The 2013 MacBook Air Review (13-inch)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 24, 2013 12:01 AM ESTDisplay
When I reviewed the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, I viewed it as the true Retina MacBook Air that everyone was waiting for. With modest increases in thickness and weight, the rMBP13 gave you a much better screen and a larger battery to drive it. Apple’s lineup made sense.
After being in Taiwan earlier this month and checking out all of the 13.3-inch 2560 x 1440 displays being used on notebooks similar in size to the 13-inch MBA, I was beginning to reconsider my position.
To hit an aggressive schedule, you have to mitigate risk. In the case of the 2013 MBAs, Apple kept the chassis spec unchanged in order to do just that. As a result, the displays too, remained unchanged. We’re talking about TN panels (admittedly higher quality than most) and traditional pixel densities. Compared to the Retina Displays deployed across the rest of Apple’s product lines, these panels just aren’t as good. Compared to what you typically find elsewhere, they’re still among the best.
There are two aspects to deploying a Retina Display in a MacBook Air that are worth discussing. The first is power consumption. Greater pixel density requires a more powerful backlight to drive the panel at the same brightness, which in turn reduces battery life. Apple’s solution is to deploy Retina Displays on products it can outfit with a sufficiently large battery. I’d argue that given the battery life of the 2013 MBAs, Apple could move to a Retina Display and still deliver reasonable battery life - but it would be a regression.
The second thing to consider is price. I don’t know just how much more a Retina Display would add to the cost of a MacBook Air, but it’s clear it would be non-negligible.
There’s no real solution to the first problem, but the second one should be less of an issue as panel prices come down. I don’t know where Apple will eventually land on all of this, but today what happens is we get a well defined separation between MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
Professional users who need greater color accuracy and/or additional desktop resolution really should go for the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. If you don’t need either, the MacBook Air will suffice.
In practice, the MBA’s display isn’t bad by any means. I’ve been staring at it non-stop since WWDC and don’t mind using it at all. The biggest visual issue for me is actually the shifting contrast at off-center vertical angles. It’s not a problem once you properly adjust the display angle but it’s something you don’t have to deal with on the rMBPs. When I'm not in crazy work mode, the lack of resolution isn't a huge deal - but when putting together big articles like this one, I find myself missing the rMBP quite a bit. I guess that's why the rMBP has Pro in the name.
My review sample featured a Samsung panel (LSN133BT01A02), although I’m sure the usual panel lottery is in full effect this generation as it has been in the past. Brightness and contrast are both comparable to what we had last generation (my Samsung panel this year was a bit better than last year's). The brightness/contrast results are very comparable to Acer's 1080p S7, just to show you how far Ultrabooks have come.
I ran the 2013 MBA through Chris Heinonen’s new display workflow using CalMAN to give you an idea of color accuracy vs. the rMBP:
| CalMAN Display Comparison | ||||||||
| Apple iPad (3rd gen) | Apple iPhone 5 | 13-inch rMBP (uncalibrated) | 13-inch 2013 MBA (uncalibrated) | Google Chromebook Pixel | ||||
| Grayscale 200 nits Avg dE2000 | 3.7333 | 3.564 | 1.7825 | 3.348 | 7.132 | |||
| CCT Avg (K) | 6857K | 6925K | 6632K | 6809K | 6442K | |||
| Saturation Sweep Avg dE2000 | 3.193 | 3.591 | 2.1663 | 5.3608 | 7.0927 | |||
| GMB Colorchecker Avg dE2000 | 3.0698 | 4.747 | 2.4521 | 3.9883 | 5.7664 | |||
The 13-inch MacBook Air isn’t bad, but Apple’s Retina Display is just better.
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smilingcrow - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Says the person complaining about other peoples' immature posts.darwinosx - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Most projectors use HDMI, VGA is long dead. You could have taken two seconds to Google VGA adapter for MacBook Air to find there are many options though. Putting a VGA port an an Air would be idiotic. Actually on any modern laptop.SirPerro - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
VGA is dead already. LAN... Well, I haven't tried a WiFi connection that comes even close to wired. And that's not going to happen in the near future.Apple doesn't look to the future. Apple looks to the wallet. And certainly charging some serious money for cable adaptors which everybody else includes for free is a very good move towards their target.
And yes, if they removed RJ-45 because it was too thick, they could've used a 50c adaptor to a phisical smaller interface. But that wouldn't be so profitable.
Kevin G - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
There plenty of space to put in an RJ-45 jack into the Macbook Airs if Apple didn't care about ascetics: in the bezel of the LCD display. Part of the Cat5 cable would go through the the RJ-45 hole in the display. I'd only work with the screen open but for a wired connection it wouldn't be much of an issue I believe. The problem is that this is a pretty fugly solution.darwinosx - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Ah so you are a laptop engineer..no...an adapter is fine for those who need it.Kevin G - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
An adapter is easily lost.... the display only gets lost with the rest of the computer.AirieFenix - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Putting a RJ45 connector on the bezel of the screen... yeah, I prefer to not comment.Spoony - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
I work for a large corporation too. I know that projectors are all VGA, and everybody uses PowerPoint to show awful ugly presentations with slides just repeating what they say with zero value-add. Anything we can do to exit this model has my full support, and not shipping ANY laptop with VGA would be a great start.Don't make excuses for lame prehistoric corporate IT, demand better.
lilo777 - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Yeah. Marketing spin in this review was stronger than usual. Here are some examples."To hit an aggressive schedule, you have to mitigate risk." Really? Since when Apple's schedule has become aggressive? Launching 5 products per year which in most cases have very little changes. It's not like the previous version of MBA was released three months ago.
"We’re talking about TN panels (admittedly higher quality than most) and traditional pixel densities. Compared to the Retina Displays deployed across the rest of Apple’s product lines, these panels just aren’t as good. Compared to what you typically find elsewhere, they’re still among the best." "Typically find elsewhere"? Are they trying to compare MBA with $400 laptops? If you look at the same price range (Sony Vaio Pro, Samsung 9 etc.) you will find much better displays than what MBA has. It looks like being an Apple customer Anand has developed an attachment to the brand that interferes with the quality of his reviews.
darwinosx - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Everything you said is wrong and ignorant but the dumbest is accusing Anandtech of bias.