Apple MacBook (2.0GHz) review

Its native widescreen resolution of 1,280x800 is also ideal for watching movies on, but you won't be playing any games with it, as the integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics adaptor isn't designed for anything more strenuous than showing movies, presentations or photos. Built into the screen is Apple's iSight webcam. This is great for web conferencing, but it only supports a low resolution of 640x480 pixels, so the picture quality is only about as good as a budget camera phone.

We were slightly disappointed by the level of storage in the MacBook. The top-spec model only comes with a rather paltry 80GB hard drive. This pales in comparison to the 120GB offerings on laptops such as the Sony Vaio VGN-S5VP, so it's not the ideal place to store a large collection of multimedia files. On a related note, the MacBook doesn't have a dual-layer DVD rewriter. It can read dual-layer discs, but is restricted to writing only 4.7GB of data at a time.

The MacBook makes up for this to some degree with strong networking capabilities. It has an integrated 802.11a/b/g wireless adaptor for connecting to Wi-Fi networks, and features an enhanced data rate Bluetooth radio. The laptop also supports 10/100/1000 Ethernet connections, which is up to 10x faster than ordinary LAN networks, but there's no built-in modem, so you'll need a broadband connection or an optional USB modem if you intend to take it online.

Like the 12-inch PowerBook before it, the MacBook's integrated speakers sit at the rear of the unit, projecting audio away from the user. This is strange in itself, but stranger still is the fact that the speakers are covered by the lid of the laptop when open. As a result, the sound quality isn't as good as it could be. We found it was on a par with most other laptops of this size, but that isn't saying much, as most are quite poor.

Like the MacBook Pro, the MacBook has a comprehensive software package. It comes with Mac OS X v.10.4 Tiger, iLife '06 (which features iTunes iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand), plus a trial version of Microsoft Office 2004. You also get Apple's standard one-year warranty.

Performance
The MacBook delivers strong performance in most cases. This is thanks primarily to its use of Intel components, but like all new Intel Macs, it suffers when running applications that weren't designed for this chip. It's slower than the old PowerBooks when running applications such as Photoshop due to its need to translate these applications using Rosetta.

It performed nearly identically to the MacBook Pro in our video-encoding tests, completing the encoding process in 25.5 minutes, versus the Macbook Pro's 25 minutes. Gaming performance was unsurprisingly lacklustre. It ran Doom 3 at a paltry 3.8 frames per second (fps), which is frankly unplayable. We were more impressed by the battery life, however. It lasted 3.8 hours during DVD playback, which is enough to get through a couple of films.

Edited by Michael Parsons
Additional editing by Kate Macefield