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
The 11-inch as a Windows Notebook
As a follow-up to our Nvidia 320M/MacBook Pro 13 article last week, I’ve been running our Windows test suite on the MacBook Air 11”. I, like Anand, have the lowest end 11”er, with 2GB memory and the 64GB SSD. This makes installing Windows an interesting proposition since after the two OS installs, you’ve got right around 30GB of free disk space to work with. My suggestion - if you plan on installing Windows and dual booting often, save yourself the headache and get the 128GB model.
The other quirk with putting Windows on the Air is that it must be done with a USB optical drive - no hard drive/thumb drive installs. Interestingly, my external optical drive wasn’t recognized as a bootable drive, so I had to run out and grab an Apple SuperDrive. Apple says that you just need an external DVD drive, without specifying the MacBook Air SuperDrive, but your mileage may vary.
Boot Camp Drivers are now downloaded from Apple's servers prior to the Windows installation
With the Windows install out of the way, we were free to test the living daylights out of it, and that we most certainly did. The 11” Air has the same 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400 as the similarly thin Dell Adamo 13. Months after we move to Arrandale ULV, leave it to Apple to bring the good old CULV platform back to relevance. As expected, Cinebench and the x264 encoding test gave us results around the same level as the Adamo and the rest of the old CULV gang. Versus the 13” MacBook Pro, you’re looking at roughly a 40% decrease in the CPU compute-heavy benchmarks, roughly equivalent to the reduction in clock speed from the 2.4GHz Pro to the 1.4GHz Air. Arrandale ULV notebooks, such as the Alienware M11x and its Core i7-620UM, are another matter entirely, with the newer architecture posting numbers nearly doubling the Air’s Core 2 processor.
The gaming benchmarks get a bit more interesting. We’re looking at the same GT 216-derived GeForce 320M that was in the MacBook Pro 13, with the same 450MHz core and 950MHz shader clocks. Based on the performance we saw out of the Pro 13, we know that the Air, even in 11” form, can still hold its own in games.
At low detail settings, the Air is pretty consistently 20% slower than the Pro 13, except in SC2, where they were roughly equal. Given that the GPU is identical and that both are using 256MB of the system’s DDR3 1066 memory, it is likely that the 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo is slow enough to put a bottleneck on gaming performance. It’s still a ways ahead of the ASUS Core i3/G 310M combo, and all of our games are playable at native resolution.
At medium settings though, the Air starts to fall off a bit. Where the MBP13 was borderline-playable, always between the 25-35 fps range, the Air is about 10% behind and makes it to the magical 30fps mark in STALKER, but nothing else. DiRT 2, Left 4Dead 2, Mass Effect 2, and StarCraft II all ended up between 22 and 26 fps, still faster than the G 310M, but not quite playable. Another interesting concern during gaming is heat. The Air isn’t the coolest notebook in the world, with idle temps hovering around 50C, but while running the gaming tests, I saw GPU temps rise up into the 70s. Nothing too alarming, but still pretty toasty and more than enough to get the fans spinning to the max.
But let’s put this all in perspective. This isn’t about just an 11.6” notebook that can game - the 11.6” M11x is the fastest gaming notebook under 5lbs, but even then it’s still a full two times heavier than the MB Air 11. The Air 11 shoehorns quite a bit of power into one of the smallest form factors on the market. Having a GT 216 core in an enclosure this small and being able to run these games at 40 fps at native resolution is definitely very impressive.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
185 Comments
View All Comments
JVC8bal - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Good case. Another example is Porsche, who has the widest profit margins of any car company. A 911 doesn't cost anything near what people will pay for them, and adding a $8,000 turbo doesn't equate to the $40,000 premium they can charge for it.ImSpartacus - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Did you even bother reading the entire comment? I thought it was logical enough.A business is in the business of making money, not selling things. If a business can make more money by selling fewer things, they will do it.
quiksilvr - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
I should have been clear:It will never happen because it makes to much sense to US. I'm not talking about the general unwashed masses that have an orgasm over an Apple Logo.
