The 2011 MacBook Air (11 & 13-inch): Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 28, 2011 3:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Apple
- Mac
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- MacBook Air
- Laptops
CPU Performance: A Huge Upgrade
I've got an expanded test suite here courtesy of the testing I did for our Lion review. As I mentioned in our Lion review, performance hasn't changed between Snow Leopard and Lion for the most part so the older data in these benchmarks is still quite valid.
Adobe Photoshop CS4
The old Air was not very good for those doing a lot of photo work. You could manage, and I definitely did, but it was painful. The story is completely different with the new MacBook Air however.
While the 2011 Macbook Pro is still considerably faster, completing our CS4 test in just over half the time as the 13-inch Air, these machines are competitive with last year's MBP. Remember the 2010 MacBook Pro only had two Arrandale cores and these Airs have lower clocked, but higher performing Sandy Bridge cores. Part of the performance advantage is the integrated SSD, whereas those older Macs didn't come with one by default. But most of the time these chips are running near their max turbo frequencies under load, which really helps narrow the performance gap between them and their 2010 professional counterparts.
If you have anything older than a 2010 MacBook Pro, these new Airs will actually be an upgrade for you.
Cinebench: Single & Multithreaded Performance
The old Air just wasn't that great of a performer. They were good enough if you didn't do much with your machine, but for those who lived on the bleeding edge they performed like a 3 year old MacBook Pro.
Single threaded performance on the new Air is much better than before thanks to turbo boost. The 11-inch MBA is 71% faster than the upgraded 11 from last year, that's more than noticeable in real world usage. The 13-inch MacBook Air enjoys a similar advantage over its predecessor.
Where things get even more ridiculous is in multithreaded performance:
The single threaded performance of the new 11-inch MacBook Air is actually higher than the multithread performance of last year's model. Thanks to Hyper Threading and better performance per core you get around twice the performance of last year's models. Again the Air still isn't as good as the new quad-core MacBook Pros, but if you've got a machine from 2008 the new 13-inch MBA will actually be a performance upgrade (and a more portable machine).
Boot Performance
Boot time on these machines is great thanks to Apple's minimalist EFI and their SSDs. I will mention that the MacBook Air used to wake from sleep almost instantly however as of several OS revisions ago there seems to be a noticeable lag before I get a usable mouse cursor. I don't remember this being the case when the MacBook Air first came out and it's no different in Lion.
iMovie 11 Performance
If you're going to be doing any video transcoding work you're going to want to upgrade the 11-inch MacBook Air's CPU. While it's much quicker than it used to be, the 1.6GHz Core i5 takes 17% longer to finish our iMovie import script than the 1.7GHz i5 in the 13-inch MacBook Air.
Exporting is a far bigger issue on these parts. Again the new systems are much faster than the old ones but if you're serious about video transcoding you should probably have a MacBook Pro.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to say that it's absolutely ridiculous that Apple still doesn't support QuickSync in iMovie. We'd see far better performance from all Sandy Bridge equipped Macs if Apple would just take advantage of QuickSync. The silicon is there, it just needs to be used.
iPhoto 12MP RAW Import
Here the new Airs do very well, but the 15-inch MacBook Pro is still around 2x the speed.
Adobe Lightroom 3
Final Cut Pro X
The trend continues. These new machines are faster than a 15-inch MacBook Pro from early 2008, but are no match for the new 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro. If you're going to do a lot of video encoding there's no replacement for more cores.
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darwinosx - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
There is barely any difference between Elitebook models to talk about. Nor is there anything particularly special about them. Just another Windows clone made and supported a little better than what HP sells at Best Buy. Given that, it was covered quite well.OCedHrt - Thursday, July 28, 2011 - link
This is so last year. This is not even what I got in my Sony Z last year. For $1600. 2.4 ghz i5 (520m), GT 330M in 3 lb chasis with internal dvdrw. And that was bottom of the line. Not to mention I got mine from MSFT with 40% off.This year: http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Ca...
Of course this one costs way more, but still worth a though.
beginner99 - Thursday, July 28, 2011 - link
lol yeah. Sony is the only brand that has even more ridiculous pricing than Apple. You say it yourself 40% off. And in this case I say apple's pricing is very competitive and I'm an "apple-hater". Never owned a single device from them, not even an Ipod.The new base model Vaio Z will also be about 40% more expensive at half of the SSD capacity.
Anyway, I would have already bought it, if it was a windows system.
Johnmcl7 - Thursday, July 28, 2011 - link
I wouldn't say Sony's pricing is ridiculous as you're paying for absolutely cutting edge tech whereas with Apple . The previous Z series may have been pricey but it featured a 13.1 1080p screen (genuine 1920x1080), up to an i7 dual core processor, quad SSDs in RAID 0, dual graphics graphics cards (one integrated, one discrete), blu-ray writer which even Apple's 17in machines couldn't match but was smaller and lighter than Apple's 13in machines.I have the Vaio from the previous generation (Z5) which has a C2D 3Ghz processor, 13.1 1600x900 screen, dual 128GB mSSDs in RAID 0, blu-ray writer and integrated & discrete graphics cards which again Apple didn't offer anything even remotely comparable. Speccing up a Macbook to the maximum level put it far above the Vaio in cost but far below in spec with just a 2.6Ghz processor, DVD burner, single graphics card and low resolution screen.
John
darwinosx - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
Kids, read the review and learn something before commenting. No Sony has this proc in it yet. Also learn something about cpu speed in different processor models. Finally try to understand that this laptop is meant to be super thin and lightweight which the Sony is not. It is also top quality construction support and uses a modern OS.OCedHrt - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
The sony from last year is nearly the same weight at 3.1 lb with an internal optical drive and the new one this year is much lighter at 2.5 lbs with external.The Sony Z specifically do not use ULV processors for maximum performance:
Intel® Core™ i5-2410M processor (2.30GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.90GHz
Intel® Core™ i5-2540M processor (2.60GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.30GHz
Intel® Core™ i7-2620M processor (2.70GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.40GHz
The base processor already matches the top of the line Air processor in turbo and far exceeds it in other conditions.
So to recap: Sony Z from last year (Z11-Z14) is already super thin and light weight at significantly faster performance for same cost, and sometimes cheaper when Microsoft Store has a crazy sale.
Sony Z for this year Z21 is even thinner and lighter at even faster performance for a slight premium. Remember the lowest Z performs better than the fastest Air. $1969 vs $1599 gives you an external dvdrw and discrete graphics and usb 3.0. That's not a bad deal at all.
Keep in mind the fastest Z will kill the Air in performance all in the same chasis. And battery life from reviews indicate the new Z is on-pair with Air (4+ hours with a movie playing continouously).
OCedHrt - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
$1600 was not 40% off. I got mine for $1100. $1600 is the retail price at B&M for the entry level model that I outlined (with 64gb x2 SSD).ViRGE - Thursday, July 28, 2011 - link
Looking at the specs, something doesn't make sense. They're using 35W TDP processors and claiming better battery life on a smaller battery than the 13" MBA. The math doesn't add up on that one.KPOM - Thursday, July 28, 2011 - link
Might Sony be including the optional "sheet battery" in that time?ViRGE - Thursday, July 28, 2011 - link
Nope. They break that out separately.