Armchair Engineers... What a perfect descriptor for Mopar. Have you seen him talk about thermodynamics 😂 ?
In all seriousness, no one is arguing that. Have you read anything in this thread?
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2020 Air Heatsink Modification Thread
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Armchair Engineers... What a perfect descriptor for Mopar. Have you seen him talk about thermodynamics 😂 ?
In all seriousness, no one is arguing that. Have you read anything in this thread?
The tone of this thread is that once a machine throttles it has become useless. But the reality is that the performance drop will not be noticeable to most users in the intended market. It only bothers benchmarkers, and people using the wrong machine for the job who might notice.
The Notebook check editorial mentioned by Mick2 has six case studies and the average performance drop is 20%.
If laptops were all designed for no throttling there would be a penalty on size, weight and cost for the cooling system needed. Far better for this market to accept 20% throttling. People who need the maximum continuous performance can get different machines.
The Notebook check editorial mentioned by Mick2 has six case studies and the average performance drop is 20%.
If laptops were all designed for no throttling there would be a penalty on size, weight and cost for the cooling system needed. Far better for this market to accept 20% throttling. People who need the maximum continuous performance can get different machines.
I think consumers are accustomed to throttling to manage sustained CPU temperature in whatever laptop they buy. The question is though, are they accustomed to that temperature being 100 degrees C, the Tjmax of the CPU?
Sometimes, it might also be hard to tell if someone's use case is CPU-intensive. For example, if someone wanted to check email, review spreadsheets or architectural PDFs for work, and then maybe relax by playing a strategy or simulation game, a MacBook Air seems to be reasonable. The problem is, this use case can tax the CPU for an extended period of time.
In the long term, I would worry about the heat's effect on the other components, like the logic board or the battery. As a side note, I think this might be where the MacBook Air's case fan is useful. It keeps air flowing over these other components. Maybe this is part of the reason we do not have a fanless MacBook anymore.
Posts in this thread are starting to come over as a bit petulant and ad hominem. So please, play the ball, not the man
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Or maybe a better vehicle analogy is that you bought a Honda Civic and then wondered why you couldn't red-line the sucker for hours on end at Le Mans.
"How long can it turbo-boost before throttling" is not a question asked by someone who wants an affordable car that can cruise the Interstate at steady highway speeds with decent fuel economy. You need to punch it for a few seconds to get past an 18-wheeler? Yeah, the "Civic" can do that just fine, too.
The thing is, I've had two Civics. Damn fine vehicles. They've done everything that I ask of them; long road trips, zip up steep hills like the one I live on... When I need to pass or make it to highway speed from a standing start in a short distance? I can punch it and it jumps. However, my overall driving style is pretty much plain-vanilla, so I don't have to spend more than Civic prices to get a car that suits my needs. If I wanted "exhilaration" I might think in terms of other nameplates including Honda's own Acura line, which literally uses "exhilaration" as its current marketing catch-word.
Same thing for my computing style. Oh, once upon a time I worked on large book manuscripts that required simultaneous use of Adobe InDesign, Aperture, Numbers, Pages, Google Earth, and about 50 or so open Safari tabs... it required plenty of RAM, but never over-taxed the duo-core i5 in my iMac. Why? Someone else on the team was doing the really heavy lifting - outputting the pre-press PDFs of those 300-400 page complex manuscripts on a Cheese Grater. That was a sustained grind that took hours. These days, no more InDesign, but I still often run photo editing, spreadsheets, and heavy browser and map research simultaneously. Memory pressure on that same iMac is now running far cooler, and the CPU is still chugging along at low levels of utilization. About the only time I hear the fan kick in is during an OS install.
If I wanted/needed a laptop (which I don't - I've used iPad as my portable since the first-gen iPad was introduced), MacBook Pro would undoubtedly be over-kill. Just don't need it, don't need to spend the money. MBA is as much as I need, and it's smaller and lighter as well. I felt differently back when MBA lacked a Retina display, but now that Air has that, I have no reservations about using Apple's "value proposition."
But a much longer time ago, I was in music recording/production. Pro-quality digital audio had just come to Mac, and I was running on a heavily-tricked-out Quadra 950. I recorded concerts live to DAT, then returned to the studio for post and CD pre-mastering on the Mac. The DATs had to transfer real-time to the Mac, which was a bit of a production bottleneck. Even then, I dreamed of the day when I could record direct-to-laptop and start post-production while still out in the field.
