Anandtech review of MBA 11" & 13"- MUST READ!

[unagimiyagi]

The battery life numbers that he posted are impressive, but what you should really look at is the heavy usage scenarios. Those are more realistic.

I doubt that for the vast majority of people they will ever even sniff 11 hours on the 13" mba.

I still maintain that the 13" mba's battery life is more like 5 hours, and the 11 incher is about 3.5.

I use the 13" mbp 2010 and its 10 hour life is about 5.5. A 17" is about 4.5. This agrees with Engadget's review of the 17". For the 11.6", they said about 3:44 at pcmag.

My use cases are flash blocker, just surfing, no videos, word processing, email, some chatting. No itunes. I do use at 80% brightness or else the reflections on the **** screen are ridiculous. There is no way that anyone gets the higher end of the times that Anandtech is reporting unless you want to just stare at your screen. Under load, the macs are not any better than any other OS. Under idle, probably. If you want an idea about battery life, look at the watt hours of the battery that's inside. A 35 watt hour battery for the 11.6" is almost the same as the old 13" mba, and I say we're looking at 3.5 hours. In fact, in the store that's exactly what the 11.6" said. There are no miracles that Apple is pulling here.

 

[gwsat]

Loved the review. Pointed out strengths and weaknesses evenly, it seems. I'm pleasantly surprised by the SSD's tested perfomance as well.

The big question is, will Anand rerun all the tests on a 2.13GHz MBA?

I hope that somebody does a comprehensive review comparing the 1.86Ghz 13 inch MBA with the 2.13Ghz model. In the best of all possible worlds I would also like for such a review to assess how both models handled running Windows 7 and Windows apps in tandem with OS X apps using Fusion 3.1 in Unity mode. That won't happen, I suspect, but hope springs eternal.

 

[thinkdesign]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIEMobile6.0) Sprint T7380)

Another intresting source of an article doing more than just lazy-writer's gigahertz-counting (a new term, based on "features counters") about the new Airs...

Today's daringfireball.net has a link to:

"Ben Brooks makes the case for the MacBook Air as a primary computer."

 

[unethical]

usb 3.0

I don't understand why they didn't put USB 3.0 on the Air (or any other mac products). I assume they don't want to run the battery down, but it's not connected 24/7.

It's the ONLY reason I'm not buying it. I'm using USB 3 on a PC with USB 3 external drives, and it's surprisingly fast.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

 

[maflynn]

I don't understand why they didn't put USB 3.0 on the Air

Because intel has yet to produce the chipsets for usb 3.0 and are instead embracing light peak which apple on board for as well.

 

[unethical]

Because intel has yet to produce the chipsets for usb 3.0 and are instead embracing light peak which apple on board for as well.

aha, you're right. I was reading up on light peak a few days ago. never thought of it as being used in the masses. thought it was more for servers, etc.

thanks for the info.

 

[njsa04playa]

I always enjoy reading stuff from anandtech, they have great articles and this review is the same.

Of course I love this quote from the review


I'm castigated on the various apple forums when I state the 11" MBA is a netbook, but yet I'm not alone in that thinking.

i sw a netbook yesterday bought for 350... chiclet keyboard, 250 gb hdd and 500 gb online data storage...3 gb ram and unfortunately atom, the trackpad was actually quite spasious. I was quite impressed with this netbook it is a lot cheaper and windows is only half bad. hOwever i am typing this on a macbook pro 13 inch.. .
Apple should have half data storage in the cloud half on hd.... 256 maybe on bottth. That would be the dream come true, that is where the future is leading uss

 

[miata]

I don't understand why they didn't put USB 3.0 on the Air (or any other mac products). I assume they don't want to run the battery down, but it's not connected 24/7.

It's the ONLY reason I'm not buying it. I'm using USB 3 on a PC with USB 3 external drives, and it's surprisingly fast.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

Great question. I would imagine that that Apple won't release a "Pro Air" model until they can do USB 3 to replace or complement Firewire 800.

 

[WardC]

I just spent an hour and a half reading this entire review.

Anandtech failed to include the 2.13GHz rev C MBA w/128GB SSD in their benchmark comparison.

They also failed to include the 2010 2.13GHz 13" or the 1.6GHz 2010 11.6" in their benchmarks. These are important figures to have, and from a professional standpoint, I would have waited to test these machines before publishing their review, so they could include the full range of spec benchmarks in their reviews. Readers want to see these benchmarks too!!! It would be great to see how the new 2.13 stacks up to the old 2.13, etc.

I would have liked to see how the 11.6" 1.6GHz configuration compared to the old 2.13GHz with the SSD, if the new 1.6GHz was actually faster or not. All we had to compare it to was the 2008 model of the 1.86GHz config with the hard drive.

Overall a good thorough review, I liked reading it, I would just have liked to see the full range of benchmarks tested and posted for all configurations so we can see how they all stacked up. Maybe they couldn't get their hands on the 2.13GHz or 1.6GHz at the time they tested, and wanted to get this review out immediately. Maybe a more comprehensive benchmark of the machines including all configurations could be posted at a later time.

 

[orpheus1120]

They only reviewed these models as these were the only models given out by Apple to the media for reviews after the keynote. It would be silly not to review them as it is than to wait for all the models to arrive at their doorsteps when rival review sites are all practically doing MBA reviews right now.

