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
Can You Be Productive With the 11-inch?
The new Airs are slow, they are great for writing and browsing the web (sort of like fast iPads) but they are noticeably slower than the Pro lineup everywhere else. To get a good feel for what could be done with these machines I put them through my normal review publication workflow. In particular, I focused on my Photoshop experience on both of these systems.
I edited 43 photos for this article, and of course I split the editing time across both the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air.
Each photo was a 12MP RAW, imported into Photoshop, cropped, color/contrast balanced, and saved twice as a compressed JPG (once at 1900 pixels wide and once again at 600 pixels wide). I brought 10 photos into Photoshop at a time, trying to be mindful of the memory constraints each of these systems presented.
I started on the 11-inch.
The import process was noticeably slower than what I was used to. It took seconds for each photo to appear in Photoshop once I’d told it to process the RAW files. Over the course of 10 photos imported at once, that amounted to a reasonable amount of down time.
The SSD kept things moving however. Performance was consistent between editing one photo to the next.
The slow CPU impacted everything. Basic tasks like opening and saving the images took longer than I was used to. Even bringing up Spotlight to launch Chrome felt slower than I’d like.
The screen size and resolution never made me feel cramped, although it was difficult to see detail in the high res photos without zooming in.
While it’s possible to do work like photo editing on the 11-inch MacBook Air, it’s not very pleasant. If you’ve got no other computer around you can do it, but if you’ve got access to anything faster you’ll be a lot more productive.
I realized this when I switched to the 13-inch machine. The 33% higher clocked CPU makes a big difference. Everything pops up quicker, the editing process takes a lot less time and the screen is just a good enough size/resolution where you don’t have to do a ton of zooming to prepare web presentable photos.
I edited half the photos on the 11-inch and the other half on the 13-inch. The half I did on the 13-inch took about half the time as the group I did on the 11. If you need a machine for content creation/editing, the 11-inch won’t cut it.
As a pure writing device however, the 11-inch is great. The SSD ensures that performance is consistent and applications launch quickly. If all you do is write, browse the web, write emails and talk on IM - the 11 gets the job done. Ask more of it for long periods of time and I think you’ll be disappointed.
The 13 isn’t a productivity workhorse, but it’s possible to get heavier work done on it if you need to.
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deslock - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Thanks Anand & Vivek for the detailed and interesting review. I hope you post a followup with more info on how Apple was able to get this level of performance out of the hardware (vs other similar SSD-equipped machines). Also I'd like to see a long term test of performance (because of the lack of TRIM), or perhaps additional testing showing just how effective the new MBAs are with GC.Oscarcharliezulu - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Thanks for a great, detailed review that doesn't gloss over any point. I've read as many reviews as I can find and many gloss over or just take things as a given - not much more useful than the Apple web site. Your review was detailed in all the right areas. I know where I will be disappointed and where I will be happy. No surprises thanks to your review.I think for a business user (web + mail + Word processing + presentations + lightweight spreadsheet) the Air's may be pretty good - finally great battery life (with wifi active) so I can go out to a customer and work off battery all day without carrying an extra battery or carrying the AC adapter.
Pity about the price - once you tick the options the price becomes ridiculous when you compare to mainstream laptops. I will have to stick to a base model + 4GB ram, and wait to upgrade the SSD later (someone is sure to come up with an upgrade).
And graphics - for ultraportables its good, but the higher end pro's etc really need a lot more grunt - we should be able to play games at High at native resolution.
pmeinl - Friday, October 29, 2010 - link
Just stumbled across an SSD 256GB upgrade kit for the 11.6":http://www.photofast.tw/products/GM2_SFV1_Air.html
It includes an USB adapter for using the orginal SSD as portable storage.
mutatio - Friday, October 29, 2010 - link
Anyone else hear this thing screaming for Fusion in it? If AMD can finally get their power specs in line to be competitive with intel the 11" would be one smoking little monster if Apple bites at it. :-)63jax - Friday, October 29, 2010 - link
don't hurry to change your mac's, just wait for AMD to release their Fuzion chips and then we will have the perfect Mac's. i know i will...Norrah - Saturday, October 30, 2010 - link
I would really like to see how an older Macbook Air (rev c) with an aftermarket SSD would hold up against the new.. performance wise!I need the last kick, if i am to go for the new.
jorjitop - Saturday, October 30, 2010 - link
I think that there is another factor you missed which makes a difference to the relative performances. That is, the 11 inch has a 800 Mhz front bus, while the 13 inch has a 1066 Mhz front bus. In my experience, this makes a noticeable difference to performance.Brooklynzoned - Saturday, October 30, 2010 - link
Both models are 2010, Both machines are running Window's 7. Both Machines Score a 5.3 out of 7Apple Macbook Pro with a 2.4 8G Ram with a Seagate XT Hybrid....Scored 5.3
Apple Macbook Air with a 2.13 4G Ram with the 256 SSD Flash......Scored 5.3
Dell Adamo Onyx With a 1.4 4G Ram with a 128SSD .....................Scored 3.2
Funny thing is the Macbook Pro has a video card with 256 dedicated memory
the macbook air has shared video memory.... and scored higher in the 3D
Brooklynzoned - Saturday, October 30, 2010 - link
Battery Life Amazing,Speed,, Oh Yeah this baby moves.... N quick.. Faster then my Macbook Pro
its crazy how fast it starts up... not from sleep but from a full shutdown and startup. Fast...
The Macbook Air is The future of what a Notebook Should be.
ioannis - Sunday, October 31, 2010 - link
Anand,on page "The 13", the captions at the top seem to suggest that you are comparing the 13" MBA with 15" MBP, while the text suggests otherwise (13" MBA vs 13" MBP, which makes more sense).
thanks