Today, that dream is fully realized, but there is no way on Earth I'd think to run Logic Pro X on a MBA in a pro environment. Even if MBA is fully capable (as a prominent Logic Pro X review in App Store claims), it's just the wrong place to scrimp, especially when you compare the price of a MBP to, say, a Nagra ($9,900 USD) or just a single Neumann U-87 mic ($3,200 USD). Now, Neumanns were a bit cheaper in the '90s, but I often went into the field with $20K worth of mics and a total kit worth over $50k (and that was considered low-budget, as I didn't use a sound truck). Hell, my studio monitors cost over $10k. The Sony CD burner was over $3k and the CD-R blanks cost $24 each (that was still cheap, since a 2,500-foot reel of 0.25" analog mastering tape cost far more, and 2" tape for a 24-track... I think we charged our clients $250/reel, which at 30 inches-per-second lasted 15 minutes). When I was doing film/tv scores a single-track 35mm mag film recorder cost over $10k... and the machine rooms in film mix houses had dozens of those suckers all synced-up. So, say $200k-$300k worth of machines, a $50k-$150K mixing board... all replaced by a $200 app running on on a $999 - $3K laptop. (Of course, people with my point of view are why Apple can sell $24,000 Mac Pros...).
Again, you can wish MBA performed like a MBP and that a MBP could blow a gaming machine out of the water, but that's not the way it is. If a Windows machine does what you want at a price you like, then why are you complaining here? But if you'd still prefer a Mac, then Apple has all the power - they'll price their equipment higher because they can.
Your posts in this thread are starting to come over as a bit petulant and ad hominem. Reading back over the last few pages, when a poster makes a point, you have a tendency to take swipes at the poster - or @Mopar in particular - rather than addressing the point they're making. This tends to steer the thread to extremes and adds an unecessary adversarial tone to the discussion. Please, play the ball, not the man
No offense, but that's pretty hypocritical given you've posted things like this....
Achhh, now you've done it. Cue the meltdown in 5...4...3...2...
If you don't like my style of arguing, sorry. Also you might not have seen, because they were promptly deleted by a mod, that there were a few comments from others directed at me that may have caused my response to be a bit aggressive at times. Obviously if the original comment was deleted, then my tone looks completely out of place in retrospect.
But to to point, I've written several long posts, done tests and referred to multiple videos to give my main arguments. Meanwhile @Mopar, and others in the same camp, have not addressed these main points, and instead having a dig at a few smaller things I've said.
For those interested in the actual topic of this thread, see my main points here which I repeated from a few pages ago eve. I've addressed issues where benchmarks scores for the new MBA were perhaps too low as the machine was indexing.
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The redline analogy is in line with my point. I had a Civic Si when they had high redlines. They were as capable as any vehicle at maintaing sustained high rpm loads. And more reliable than almost anything in that environment. They weren't particularly fast but they could utilize what they offered. The radiator/cooling analogy still fits best.
Someone else pointed out that the MBP has the thermal capacity for sustained performance (even if you should buy something else if that's a regular use case). At not-too-difference thickness and weight. So, we have an Air where sustained performance is never possible in real world conditions. I think that strikes people as a marketing decision, not an engineering limitation.
It seems MBA 2020 has a limitation in order to consume less power for the battery. Because even with the water cooler, the power and clock speed was similar to the original one. But of course, MBA 2020's setting is base on the heat sink, not a water cooler so as long as we don't know how to change the software limitation, the performance is slightly better.
He actually plugs in the power cable at 5:55 and it power draw increases but only by about 1W.
The video shows weird behaviour with the 'water' cooling during Cinebench:
- Temps of only 50 °C, fans at 0 rpm, running at 1.8 GHz and pulling 12W.
Compared to no 'water cooling':
- Temps of 100 °C, fans on, running at 1.5 GHz and pulling 11W.
Clearly with the water cooling the CPU could have run faster as it had about 50 °C of head room and can boost up to 3.5 GHz. However it seems like there's some hard code written in by Apple to make sure it throttles. In fact, a review of the MBA by The Verge (here) states:
"Heavy sustained workloads cause the system to do some aggressive thermal throttling, basically capping the max speed of the processor in order to manage heat. Apple told me this throttling is by design. The company doesn’t think most people need hardcore sustained performance, so the Air is built around Intel’s turbo boost feature, which can quickly ramp the processor to 3.2GHz to get something done and then ramp it back down to 1.1GHz to preserve heat and battery life."
