Review and tests of the new MacBook Air (2013)

Good afternoon, users of Habrahabr. I want to share my joy: two weeks ago I became the owner of the brand new MacBook Air MD761, one of those same models on the Intel Haswell processor. Sin - took thanks to the tricks of the apple company. And the laptop was praised: it’s 12 hours of work, and is 15% more powerful and SSDs are superfast ...

Two weeks have passed and now I am ready to bring to court everything that I have experienced with this ultrabook.

Review itself



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So, the article will cover all the new things that “stuck” Apple in the MacBook Air 2013.

SSD

Firstly, these are the ultra-fast SSDs that Samsung now make. But few people know that they are also made by SanDisk, so when you buy yourself a 2013 MacBook Air, you play roulette, since it is impossible to find out what you got. I was lucky - I got Samsung, which gives out 700 MB / s for reading and writing. SanDisk gives 700 for reading and only 300-400 for writing.



In practice, such a fast SSD does not really feel like if you use your laptop to surf the net or watch movies (not AVI Lossless, of course).

Wi-Fi 802.11ac

The new data transfer standard allows several times to increase the speed that 802.11n offered. Why is this needed? Of course, this is a reserve for the future, but now I have nothing to check this speed on. My home operator, for which I pay 900 rubles / month. promises a speed of 100 Mbps, as a result I get 15 Mbps. What can we talk about? (It's time to change the operator, by the way)

The only application now is a bundle with the new TimeCapsule (the review of which you rejected so quickly on Habré). A MacBook Air paired with a “time capsule” made a copy of the system (25 GB) in 15 minutes. Impressive.

Intel Haswell and runtime

Finally we come to the most interesting. Apple has announced that the new Air 13 'will run 12 hours, and the Air 11' 9 hours.

In practice, such numbers were obtained (I tested only a 13-inch model on Core i5 1.3 GHz)

- Movie (H.264, 1080p ~ 7 GB, MplayerX) at 70% brightness, 100% sound in headphones: 11.5 hours
- Skype, Chrome, music without headphones, periods of Photoshop CC at 100% brightness: 7-8 hours

In my opinion, the result is more than impressive. This is not worth any discussion; Haswell is truly a revolution that finally gives the runtime of the laptop that I have wanted for so long.

Of course, other factors also influenced autonomy: more “careful” RAM, the LPDDR3 standard (DDR3L is used in 2012 models), and a lower processor frequency. Air with Core i5 now has a frequency of only 1.3 GHz (1.7 GHz in 2012 models with Ivy Bridge), and 1.7 GHz with Core i7 (2.0 GHz in 2012 models with Ivy Bridge). But I want to assure, and it's not scary. In Turbo Boost mode, the i5 accelerates to 2.6 GHz, and the i7 to 3.3 GHz.

Geekbench 2 results are as follows:

MacBook Air 2012:

11 'i5 - 5600
11' i7 - 6500
13 'i5 - 6000
13' i7 - 6700

MacBook Air 2013:

11 'i5 - 6600
11' i7 - 8100
13 'i5 - 6700
13' i7 - 8200

Regarding Air 2013 Core i5 - I confirm 6700 points in Geekbench 2

Other checks:

Launch Photoshop CC - 3 seconds
Launch Photoshop CS6 - 2 seconds
Cold Start MacBook - 13 seconds
Launch After Effects CS6 - 8 seconds

Problems of the new Air

Unfortunately, not everything is so good in the new Air, there are problems. A pity ...

Firstly, this is a sensational problem with Wi-Fi. It really is, but it manifests itself in different ways. My internet stops working every 1-3 hours. You just need to reconnect the Wi-Fi connection and everything returns to its place. My friend also bought Air 2013 (MD760), his Wi-Fi does not work at all. The only good news is that the problem is solved by updating to 10.8.5 DP or Mavericks DP.

Secondly, the "jumping sound." When watching movies, the sound level itself changes by 30-40%, this is also a software error, and in 10.8.5 I also do not observe it.

And thirdly, spontaneous entry into sleep mode. Perhaps this problem applies only to my laptop, as the magnet may be buggy, but there is a problem and it occurs, fortunately, not often. Once every 1-2 days.

Conclusion



2013 MacBook Air is undoubtedly a breakthrough thing that deserves the attention of anyone who is looking for a worthy replacement for one of their old MacBooks or laptops on Windows (if you want to join the Apple camp). Before this newcomer, I used the MacBook Pro MD313 (mid 2011), and before it, the 2010 Air. I want to say that I will not return to Pro'shka. Firstly, I had to put the SSD there manually instead of the drive, so that the computer really worked fine, and secondly after Air - this is not so portable. But there are pluses - I used OS X 10.6.8 on it, which allowed me to work on my laptop for 5 hours and did not have unnecessary “whistle-blowers”, such as a notification center or “rubber” animation, which I disabled through the terminal in 10.8.4.

The 13th Air is a hardy, thin and pretty nifty laptop, and in my opinion is worth the money. I bought the MD761 model for 47,000 rubles, I am satisfied with the purchase.