MBA 2013: El Cap or Sierra?

[Val-kyrie]

I have a 2012 Mac Mini and a 2013 MBA. I am currently running El Cap on my MBA but need to upgrade the OS on my Mini. I would like to keep them on the same version of macOS and will likely run it for the next year.

I have found only one thread which indicated a loss of battery life for 2013 MBAs running Sierra, so I am wondering if anyone has any further input on performance and battery life for older MBAs running Sierra?

Is it better for performance (obviously not security) to stick with El Cap or does Sierra offer comparable performance?

 

[Macdctr]

I’m running Sierra on my 2013 MBA with no issues so far. Been running it pretty much all day on a single charge before reconnecting it in the evening. Doesn’t seem to experience any battery performance issues so far...

 

[elf69]

my MBA (2012) is fine on high Sierra.
no issues.

had no issues on Sierra either.

 

[madrich]

Keep reading in the forum for High Sierra, there have been some problems.

 

[Macdctr]

Keep reading in the forum for High Sierra, there have been some problems.

When I ran High Sierra I was constantly having to deal with my storage drive running out of storage space. Never found out why this was happening but every Mac I had running High Sierra was having the same issues and I was not too thrilled with Apple's new file system APFS so I went back to HFS+ and Sierra. No more issues and am happy running Sierra for the time being...

 

[Val-kyrie]

Keep reading in the forum for High Sierra, there have been some problems.

I am aware of many issues with High Sierra. I have older hardware, so I am looking for feedback on using Sierra (not High Sierra) with older hardware, such as the MBA. I would like to avoid upgrading to Sierra only to downgrade back to El Capitan.

 

[Macdctr]

You should not have any issues running Sierra on your 2012 MacBook Mini or 2013 MBA. I'm running Sierra on my 2013 MBA with no issues whatsoever.

 

[Audit13]

I'm also running HS on a mid-2013 MBA and everything is fine.

 

[Val-kyrie]

Thank you for the feedback. I will update in the near future after I upgrade.

my MBA (2012) is fine on high Sierra.
no issues.

had no issues on Sierra either.

You should not have any issues running Sierra on your 2012 MacBook Mini or 2013 MBA. I'm running Sierra on my 2013 MBA with no issues whatsoever.

I'm also running HS on a mid-2013 MBA and everything is fine.

 

[Boyd01]

I have been running Sierra on my 2013 11"/i7/8gb MBA for about a year with no problems. I kept this machine on Mountain Lion (which was the original operating system) until upgrading to Sierra, and subjectively would say that it feels a little faster on Sierra. My battery life has definitely dropped over the years, but I'd expect that with an almost five year old computer, regardless of operating system.