The 2012 MacBook Air (11 & 13-inch) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 16, 2012 12:53 PM EST- Posted in
- Apple
- Mac
- MacBook Air
- Laptops
- Notebooks
Final Words
The MacBook Air is in its third iteration of the current design and it's tangibly better than the two that came before it. The 2010 (and older) models are just plain slow by comparison. Thanks to architectural, frequency and thermal improvements, one of the cores from a 2012 MacBook Air ends up being faster than two from a 2010 MBA. In other words, the 2012 models end up being more than twice as fast as the 2010 models in many of our CPU bound tests.
Battery life has also improved thanks to Intel's 22nm silicon. You'll get between 3 - 7 hours on the 13-inch MBA, and between 1.85 - 5 on the 11-inch model.
It's not all about Intel in the 2012 Airs however. The improvement in storage performance is even more revolutionary. Similar to the rMBP, with the 2012 MacBook Air Apple has entered the world of modern SSD performance. The impact of the faster SSDs is felt everywhere from boot to application performance. Once again there are two SSD suppliers, but unlike in previous models both can be deliver good performance. If you use FileVault or plan on working with a ton of already compressed data, you'll want to pick a 256GB or 512GB drive to end up with Samsung's controller rather than the SandForce driven Toshiba solution.
By offering 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD BTO options, Apple has made the MacBook Air even more of an upgrade for owners of older MacBook Pros. The options aren't cheap but the flexibility in an inflexible machine is important.
The only real downside to the 2012 MacBook Air is in the display department. Apple raised the bar with the 2012 iPad and Retina Display on the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air's display is good for a TN panel but the rest of Apple's new world has moved to high resolution IPS panels. The same is starting to be true outside of Apple as well. The competition has simply caught up and surpassed Apple in the low-cost, but high-quality display business. The MacBook Air is no longer competing against poorly designed netbooks, but a bunch of clones that are quickly approaching parity across the board. The MBA panel isn't bad, but it needs to be better.
Even without a new display however, the MacBook Air continues to be one of the best executed ultraportables on the market today. If you're after absolute portability, the 11-inch model is great. If you want a Pro replacement and can get away without four cores and a discrete GPU, the 13 gets the job done. I have no issues recommending either system.
Looking forward, Haswell will have an even more significant impact on the MacBook Air next year. Without room or the thermal budget for a discrete GPU, the MacBook Air stands to benefit even more from improved processor graphics. With 2.5x the graphics compute power of HD 4000 plus embedded DRAM, Haswell's processor graphics will bring an entirely new level of gaming performance to the MacBook Air.
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notposting - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Anand, the 2012's are obviously superior (especially in the graphics department, wow!) than the 2011 models, but if someone is looking for their first "modern" Mac, do you think the 2011 13" MBA would hold up well?Apple offers their refurbed 2011 fully loaded model (1.8GHz i7, 4GB/256GB SSD) for only $1199 with full Apple warranty which seems like a pretty good value for the dollar...assuming the machine isn't used for any sort of demanding games (ie Solitaire at the max), just your basic web, movies/music, office, etc, it seems like it would be a good deal.
For that matter they offer the i5 with 4/128 for only 929 which might be even better though I think the increased storage would be a good idea....
What are your thoughts on this?
phillyry - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link
Either will do all of your basic tasks and you likely won't notice the difference unless you do stuff that is GPU intensive (which these things aren't really designed for anyways).Traded in a 128GB one for a 256GB one because storage is the real limitation.
PatM - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Have been waiting for this review since their announcement! I'm trying to decide between the i5 & i7. The issue is performance vs temp (and fan noise). And wouldn't you know it, every chart in the review separates the 13" i5 & i7 until the temp section, and all of a sudden, it's just 11" vs 13".Is there a reason for this that I'm missing? Does anybody know if the i7 runs hotter (and is louder) than the i5? If so, how much?
Thanks!
yuanshec - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Anand:Great review again.
I just wondering do you have testing results on 4G vs 8G RAM?
Does the extra performance gain outside 4GB worth the $100 upgrade fee?
Deepcover96 - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
I think if you do anything more than web-browsing and document editing, then the $100 upgrade is a no-brainer. But I'm not Anand.phillyry - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link
Increasing RAM doesn't increase performance.It just makes it so that your less likely to hit the ceiling and suffer performance degradation as a result of page file swapping (or whatever, correct me if I'm wrong). But most 'normal people', e.g. non-Anandtech readers, would never notice the difference - especially since the MBAs are pure SSD with no nechanical hard drive to slow you down (when you do need to access it).
Spunjji - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Pleeeaaaassseeee can we get some meaningful comparisons to non-Apple hardware in the benchmarks? Boot Camp is definitely a thing now. It exists. It is there. Install Windows, run the benchmarks. I want to know how their hardware compares to other machines, not just Apple machines. Some of us care about this. :(Galatian - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Anand, thanks (again) for your review. I downloaded your profile for my MacBook Air 13" 2012 which has the Samsung screen, but I feel it is completely off. Blues become a little to greenish and everything just seems dull. Blacks are now...well shades of gray...hard to explain. Are you sure you have uploaded the right profiles?wditters - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
It seems that there are more users commenting about the Samsung profile. I have the same experience as you have. Somehow it seems to be way off target, and actually makes the screen look worse.aliceyoung - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Please, guys, if you're going to publish all these nice tables, check to make sure they are correct. There is no 11 inch i7 2010 MBA. And "Intel HD 4000 graphics" is not a "base clock speed." I found those two errors and I barely skimmed 20% of the article. There must be many more.