely OS X operating system, with its neat simplicity, and relative freedom from viruses or constant updates. The Air can also run Windows, but adding it is an expensive undertaking. So if you want or need to stick with Microsoft, the Helios is a decent alternative at a lower cost.
VERDICT
Pricier than some comparable laptops, but cheaper than a MacBook, this is a more than adequate PC in an impressively compact design.
SPECIFICATIONS
2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U dual-core processor • 8GB memory • 250GB SSD • Intel HD Graphics 5500 • 13.3in 1920x1080-pixel screen • 720p HD webcam • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Windows 8.1 • 18x325x219mm (HxWxD) • 1.4kg • Five-year warranty