Dell Adamo vs Apple MacBook Air

Today’s launch of the stunning Adamo will surely result in a flood of articles asking if this is Dell’s MacBook Air killer.

But we’ve gone one better. We’re going to answer that inevitable question with the world’s first head-to-head of these super slim and super sexy sub-notes!

(Readers from the USA, please note: because APC is an Australian publication, any prices we list are Australian retail prices in Australian dollars.)

Design

Take it from us: the Adamo looks like no other Dell you’ve ever seen. The company which made its name building boxes and helping turn the PC into a commodity has invested heavily in design and research over the past few years.

Indeed, we’d suggest that if Steve Jobs had unveiled an Apple-badged Adamo as last year’s new-look MacBook Pro, the applause would have just as loud and the lustful sighs just as longing. That’s a compliment to Dell’s design team, because good design lives outside the false boundary of brands.

The Adamo follows a straight-cut and decidedly modernistic European mode compared to the tapered and organic futurist conceit of the sylph-like MacBook Air.

In keeping with its ‘luxe laptop’ positioning the Adamo is cast from a machined aluminium frame, finished with a stylishly eye-catching pattern etched on the lid and a scalloped backlit keyboard. Fashionistas will appreciate that the Adamo will be available in Onyx and Pearl, compared to the single silver sheen of the MacBook Air.


Given that taste is largely subjective we could declare this catwalk shoot-out a tie. But this is our comparison, and our take is that the Adamo is the world’s most stylish laptop.
Winner: Adamo.

The world’s thinnest laptop?

Dell claims that Adamo is “the world’s thinnest laptop”. Well, yes and no (but mainly yes).


Apple has a little wiggle room to hold onto bragging rights thanks to the MacBook Air’s tapered design, which goes from 0.4 cm (0.16 inches) at the leading edge to 1.94 cm (0.76 inches) at the rear.

Adamo’s consistent height from front to back gives it a profile of 1.64 cm (0.65 inches) – so while Adamo is noticeably thicker at the front, it’s thinner than the MacBook Air when overall width is taken into account.
Winner: Adamo (but we’ll allow that the MacBook Air’s slivered shape could make it feel thinner).

The world’s lightest laptop?

This crown still belongs to the MacBook Air, which barely nudges the scales at 1.36 kg (3 pounds). At 1.81 kg (4 pounds) the Adamo has bugger-all body fat, and just like the MacBook Air it’ll often make you stop and wonder if you remembered to put your laptop in your bag.

The Adamo also has a slightly larger footprint than the MacBook Air – it’s 33 cm (13.4 inches) wide by 24.1 cm (9.5 inches) deep, against the MacBook Air’s 32.5 cm (12.8 inches) and 22.7 cm (8.94 inches).

We’re not trying to split hairs – any notebook that’s not much larger than a sheet of A4 paper and weights less than 2 kg is still brilliant – but a win’s a win.
Winner: MacBook Air.

Performance

While both the Adamo and MacBook Air are fitted with the latest 45nm Penryn-class Core 2 Duo processors, the MacBook Air has the meatier powerplant in Intel’s low-voltage SL series, with a choice between 1.6GHz (SL9300) and 1.8GHz (SL9400).

Dell opted for the less power-hungry but equally less powerful ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo SU, running at 1.2GHz (SU9300) or 1.4GHz (SU9400).


And there’s much more to this than clock speed: the MacBook Air’s SL chips are packed with 6MB of cache and run through a 1066MHz front size bus, giving them a clear edge over the 3MB cache and 800MHz bus of the parsimonious SU processors

For graphics, Adamo relies on Intel’s embedded GMA X4500HD engine while Apple favours NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M graphics processor.

The Adamo wins back a point for being able to take 4GB of RAM whereas the MacBook Air is stuck on 2GB, but the MacBook Air still has more muscle to begin with.
Winner: MacBook Air.

Battery

We’re going to have to base this one off the vendor’s stated battery life figures until we can do a side by side test under identical circumstances. Of course, the manufacturer’s battery figures are best viewed through rose-coloured glasses, and in most cases are attainable only under the most aggressive power management settings – low screen brightness, minimal usage and certainly no wireless Internet.