Crazy. So it seems like what this, and the Max Tech video tells us is that Apple is thermally throttling and putting in some hard code into the BIOS (or mac equivalent) to make sure it throttles after some initial burst. I can understand why they did it to preserve the MBP, but you can understand the frustration!
The video shows weird behaviour with the 'water' cooling during Cinebench:
- Temps of only 50 °C, fans at 0 rpm, running at 1.8 GHz and pulling 12W.
Compared to no 'water cooling':
- Temps of 100 °C, fans on, running at 1.5 GHz and pulling 11W.
Clearly with the water cooling the CPU could have run faster as it had about 50 °C of head room and can boost up to 3.5 GHz. However it seems like there's some hard code written in by Apple to make sure it throttles. In fact, a review of the MBA by The Verge (here) states:
"Heavy sustained workloads cause the system to do some aggressive thermal throttling, basically capping the max speed of the processor in order to manage heat. Apple told me this throttling is by design. The company doesn’t think most people need hardcore sustained performance, so the Air is built around Intel’s turbo boost feature, which can quickly ramp the processor to 3.2GHz to get something done and then ramp it back down to 1.1GHz to preserve heat and battery life."
Crazy. So it seems like what this, and the Max Tech video tells us is that Apple is thermally throttling and putting in some hard code into the BIOS (or mac equivalent) to make sure it throttles after some initial burst. I can understand why they did it to preserve the MBP, but you can understand the frustration!
This guy's a clown. Plugging and unplugging the laptop in mid-test. Can't apply thermal paste – you knew straight away as soon as he applied the first big dollop of paste that he didn't know what he was doing – and he can't even count.
Anyone notice anything funny about this graph? Yeah, the gel pack is faster – but that's not what he says on the video.
I shudder to think what this guy's MacBook Air is like now after removing the heatsink and putting it back together with his "engineering" skills.
And the next guy is obviously someone else who doesn't know how to do benchmarks until the machine has finished indexing, as his GB5 multi-core scores are 60% of everyone else's. Most people have who have waited for their machines to finish setting up have reported a multi-core score of 3200. This guy gets 2400: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/...-keyboard-processor-battery-life-camera-price
The moral of the story is, YouTube is fully of amateurs.
Anyone notice anything funny about this graph? Yeah, the gel pack is faster – but that's not what he says on the video.
I shudder to think what this guy's MacBook Air is like now after removing the heatsink and putting it back together with his "engineering" skills.
And the next guy is obviously someone else who doesn't know how to do benchmarks until the machine has finished indexing, as his GB5 multi-core scores are 60% of everyone else's. Most people have who have waited for their machines to finish setting up have reported a multi-core score of 3200. This guy gets 2400: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/...-keyboard-processor-battery-life-camera-price
The moral of the story is, YouTube is fully of amateurs.
You can pick out those stupid errors in those reviews, but their point still stands. Max Tech's incorrect graph and plugging/unplugging doesn't change the fact that he shows the MBA improves performance with extra cooling. The Verge's statement that Apple told them the MBA is designed to thermal throttle is not invalidated by the fact they didn't wait for the machine to index before benching it.
It's fairly clear now that the MBA is thermally constrained. In fact, you'd be arguing with Apple if you disagreed.
It's fairly clear now that the MBA is thermally constrained. In fact, you'd be arguing with Apple if you disagreed.
How does this statement reconcile with the Notebookcheck editorial where the average performance reduction for six machines was about 20%.
I still believe this is a non-issue for the intended market, and 20% reduction will not be noticed except by benchmarking enthusiasts and people using the wrong tool for the job, and is a fair penalty to pay for reduction in price, size weight etc.
Yes it is by design and Apple know what they doing (at least in this case)
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It's hard to measure how much the MBA's throttling reduces performance because it acts differently than the laptops in that notebookcheck review. I've already said this, but if you look at the review, they're carrying out Cinebench runs one after the other continuously for around 30 minutes. These laptops will thermal throttle after 1 or 2 runs. On the other hand, the MBA will thermal throttle within one minute of one run. It's completely different. Additionally, I doubt those laptops in the notebookcheck were designed to thermal throttle, I think most manufacturers try to make the thermals as good as possible, even Apple, but just not with the MBA so the MBP is preserved.
