Apple's 2010 MacBook Air (11 & 13 inch) Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 26, 2010 10:08 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Air
- Laptops
Performance
Benchmarking under OS X isn’t difficult, you just need to get creative. Luckily I’m in dire need of creative outlets so creating OS X benchmarks works for me. I’m using the same tests I introduced in my Holiday 2009 Macbook Pro roundup and running on the launch hardware for each notebook listed in the charts.
We’ll start with general application performance.
General OS usage is a difficult thing to quantify, but one measure of performance has always been the number of bounces an icon in the dock makes before an application loads. I decided to take it to the next level and write a quick script to launch 15 applications in a row, timing how long the entire process takes.
I launched, in order: Mail, Safari, Activity Monitor, iTunes, iCal, DVD Player, iPhoto, Photo Booth, Quicktime Player, Disk Utility, Preview, iMovie, Front Row, Garage Band and Aperture.
The entire process stresses both the disk and CPU, which is why we see a huge improvement when going to an SSD as well as differences between CPU speeds.
What a difference an SSD can make. The 13-inch MacBook Air is the fastest standard shipping configuration Apple offers in this benchmark. The fact that there's a measurable difference between the 13-inch and 11-inch models shows you just how slow that 1.4GHz Core 2 really is.
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
The Retouch Artists Speed Test we use for our CPU testing under Windows also works under OS X. We're running the exact same benchmark here, basically performing a bunch of image manipulations and filters and timing the entire process.
The 13-inch MacBook Air performs as well as last year's 13-inch MacBook Pro. But if you plan on doing real work, you'll be hampered by the performance of these systems. Apple really needs to find a way to get an Arrandale or Sandy Bridge into this chassis
Aperture 2 RAW Import
For my Aperture test I simply timed how long it took to import 203 12MP RAW images into the library.
The SSD makes the 13-inch MacBook Air far more competitive than it should be here. It's even faster than a two year old 15-inch MacBook Pro. The 11-inch MBA is faster than the old 13-inch MBA due to its better thermal characteristics as we pointed out earlier.
Cinebench R10
I’m a fan of the Cinebench test because it lets me show off both single and multithreaded performance in the same workload. First, the single threaded performance:
The performance in both of these tests in line with the rest of the results. These notebooks aren't very good at intensive workloads. It is worth pointing out that the 13-inch MacBook Air posts better numbers here than the old dual processor 2.5GHz PowerMac G5 :)
Quicktime H.264 Video Encoding
Our final benchmark is more consumer focused. Here I'm taking an XviD and converting it to an iPhone-supported H.264 format.
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Exelius - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
I don't know any company that will do this -- HP and Dell require you to mail your machine in as well (unless you pay the extra $500 for the "Gold" replacement plans; an option only available on their most expensive "business" machines.) Often you have to remove the HD before you send it off or else yours might get "lost" (along with all the data on it.)Not that it's a great situation to be in; but this is an issue with many more companies than Apple. You'd still be out a machine.
I own an MBP because it was the only machine available with both discrete graphics and better than 3 hours of battery life. The screen is also dynamite. Were there other machines that were cheaper? Sure. But Apple is the only company that makes a machine comparable to the MBP at any price.
khimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
M11x has a descreet, and intergrated, and better then 4+ battery life, in home repair (they send out technicions)ill give ya the screen though. mac books do have nice displays.
khimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
FYI if you have a Fry's electronics near you, when you get a notebook from them they will give you a loaner laptop till they finish fixing your system. If your paranoid about hardware failing in your system its something to consider.On another note the way that the macbooks are built makes it so that when you drop them you can do serious damage to the internals. Ive seen several MBPs that needed an external disk drive becaus the aluminum mill next to the dvd tray was made to thing and warped to the point where it would scratch any disk going in, or would not be able to load a disk at all.
Roland00Address - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
You only get a loaner if you bough Fry's Protection Plan that they offer not if you get it repaired under a manufacturer warranty (which Fry's will gladly service since they are an authorized repair center for many brands.)I second the aluminum mill being able to be warped it happened with my 08 macbook pro. That said many samsung dvd external drives are so cheap (and work with OS-X). I am seriously considering buying another ssd and a mounting mechanism in my macbook pro and then booting from the ssd.
ajuez - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
According to Anand:"The SSD isn’t in an industry standard form factor, although the connector appears to be either micro or mini SATA. Presumably 3rd party SSD manufacturers (ahem, SandForce partners I’m looking at you) could produce drop in replacements for the MacBook Air SSD."
And... bingo!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/27/macbook-air-upg...
"The Air USB 3 Adapter gives you not only a brand-spanking-new 256GB module with a Sandforce SF-1200 controller, but a speedy USB 3.0 flash drive too -- which smartly doubles as the mechanism by which you move your old files over, as you can just transfer everything through the USB port. Once you're done swapping modules, the company says you'll see a 30 percent speed boost over the original drive, with reported transfer rates of 250MB/s on both sequential reads and writes. "
lemonadesoda - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Thanks for the link. Interesting.And matte screens are also available:
http://www.techrestore.com/pr/macbook-air-matte-sc...
All that is missing is an SD card slot
Exodite - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
It's a couple of very interesting machines, to say the least, but seem to suffer from much the same issues as previous generations.That said i'd be a pretty much perfect machine for me if it had;
The traditional backlit keyboard.
AMD's upcoming thin-and-light Fusion chips or an Intel Sandy Bridge ULV.
USB 3.0 and HDMI ports.
Matte screen options.
Maybe the next version, eh?
SlyNine - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
"In practice I found the 2008 13-inch MBA launched applications quicker (short bursts of full clock speed), but after prolonged use or completing CPU intensive tasks it was tough to tell apart from the new 11-inch. What's even more troublesome is that Apple's aggressive clock throttling went relatively undetected until now. This is something I'm going to have to devise tests for and pay more attention to in future reviews. Sneaky, Steve, sneaky."And this isn't the first time, Your Dell XPS 16's throttled like crazzy, and still do.
ipredroid - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Anand, can 13in MBA run 30FPS on StarCraft 2? I realize this isn't a support forum... sorry for the lazy question. Thanks for the review. I saw the 11in MBA FPS) no 13in MBA :( FPSkhimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
it is possible to do SC2. the memory bump would do you well if your considering running starcraft on the Air (RAM is shared with gpu and cpu) since you loose 256 megs of your 2 gigs to the video card and SC2 has a min spec of 2 gigs with a recommended of 4.it has performed respecabaly on the old air on low settings, so you should be able to bump up a couple of settings possibly getting up to medium with this new revision.
but if your looking for 30FPS through i would go for low. with lots of units on the map in some games your system might lock up at the wrong time.