The 2013 MacBook Air Review (13-inch)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 24, 2013 12:01 AM EST802.11ac: 533Mbps Over WiFi
Haswell isn’t all that’s new with the 2013 MacBook Air, Apple also integrated support for 802.11ac. I wrote a primer on 802.11ac last year, but I’ll provide a quick recap here. 802.11ac is a 5GHz-only WiFi standard, with support for wider channels (80/160MHz vs. 40MHz in 802.11n) and better spatial efficiency within those channels (256QAM vs. 64QAM in 802.11n). Today, that means a doubling of channel bandwidth and a 4x increase in data encoded on a carrier, which are responsible for the significant increase in bandwidth. Usable bandwidth should also see improvements on 802.11ac as high-end access points are all expected to ship with beam forming enabled.
The first 802.11ac implementations we saw were on the smartphone side with HTC’s One and Samsung’s Galaxy S 4. Both of these devices were single antenna/single spatial stream implementations with 80MHz channels and 256QAM, resulting in a max PHY rate of 433Mbps. In his review of the HTC One, Brian documented peak performance using iPerf and a TCP transfer. In a smartphone, such high bandwidth from WiFi is really useful for improving battery life (race to sleep). In a notebook, you get the same potential improvement in battery life but there’s one more: a wireless alternative to Gigabit Ethernet.
In a 3-stream configuration given what’s available today, we’re talking about a 1.33Gbps PHY rate. Assuming better link efficiency on a notebook compared to what we’ve seen in smartphones thus far, we could be talking about a real alternative to Gigabit Ethernet - at least close to an AP. While wired GbE is always going to give you a more consistent experience, the vast majority of homes aren’t pre-wired with Gigabit Ethernet. In living situations where you can’t just run a bunch of Cat6 everywhere, but still want high speed networking, 802.11ac could be a real alternative.
The 2013 MacBook Air adds support for 802.11ac via Broadcom’s BCM4360. The controller is capable of supporting up to 3 spatial streams, but in its implementation in the MacBook Air we see a maximum of 2 used. I fully expect the 2013 rMBPs to use a third antenna to leverage all 3 streams. BCM4360 supports 80MHz channels, 256QAM and short guard intervals. The result is a max PHY rate of 867Mbps.
ASUS sent me its RT-AC66U based on the same BCM4360 silicon (coincidentally the same controller that’s in the new Airport Extreme), which I promptly used for testing the new MacBook Air. The ASUS router and MacBook Air combination worked perfectly. In the same room as the AP, I had no issues seeing the maximum 867Mbps PHY rate (above).
Within about 5 - 8 feet of the AP, I saw an average of 533Mbps using iPerf. That’s real data sent over TCP:
A 3-stream solution could definitely rival wired GbE, at least for short distances.
I then went about characterizing 802.11ac performance vs. distance to get an idea for how performance fell off as I moved away from the AP. My desk and test area is in the corner of my office, which is where I put the ASUS 802.11ac router. Performance around my desk was always up around 533Mbps.
Move around 18 feet away but remain in the same room and measured performance dropped to 450Mbps. One set of walls and another 10 - 15 feet dropped performance to between 250Mbps - 340Mbps. Another set of walls without moving much further and I was looking at 200Mbps. When I went one more set of rooms away, or dropped down to a lower level, I saw pretty consistent falloff in performance - dropping down to 145Mbps. Note that my setup is pretty much the worst case scenario for longer distances. The AP isn’t centrally located at all. If I were setting up an 802.11ac network for max coverage, I’d probably see 300 - 400Mbps in most immediately adjacent rooms.
So 802.11ac on the new MacBook Air is pretty awesome, there's just one issue...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
233 Comments
View All Comments
lilo777 - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
It would help if you disproved something that was so wrong in my post. Perhaps people using OSX in their names are simply incapable of recognizing any Apple bias?akdj - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
In the ultra book market... and this price point....there aren't a lot of excellent choices right now for displays. If you step up to $1500-$1800...yes, one or two of the UltraBook vendors are selling 1080p IPS panels. At this price though...in the 'true' UltraBook sense of the word....go shopping at Best Buy sometime. Take a look at what Dell, Toshiba, Samsung and others are offering....again @ $1099. Asus is honestly the only one, in my opinion...that you can buy odd the shelf that competes. Period. You're right...it's time we get a 'better' panel. Perhaps 2014 will bring IGZO technology and production up to speed...IPS prices drop a bit...and Apple decides to equip a higher quality display. I'm all for it. But the current displays don't suck. They're excellent for what they are and at the current 'price point' you can't get that killer high rez panel from Sony. As well...at this size 11"), unless you double the resolution and pixel double as in the rMBP...raising the default resolution too much and text, icons, etc become to small. I'm always amazed at how much real estate I actually DO have on my 11" Air (2011)....in apps with 'full screen' capability....and until I bought the rMBP 15" last summer...I only used 17" MBPs!TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
everyone overlooks something else with the 13 inch air's display...it's 16:10. which is amazing. i'd gladly take this over 16:9 anyday. wish more oems would go back to 16:10. and having seen the screen, and with a bias against macs...i kinda want one of the new airs.darwinosx - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
The display is not glossy. Read the article you are commenting on.lilo777 - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
You do not need to read the article to know that all Apple displays are glossy. It seems you do not even know what matte display looks like.Sm0kes - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Apple's Macbook Air lineup, while not as "glossy" in appearance as the Retina Macbook Pro's do still have a glossy coating. As a long time hater of glossy displays on notebooks, I have no issue with my Air.amrs - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
No WWAN either. I think I'll upgrade my Thinkpad X201 to an X240s when those come out if it's any good. With matte display and 3G/4G inside too. Just the basics for mobile usage really.Strulf - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
1920 x 1200 certainly would be nice. I want to upgrade my 2009 MBA but I'm gonna watch for the next revision - hopefully with a higher resolution then.thinkpanda - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
I would like to share a few experience regarding to WiFi performance.I am using late 2011 MBP 13", which should support 3x3 802.11n. I connect home devices with Asus RT-AC66U router. I have a home server of Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS, with Realtek 8168 GB Ethernet chip connected to the router. The home server has netatalk service installed to support AFP so that I mount the home server storage from MBP using AFP.
When I copy file from server to my local SSD (just by dragging the file at Finder), I get file transfer rate of 39MB/s! This is not even an AC network, just N network.
So I am curious that is it the server size TCP windows size settings affect the performance, and the OS X as client device is not affect at all ?
mikk - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
"It’s hilarious that Intel refused to give out die photos for anything other than quad-core Haswell GT2, citing competitive concerns, yet at Apple’s WWDC launch of the new MacBook Airs we got to see the first die shot of a dual-core Haswell GT3"Anand you are plain wrong here. Bad job! ULT GT3 photos are available from Intel since weeks!!!
http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits//core/4thg...
http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits//core/4thg...