No one's arguing it's not a non-issue for the intended market. I think we're all in agreement there. To be honest they could've put in an old 6th gen dual core CPU and the 'intended market' wouldn't have cared. The point is, they've put in a fairly powerful CPU and purposely restricted it with poor thermals. It seems like a waste and just lazy on the part of Apple.
No one's arguing it's not a non-issue for the intended market. I think we're all in agreement there. To be honest they could've put in an old 6th gen dual core CPU and the 'intended market' wouldn't have cared. The point is, they've put in a fairly powerful CPU and purposely restricted it with poor thermals. It seems like a waste and just lazy on the part of Apple.
These machines have a one-year warranty too. If there is thermal wear or damage after awhile, Apple can sell you an out-of-warranty repair service, a battery replacement or a brand-new machine. If you are worried about it, Apple can even sell you AppleCare+. I hope that my concerns about this model are misplaced and these machines can last just as long as the old, silver MacBook Airs.
[automerge]1585561081[/automerge]
You are right. OEMs often set a power limit, voltage limits and thermal limits in the BIOS or EFI.
[automerge]1585561081[/automerge]
You are right. OEMs often set a power limit, voltage limits and thermal limits in the BIOS or EFI.
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Your posts in this thread are starting to come over as a bit petulant and ad hominem. So please, play the ball, not the man
Another example of your hypocrisy... this post of yours in an MBP thread.
In case you delete it here's how it went.
A guy said:
"i5 MBA is garbage though, thermally...
...So thermal wise it doesn't matter, the issue is that at 100% of every core MBA runs at 100C which is a) stupid and b) ridiculous. Even with 100% CPU should run at 90C, throttled a bit but not at 100C..."
YOU said:
"You say above you're ok with it running ("throttled a bit") at 90C but at 100C it's 'stupid' and 'ridiculous'...? What are you basing this difference on? Is 90C just a number you prefer the look of? The chip throttles at 100C because it's designed to. You're throwing out figures about an issue you seem to have little understanding of."
And you tell ME that I'm petulant and ad hominem? Criticise my anger maybe, but to then tell me off for being aggressive while your also aggressive is another thing.
Some people on this forum are unbelievable. It seems like when you criticise an Apple product some people literally take it as a personal attack. The above is a perfect example.
It seems like there are lots of people like this in this thread. Any mention of thermal throttling and your hear..
"It fits it's intended market"
"Are you an Apple engineer?"
(They created butterfly keyboard though didn't they? They CAN make mistakes)
"It's adequate for it's intended target audience"
"If you bought it and want to do that, then you bought the wrong machine"
(as if no one wants to play a game now and then???)
"I don't see any example of people complaining their Air runs hot"
"Air owners don't care"
Last time I checked, this was forum for product enthusiasts, not marketing! We should be discussing how Apple could improve their products, not praising their marketing skills, applauding them for blatantly handicapping one product in order to preserve the sales of another. Hate to say it, but there's a strong presence of 'fan boy' running through this thread.
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I see you guys are having a very heated discussion over here
I guess we need someone to connect a simple heat pipe, perhaps even a good thermal pad (For starters) to the fan to see if it makes any difference.
Then liquid metal paste and EFI / bios mod and we’ve upgraded our Air’s to become Pro’s...
I’m quite excited this to be a possibility, but maybe we’re all fooling ourselves.
I guess we need someone to connect a simple heat pipe, perhaps even a good thermal pad (For starters) to the fan to see if it makes any difference.
Then liquid metal paste and EFI / bios mod and we’ve upgraded our Air’s to become Pro’s...
I’m quite excited this to be a possibility, but maybe we’re all fooling ourselves.
This isn't possible because T2 chip (which holds the EFI, Intel firmware, and is locked down like an iPhone) pushes the firmware via eSPI bus. You would need a jailbreak method just like iPhone do.
That cooling video does highlight what removing heat from the 2020 MacBook Air can do for the i5 CPU.
It ran Cinebench R20 faster by 16% with liquid cooling and 14% with a gel pack on the case. The CPU temperature dropped from 100 degrees C to 51 degrees C with liquid cooling and to 95 degrees C with a gel pack on the case.
It ran Cinebench R20 faster by 16% with liquid cooling and 14% with a gel pack on the case. The CPU temperature dropped from 100 degrees C to 51 degrees C with liquid cooling and to 95 degrees C with a gel pack on the case.
