13-Inch Haswell-Powered MacBook Air With PCIe SSD Tested

MojoKid writes "In addition to the anticipated performance gains that Intel's new Haswell CPU architecture might bring to the table for their new MacBook Air, there are additional component-level upgrades that Apple baked in to their latest ultra-light notebook; namely a higher capacity 54 Whr battery and a PCI Express-based Solid State Drive (SSD). Apple still hasn't seen fit to up the ante on the MacBook Air's display, opting instead to stick with the 1440x900 TN panel carried over from the previous generation 13-inch machine, with the 11-inch variant sporting a 1366x768 native res. But in terms of performance, this is Apple's fastest Air yet, with storage throughput in excess of 700MB/sec for reads and 400MB/sec for writes, along with graphics horsepower that rivals entry level discrete GPUs, thanks to Intel's HD Graphic 5000 core in Haswell. Battery life has been improved dramatically as well, with the new Air lasting over 9 hrs on a charge, playing back 1080p video content. Apple also reduced their MSRP by $100 versus last year's model." Not too bad at around $1100. The 54Wh battery looks it improves the portability a bit.

Comments

seems the Mac premium is disappearing

[Trepidity]

That's actually a pretty competitive price. I can't find a way to configure, say, a Lenovo Ultrabook with an SSD and anywhere near comparable CPU for less than $1200.

Re:seems the Mac premium is disappearing

[OzPeter]

That's actually a pretty competitive price. I can't find a way to configure, say, a Lenovo Ultrabook with an SSD and anywhere near comparable CPU for less than $1200.

IMHO the "Mac Premium" has always been overstated for things like the Air. Yes the computing power per $ ratio may be lower than for competitors - but only when you don't take form factor into account. Every time a competitor produces an Air apparent in a similar form factor the price comes in about the same.

Re:seems the Mac premium is disappearing

[Rockoon]

The problem is that Apple's lineup doesn't update as frequently as ***every competitor combined***, so people like to bitch nine months after launch that an Apple computer is overpriced.

No, the problem is that the price doesnt update as frequently as every other competitor.

You are arguing a straw man right now. Nobody complained that Apple doesnt update their Air feature set more frequently. The complaint continues to be that Apple will try to sell this ultrabook at the current price well beyond the point where competitors have much nicer solutions at much lower prices.

The proof is quite simple:

If you purchased an 11.6" Macbook Air 30 days ago, it cost you $1100 but what was inside was a 1.7ghz i5-3317U, 128GB SSD, 4GB DDR3, with a 1366x768 display.

These specific features are common in ultrabooks, but for the same money you can have an upgrade:

Same price (little lower actually), 1.7ghz i5-3317U, 128GB SSD, 4GB DDR3, 11.6" 1920x1080 touch screen, convertible.

How about a faster CPU too, 1.8ghz i5-3337U, 128GB SSD, 4GB DDR3, 11.6" 1920x1080 touch screen, convertible.

Wow, its $100 cheaper!, 1.8ghz i5-3337U, 128GB SSD, 8GB DDR3, 11.6" 1920x1080 touch screen, convertible.

The Apple Premium remained in full effect for ultrabook shoppers last month, and will be again be in full effect a month from now too.

Re:seems the Mac premium is disappearing

[rsmith-mac]

For the base model. Just don't select any upgrades. Especially don't select RAM upgrades. Apple charges $100 to upgrade from 4GB to 8GB of RAM... so effectively $100 for 4GB. You can get 8GB of brand name (Corsair, G.Skill, Crucial...) laptop ram at RETAIL for less than $70.

Note that the Airs have their DDR3L memory soldered directly onto the motherboard to save space. You can't buy aftermarket memory for those models, so this advice is out of date at best.

I have one ...

[gander666]

And I love it. I get about 2 - 3 days of average use out of the battery (home use, after work, on the couch, 3 - 4 hours each night). I get an honest 12 hours from the battery with normal use. Snappy, and very usable. I thought I would miss my macbook pro, but I really don't.

Commercials again?

[fey000]

I thought I had disabled ads.

Re:Apple only do Mid range

[OzPeter]

IMHO the "Mac Premium"

Mac is "mid range" for exciting premium products you have to look at companies like google with the Pixel

Umm .. I'd suggest that you don't understand what is meant by "mac premium".

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/,

The Chromebook is not in the same league as an Air .. they perform two different functions. If you don't have an internet connection then the Chromebook is somewhat crippled, whereas the Air is stand alone.

this low resolution laptop so electronics is not cutting it. no wonder Apple have had drops of 22%; 2; and 7% over the last three quarters...and the reason they are not selling is not the iPad which is down -14%.

I'm not disagreeing that Apple needs to pick up the pace, however those drops can be explained by commoditizing of the market, not that Apples products are suddenly inferior.

Re:Nobody is buying these

[Guspaz]

The Mac Air has 56% marketshare in the ultraportable segment as of July 1st (http://bgr.com/2013/07/01/macbook-air-market-share/). So while you claim that "nobody is buying these", sales figures instead prove that "most people are buying these".

Re:Overpriced Apple

[Jerslan]

Apple's Strategy has never been Sales Growth (as that's not a sustainable long-term strategy). It has always been to make quality products that customers will pay a premium for. This strategy dug the company out from near bankruptcy and molded it into the industry power-house it is today. They don't need to have more than a 50% Market Share in order to make a ton of money and they don't need their profits to grow every quarter. The fact that they still had a VERY profitable quarter compared to most of their competitors should be evidence enough of that.

Re:Except they don't

[OzPeter]

Chrome OS does not require an internet connection

I said crippled, not dead. And from the link you supplied Storage:

One terabyte Google Drive cloud storage for three years1
32GB solid state drive (64GB on LTE model)2

Once you have no network connection that 32Gb is really going to get you a long way </sarcasm>. The Airs come with a minimum of 128Gb of flash and you can spec them out from Apple all the way up to 512Gb .. so once again .. they are different beasts with different design considerations.