So while Dell rates the Adamo’s six-cell lithium polymer slab as good for five hours, against Apple’s allowance of ‘up to 4.5 hours of wireless productivity’, we don’t feel confident to call this in Dell’s favour without some real-world benchmarking.

It’s also worth noting that the batteries of both the Adamo and MacBook Air are sealed into the chassis rather than be replaceable by the end-user.
Winner: This one’s a tie.

Connectivity: wireless

Dell  takes this round without breaking a sweat. While both the Adamo and MacBook Air pack the mandatory 11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1, only Dell lets you option up with integrated 3G (in the higher-spec $4,299 model).


For bonus points, the wireless card also includes a GPS receiver and is rated to 7.2Mbps on both the 2100MHz 3G and 850MHz Next G bands (although not 900MHz, which Optus and Vodafone are using for their national mobile broadband network extensions).


Best of all, you’re not tied to a single telco. While the 3G model of the Adamo will include a Vodafone SIM card and come preloaded with Vodafone’s software (and most likely some sort of sign-up wizard or link), the SIM card’s not activated – leaving it up to the buyer to choose one of the Vodafone plans on offer or sign up to another carrier. The modem isn’t locked to Vodafone, although Dell cautions that it’s not certified for any other network.
Winner: Adamo

Connectivity: wired

This is a simple game of count the ports. The MacBook Air infamously shorts its buyers with a single USB port while the Adamo has three, one of which also doubles an an eSATA port.


With the Adamo you also get Gigabit Ethernet (missing from the MacBook Air) and a standard DisplayPort socket rather than a far-from-common Mini DisplayPort socket (so you need to shell out $45 for an adaptor available only from Apple).



The only caveat we’d make is that the Adamo relegates all these ports to the rear of the chassis. We doubt there’d be sufficient room on the low profile side panels for anything but the tiny headphone socket, which indeed sensibly lives on the right side panel. While this out-of-sight arrangement undoubtedly benefits the Adamo through clean uncluttered lines, it’s a headache when you need to plug in a USB memory key, iPod or similar device which has only a short-term connection to your notebook.
Winner: Adamo

Display

The Adamo’s 13.4 inch panel provides a barely noticeable boost over the MacBook Air’s 13.3 inch display, but pumps the pixels up from Apple’s 1280 x 800 to a hi-res 1366 x 768 for 720p HD (WXGA 16:9). Yum.
Winner: Adamo

Storage

Both of these bantamweights are stocked with a 128GB solid state drive, but Apple also offers a 120GB hard drive in the entry-level MacBook Air. We’d rather have SSD any day, but the price difference means you can get a MacBook Air for $2,899.
Winner: MacBook Air, for no other reason that choice (and a cheaper price tag) is good

Operating system

The Adamo comes preloaded with the 64-bit edition of Windows Vista Home Premium. The MacBook Air, of course, runs Mac OS X 10.5 and can also run Windows Vista (and XP, and Windows 7 beta, and let you switch between them if you want). So while we don’t want to enter into the OS slanging match, it’s pretty clear which notebook grabs the gold medal here.
Winner: MacBook Air

If you’ve been keeping score, the tally stands at 5-4 in the Adamo’s favour, with battery life a tie (pending some solid testing) and making a subjective call in the Adamo’s favour for design. If you put design in the ‘personal choice’ basket, it’s a draw at 4-4.

Apple gets the gong for more raw grunt, slightly lighter weight, better storage options and Mac OS X. Dell wins on being thinnest (although not by much), having a superior display, plus better wired and wireless connectivity.

So it’s close enough to neck and neck if each factor is weighted evenly, but with the MacBook Air ahead if you want maximum performance and the Adamo if connectivity (especially go-anywhere mobile broadband) is more your thing.

The prices are also comparable, as long as you compare like against like – which means pitting the Adamo against Apple’s 128GB SSD MacBook Air rather than the cheaper model fitted with a hard drive.

At $3,699 for the base model Adamo you get a 1.2GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. An extra $300 brings you up to the MacBook Air ($3,999), with its meatier powerplant but the same amount of RAM and the same size SSD.

Dig around for another $300 on top of that (or $600 more than the standard Adamo) and you’re in line for the premium Adamo – with its 1.4GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, inbuilt 3G HSDPA modem and a bundled USB DVD drive.

Now that you’ve read our call, feel free to chime in with your take on which is the better of the two, and why...