Understand?

 

[WardC]

Don't worry, Macworld has just benchmarked and tested all the configurations, including the higher end processor configs with 4GB of RAM:

http://www.macworld.com/article/155224/2010/10/macbookairbto_benchmarks.html

 

[MikePA]

Anandtech failed to include the 2.13GHz rev C MBA w/128GB SSD in their benchmark comparison.

They also failed to include the 2010 2.13GHz 13"

or the 1.6GHz 2010 11.6"

How many MBAs do you expect them to buy, or try and borrow, before they do their tests?

 

[miata]

Don't worry, Macworld has just benchmarked and tested all the configurations, including the higher end processor configs with 4GB of RAM:

http://www.macworld.com/article/155224/2010/10/macbookairbto_benchmarks.html

Good stuff, but they compare MBAs to MBPs with HDDs. I like the way AnandTech used SSDs for a real Apples to Apples comparison. Did I just say that?

 

[orpheus1120]

Don't worry, Macworld has just benchmarked and tested all the configurations, including the higher end processor configs with 4GB of RAM:

http://www.macworld.com/article/155224/2010/10/macbookairbto_benchmarks.html

Oh please, never compare this one-page benchmark charts with what Anandtech had done. Macworld has never been reputated as being a technically insightful review site. Their tests have never been really in depth. This review of theirs looks like a halfhearted beat-the-deadline job at best.

 

[ender21]

How many MBAs do you expect them to buy, or try and borrow, before they do their tests?

Any and all possible. Review units of most products do exist. And if it's true that Apple only released a certain config for review units, fair enough. I'm glad a reputable site like Anand got their hands on anything to come up with a thorough review so soon. Hopefully some "ultimate" units become available for borrowing/review at some point. I can't imagine any technical review site as diverse in their product knowledge as Anandtech purchases every item they test.

Having said that, I'm not upset that they didn't include the 2.13, given the Air is barely a week old; I just hope they supplement the review with test results with the 2.13 when they can.

 

[WardC]

nevermind.

 

[hachre]

Awesome review

 

[kenwalton]

This review confirms what I've been noticing over the last couple of days: the slightest bit of flash or anything else processor-intensive trashes battery life in the 13" MBA to a much greater extent than on my MBP.

If I have the screen at 50% and do very lightweight no-flash browsing and some chat, and have most everything else closed, I can make it to 7 hours (anything over 10 is a pipe-dream in real life). This beats my 2009 15" MBP.

But if I try to use the MBA like I normally use my MBP, with Navicat, Skype, and VLC open and about a dozen or so browser windows, flash be damned, I burn threw its battery in less than three hours. It actually seems to have shorter battery life than my MBP when I'm not straining to conserve power. And I'm not talking about editing video or anything - just normal multitasking.

I'm disappointed by this.

 

[itommyboy]

Quote from Anandtech review.

Finally, someone we can all respect who isn't afraid to call it like it is. A Netbook.

Not that I think it matters RBF, but I for one have always respected your posts around here. I noticed you dropped your "netbook" from sig though?

 

[nylon]

If YouTube is where you primarily consume flash content then I recommend going to the following site to configure YouTube to use HTML5 instead. Really helps with battery life:

http://www.youtube.com/html5

 

[itommyboy]

I've always enjoyed Anandtech's write ups, and for the most part found this one useful albeit boring, as they all can be.

What most disappoints me though is the lazy benchmarking of gaming performance. It would have been nice to see the 13" MBA actual gaming #'s vs just tossing in old numbers from the last 13" MBP. Yes they are the same card, but the SSD in the Air will often allow for better results.

 

[MrBobYu]

Anandtech really did an awesome job. So far no other reviewer have been that accurate. They did an comparison from different macbook in different category and also the Dell m11x which is around the same price. The most interesting part was the gaming . I'm happy they though about the few casual gamers like us, they put the most popular game "cough" StarCraft2 "Cough" inside.

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

Not that I think it matters RBF, but I for one have always respected your posts around here. I noticed you dropped your "netbook" from sig though?

Well thanks!

Yes, another poster here convinced me that its sort of gilding the lily to call the 13.3" MBA a netbook. Its just too big and it rivals the 13" MBP in performance benchmarks. So I now consider the 13" MBA a "MBP Junior" as my signature attests.

The 11" MBA is a netbook and the best netbook money can buy at that.

 

[iRun26.2]

Well thanks!

Yes, another poster here convinced me that its sort of gilding the lily to call the 13.3" MBA a netbook. Its just too big and it rivals the 13" MBP in performance benchmarks. So I now consider the 13" MBA a "MBP Junior" as my signature attests.

The 11" MBA is a netbook and the best netbook money can buy at that.

But I bet you would NOT consider the 11" MBA a 'netbook' if that is was the version you chose to purchase...

 

[iRun26.2]

Well thanks!

Yes, another poster here convinced me that its sort of gilding the lily to call the 13.3" MBA a netbook. Its just too big and it rivals the 13" MBP in performance benchmarks. So I now consider the 13" MBA a "MBP Junior" as my signature attests.

The 11" MBA is a netbook and the best netbook money can buy at that.

The 11" version is a "MBP Junior Junior".