The 2013 MacBook Air: Core i5-4250U vs. Core i7-4650U
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 4, 2013 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Simplicity permeates Apple from design and software all the way down to the purchasing experience. The 2013 MacBook Air offers only two choices of CPUs, and honestly for the vast majority of the population, that's all you really need. The default Core i5 1.3GHz (4250U) delivers the best overall battery life regardless of workload. Its performance is often somewhere in between a 2011 and 2012 MacBook Air depending on workload, although in some cases it's possible to see equivalent performance to an upgraded 2012 MBA. If you need more performance however, the 1.7GHz Core i7 upgrade (4650U) delivers. In most situations you get more than a 20% increase in performance, bringing the platform up to somewhere in between last year's 1.7GHz Core i5 and 2.0GHz Core i7 options. Once again, with the right workload you could even see performance as much as 20% better than a 2GHz Core i7 from last year. Although I didn't publish any results here, GPU performance seemed roughly unchanged compared to the Core i5 option.
The tradeoff in battery life is pretty easy to understand. In mostly idle workloads, I wouldn't expect any real degradation in battery life compared to the Core i5. Both configurations are equally capable of hitting the same max battery life number. More active workloads however will likely show a 15 - 20% decrease in battery life when paired with the faster CPU. It's possible that you'll see a larger drop with a very aggressive CPU-bound usage model, but at that point I'd assume that you'll probably want to be plugged in regardless of what system you're using.
In previous MacBook Airs, the choice of what CPU to buy was almost always a difficult one. Do you opt for the in-between upgrade or go all the way to the top? With this year's model, the decision is greatly simplified. If you want ultimate battery life regardless of usage model, stick with the base Core i5. If you need performance, the Core i7 upgrade is absolutely worth it. My personal choice would be for the Core i5, but that's because I tend to fall on the battery life side of of the battery life vs. performance fence when it comes to the MacBook Air. If the MacBook Air is going to be your only machine however, I can definitely make a case for opting for more performance.
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KitsuneKnight - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
> Why did Apple decide to use 2x PCI-E 2.0 for its SSD instead of 4x like the one Samsung shown.If Apple's current SSD can't completely saturate a 2x interface (that's 1 GB/second!), why bother with a 4x interface?
robco - Saturday, July 6, 2013 - link
There's ready, and then there's ready to ship in volume. Apple sells a lot of Airs. Relying on a single supplier, one whose relationship with Apple is already strained, is probably not a good idea.f0rumwh0re - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
I'm not a PC or a Mac fanboi. I have ~8 PCs, a couple Androids, and there are two iPads, an iPod, and a iPhone 4 in my house. I think the bigscreen teevee has a chip but I never bothered to find out.Being anti-Mac or PC just limits yourself.
Why do that?
I will use whatever tool does the job.
I *prefer* windows but I can get around in a mac, get messages in the droid, and I admit,the iPhone... just works. works great in a walled garden but works. I find hating a thing, to be limiting to oneself.
lmcd - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
Anyone looking at the i7 version with disdain for power -- when this device isn't given a loop but instead a "race to idle" situation, it will get better battery life than the i5 version, hence the win in the "light" bench.Also, please note that the Air was never meant to be a performance beast, and as such it's not a disappointment that the i5 Air underperformed next to last year's model. The battery life win is more than enough of a compensation.
Sushisamurai - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
Sweet. I was waiting for this, thanks *goes off to buy the i7 MBA*alittleteap0t - Saturday, July 6, 2013 - link
I bought my Mom a previous gen MBA 11"; her letting me borrow it for 2 weeks was enough for me to want one for myself. I was formerly big on Lenovo, but have since switched to HP mobile workstations. I bought a BTO 13" MBA, 1.7 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and it took about a week to ship to my door. It's a decent Windows laptop and gets around ten hours of battery life - very easy to do many things on it and ignore the power plug for a while.geok1ng - Saturday, July 6, 2013 - link
I beg to differ from the conclusion. The performance gap between the SKUs is greater than the battery life gap. Since both systems have equivalent idle numbers, with a nominal advantage going for the i7, in most usage scenarios the race to idle would be equal, if not benefitting the i7 part.USD 150 for more 4GB of RAM and better performance/watt? Sounds fair enough, which when talking about Apple price policies is as best as it gets.
mutatio - Saturday, July 6, 2013 - link
It'll be interesting to see how or if the battery life changes once Mavericks rolls out, given all the commentary in the WWDC keynote about how it is supposed to help with that. Any chance you have your hands on a Mavericks Developer's preview, Anand?captainBOB - Monday, July 8, 2013 - link
Of course he does, but he's under NDA, like all the other developers.Besides, Mavericks is still in beta, it wouldn't be an accurate test.
jabber - Sunday, July 7, 2013 - link
I was on vacation witjh my best buddy last weekend. Was a nice hot sunny day. He pulled out his two day old Macbook Air to show me.He powered it up and about two minutes later it went "plink".
Dead as a doornail.
Oh well.