I'm talking about sensible people that would rather spend half as much for an ASUS Eee PC 1215N, or people that want luxury would get the HP Envy 14 or 17.
tno - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
Wow. Sorry to kick up a dead thread, and I really hope I don't restart it. I just was really surprised by that comment. If you're kidding, maybe you're one of those griefers that says this stuff for kicks, then I guess that's your bag and you carry it, but seems silly to me. If you're serious, then you really have quite the glut of self esteem.My advice. Try it out. Want to keep your nose up? That's fine, don't buy one, just hackintosh a rig you've got. Don't game on it. Work on it. Read all the griefer blogs you want. Write on it. Produce something with it. I'm not an owner, yet, I'm a hackintosher. And having used XP, Win 7, Ubuntu and OS X on my netbook, laptop and desktop, OS X is my favorite platform to get work done, and the only one I would want to use on something with a screen smaller than 17".
If you give it a try and you still think Apple b10ws and you r001, fine. Us unwashed masses will just keep getting things done and loving every minute of it.
robco - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
There's a few technical reasons why some of these things don't exist in the MBA. Apple can't use the iSeries chips in their low-end products because Intel has blocked third-party integrated graphics. The MBA doesn't have space for a discrete GPU. Intel's integrated graphics don't support OpenCL, something Apple intends to make use of going forward. USB 3.0 is a nice idea, but at the moment, requires a separate controller chip, something else there isn't room for. Hopefully either Intel will make decent graphics (I'm not holding my breath) or AMD will come out with a decent mobile CPU with better integrated graphics. I would imagine the microphone got moved because it wouldn't fit into the new, thinner display. Including an adapter isn't something that can be done at the factory - which would they include? Some folks will want VGA, some DVI, others might spring for the Cinema Display and not need it. As for the ExpressCard slot, I do with they remove the optical drive from the MB and MBP and add that, plus an extra USB port or two. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used an optical drive in the past four years.No offense, but I imagine Apple's engineers considered all these things and more. I looked at Windows laptops before getting my 15" MBP and good quality laptops are expensive no matter who makes them. I had a hard time finding anyone who could offer a fully featured notebook in a case less than an inch thin, with a high quality display, excellent battery life and rated EPEAT Gold. Apple just doesn't compete at the low end. By the time you take that $699 Windows laptops and start adding options, the price difference shrinks considerably.
softdrinkviking - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
that's a very "can't do" kind of attitude.i really like apple's designs, but i really don't like the outdated processors they are using.
i refuse to believe that there is NOTHING that apple could do to bring better tech to it's fans.
it's very disappointing. :(
coldpower27 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Well Apple wants to support a certain feature set, and they can't do so if they go Intel and their lackluster integrated Graphics. They want nVidia graphics.If they tried to add Intel's Westmere based products with Integrated Graphics it would become a 3 chip solution. They have done this for the 15/17 markets where the chasis can hold everything and the larger battery required.
On the 11/13 where space is premium it's integrated nVidia graphics, once Sandy Bridge rolls around, we may see that change....as Intel graphics is on the CPU itself.
tno - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
This is exactly it. While Dell/Asus/Gateway churn out laptops designed to be able to fit whatever will be required of them from the next CPU/GPU/chipset, Apple chooses a set of function requirements and build their design out of that. The 11/13 size laptops are all about portability, so big batteries and thin designs at the expense of the newest, fastest processor. It's pertinent that when Dell decided to build an MBA competitor (the Adamo) they went with a rather similar specification, and ended up with worse battery life.So, could Apple sell a laptop for $600? Yep. It'd have a plastic chassis, carry whatever the cheapest processor they can squeeze out of Intel, the same crappy Clickpad everyone's slapping on their laptops, have a craptastic LCD, mediocre battery life and run Windows 7. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll go get a Mac.
OrionAntares - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Something about the MacBook Air and the processors. If they moved away from the Core 2 I'm pretty sure given the size constraints they'd need to stick with the Pentium and/or i3 ULVs. Making the Air thicker would be contrary to the whole point of the Air line. If you want a stronger processor (and more thickness) you'd go up to the regular Macbook line that is already thicker.JVC8bal - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
I concur, this guy is a tard that doesn't know anything about systems engineering or manufacturing or "productizing".