Here's how the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air compares to the Apple MacBook Air, Dell XPS 13 and more

Xiaomi’s Mi Notebook Air has certainly shaken up the competition as far as value for money is concerned. Just look at the offerings so far, Xiaomi is offering a laptop at almost half the price as anything else in the market today. This is assuming that the Mi Notebook Air retails for around the same rate in India as it does in China of course.

Lenovo decided to join the party as well with a laptop that’s titled much like an unimaginative SEO bot. The Lenovo’s Air 13 Pro, I’m actually surprised they didn’t call it a Lenovo Air 13 XPS Book Pro or something of that nature.

We’ve listed out the most popular 13 inch ultrabooks with similar specs to the Xiaomi MiBook Air in the above table. As you can see, Xiaomi’s—and Lenovo’s—pricing simply blows everything else out of the water. I can’t comment on the build quality, thermal performance or the quality of the displays on offer, but I really doubt that they’ll be so bad as to be deal-breakers.

Regardless, both laptops look promising and with the prices on offer, might actually have what it takes to finally eat into the complacency that’s gotten into the ultrabook market. The MiBook Air and Air 13 Pro are offering specifications that are unheard of in this price range, as far as ultrabooks are concerned at least. On paper, they’ve ticked all the boxes. 13 inch FHD display, 8GB RAM, discrete GPU, reasonable SSD and reasonable price. What more can you ask of a device?