Yep, I know. The gain would be greater on a jailbroken laptop. I’d probably do it if I had my thermals modified. Can any of you test with a thermal pad connecting the cpu with the fan?
notebookcheck just did a prelim review on the 2020 i5 model and it's pretty sad vs the windows competition when it comes to cooling... Initial review here
The acer with the same ice lake class cpu kills it in Cinebench multi core which is much more sustained than geekbench
Although i7, I don't think that's enough to make up for the 27% difference in performance
What's sad is the fan noise of the 2020 MBA:
"The fan behavior is also very similar to the predecessor and longer workloads (not only synthetic load, but also longer installations, for example) results in a very loud fan noise. At around 30% CPU load (installation of OS updates), the fan is clearly audible and we are already above 40 dB(A), which is hard to understand considering the low performance level. We can even measure up to 45 dB(A) under heavier 3D workloads. We will continue to observe the situation until the review is complete."
The Acer is much much quieter while the laptop weighs less too:
"A small fan is tasked with ensuring that all internal components are cooled properly. When idle, the fan is completely off, and the device thus dead silent. Even under load it remained inconspicuous and peaked at just 32.7 dB(A). Accordingly, the Swift 3 can take the lead and was the quietest device of our test group."
32.7 dba vs 45 dba is a big difference in noise
If the performance was at least competitive, the noise would be tolerable.
I wonder why such a difference in noise and performance?
Maybe this has something to do with it:
The acer with the same ice lake class cpu kills it in Cinebench multi core which is much more sustained than geekbench
Although i7, I don't think that's enough to make up for the 27% difference in performance
What's sad is the fan noise of the 2020 MBA:
"The fan behavior is also very similar to the predecessor and longer workloads (not only synthetic load, but also longer installations, for example) results in a very loud fan noise. At around 30% CPU load (installation of OS updates), the fan is clearly audible and we are already above 40 dB(A), which is hard to understand considering the low performance level. We can even measure up to 45 dB(A) under heavier 3D workloads. We will continue to observe the situation until the review is complete."
The Acer is much much quieter while the laptop weighs less too:
"A small fan is tasked with ensuring that all internal components are cooled properly. When idle, the fan is completely off, and the device thus dead silent. Even under load it remained inconspicuous and peaked at just 32.7 dB(A). Accordingly, the Swift 3 can take the lead and was the quietest device of our test group."
32.7 dba vs 45 dba is a big difference in noise
If the performance was at least competitive, the noise would be tolerable.
I wonder why such a difference in noise and performance?
Maybe this has something to do with it:
Again, another "reviewer" posting sub-standard scores to try to make a point. A simple glance at the same reviewer's Geekbench 5 score for the 2020 MBA shows a multi-core score of around 2500 – and yet we have owners on this forum who have reported scores of 3500+, with many posting scores of at least 3200.
forums.macrumors.com
Seems to me the low GB5 scores all have one thing in common: reviewers who have taken their MBAs straight out of the box and run a bunch of tests before the machine has had time to index and finish setting up the OS.
If the below BG5 score is 2/3 of what everyone else is reporting, then how can we believe their Cine R15 scores?
BTW, the Cinebench R20 scores are also much, much higher and very competitive with other processors.
MacBook Air 2020 rivals 2017 MacBook Pro in performance:
cntechpost.com
Below is the 2017 MBP – the 2020 MBA scored 951 and 354.
So who do we believe?
Macbook Air 2020 record high score on geekbench when case fan is at full blast
Hey guys, the case fan does work well and I ran the benchmark on the Macbook 2020 i5 with 8000 RPM. This proves it and I don't know why other people and youtuber keep claiming the macbook air fan doesn't do anything. Here is my score: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1618275 1585497262...
forums.macrumors.com
Seems to me the low GB5 scores all have one thing in common: reviewers who have taken their MBAs straight out of the box and run a bunch of tests before the machine has had time to index and finish setting up the OS.
If the below BG5 score is 2/3 of what everyone else is reporting, then how can we believe their Cine R15 scores?
BTW, the Cinebench R20 scores are also much, much higher and very competitive with other processors.
MacBook Air 2020 rivals 2017 MacBook Pro in performance:
MacBook Air 2020 rivals 2017 MacBook Pro in performance - CnTechPost
Apple updated the MacBook Air product line this week. Today, PC Watch conducted a running test on the Apple MacBook Air 2020, showing that its performance is comparable to the 2017 MacBook Pro.
cntechpost.com
Below is the 2017 MBP – the 2020 MBA scored 951 and 354.
So who do we believe?
you know I'm just passing by, but I don't think notebookcheck's cinebench r15 score is wrong.
Just for the sake of comparison, my 2019 MBP with 8279u scores as below:
from my personnal R20 score : 1712 multi
from notebookcheck 2019 MBP TB3x4 review R15 : 757 multi
www.notebookcheck.net
R20/R15 = 2.262
from your link R20 MBA2020 : 929 multi
from notebookcheck R15 : 448 multi
R20/R15 = 2.07
I'm not saying the score should increase by certain % going from R15 to R20, but by looking at comparison, what's wrong with the notebookcheck's R15 score? It kinda make sense. Of course, if someone can provide an actual R15 and R20 scores, that would be great.
Just for the sake of comparison, my 2019 MBP with 8279u scores as below:
from my personnal R20 score : 1712 multi
from notebookcheck 2019 MBP TB3x4 review R15 : 757 multi
Apple MacBook Pro 13 2019 laptop review: Good performance, but no real innovation
Notebookcheck reviews the 2019 Apple MacBook Pro 13 with 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, an updated processor and a modified keyboard.
from your link R20 MBA2020 : 929 multi
from notebookcheck R15 : 448 multi
R20/R15 = 2.07
I'm not saying the score should increase by certain % going from R15 to R20, but by looking at comparison, what's wrong with the notebookcheck's R15 score? It kinda make sense. Of course, if someone can provide an actual R15 and R20 scores, that would be great.
Notebookcheck said of the 2020 MBA's multi-core performance, "The best Cinebench R15 Multi result is the first run with 448 points with an average of around 400 points after 25 iterations."
The 13-inch MBP with two Thunderbolt ports is 30% faster.
The Dell XPS 13 9300 is over 32% faster.
Keep in mind that not only is the MBA slower, it will also be hotter: it will be running at ~100 degrees C in sustained loads, unlike these other machines.
The 13-inch MBP with two Thunderbolt ports is 30% faster.
The Dell XPS 13 9300 is over 32% faster.
Keep in mind that not only is the MBA slower, it will also be hotter: it will be running at ~100 degrees C in sustained loads, unlike these other machines.
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Notebookcheck.net is considered one of the better review sites and much more thorough than the others. It might be GB run again during indexing, but it still doesn't refute the fact that the 2020's MBA's cooling is piss poor just like the previous gen causing the fan to be significantly louder. Over 10dba in noise difference is very very noticeable.Again, another "reviewer" posting sub-standard scores to try to make a point. A simple glance at the same reviewer's Geekbench 5 score for the 2020 MBA shows a multi-core score of around 2500 – and yet we have owners on this forum who have reported scores of 3500+, with many posting scores of at least 3200.
Macbook Air 2020 record high score on geekbench when case fan is at full blast
Hey guys, the case fan does work well and I ran the benchmark on the Macbook 2020 i5 with 8000 RPM. This proves it and I don't know why other people and youtuber keep claiming the macbook air fan doesn't do anything. Here is my score: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1618275 1585497262...
Seems to me the low GB5 scores all have one thing in common: reviewers who have taken their MBAs straight out of the box and run a bunch of tests before the machine has had time to index and finish setting up the OS.
If the below BG5 score is 2/3 of what everyone else is reporting, then how can we believe their Cine R15 scores?
View attachment 902829
BTW, the Cinebench R20 scores are also much, much higher and very competitive with other processors.
MacBook Air 2020 rivals 2017 MacBook Pro in performance:
MacBook Air 2020 rivals 2017 MacBook Pro in performance - CnTechPost
Apple updated the MacBook Air product line this week. Today, PC Watch conducted a running test on the Apple MacBook Air 2020, showing that its performance is comparable to the 2017 MacBook Pro.
Below is the 2017 MBP – the 2020 MBA scored 951 and 354.
View attachment 902832
So who do we believe?
If you're a facebook/safari user all day (which I guess is the majority anyway) I guess it won't matter much. However, I was expecting this to replace my rMB 12 that struggles with my DSLR 45MP RAW files in lightroom and it's going to be a loud machine. My rMBP 16 is fast, but just too bulky for travel. It get's loud, but the fan noise is pleasant vs higher pitch fans. I guess I'll just cancel my loaded MBA i7 order and just wait for the rMBP 13-14 update...
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