The 2013 MacBook Air Reviews to date either focus on the fantastic, all-day battery performance or the purported lack of new features. Yet, there’s more to Apple’s latest ultrabook revision, which also packs impressive disk and processor performance.
• [F]or anyone who’s willing to lose some features to travel light, these new models show how much a single improvement can boost a computer’s appeal. These were already excellent ultraportable notebooks; now they’re excellent ultraportable notebooks that push battery life to new, productivity-changing heights — Harry McCracken, Time.
• [W]hen I showed the new Air to the people at [the coffee shop], they didn’t look impressed — they’ve seen a lot of MacBooks come in and out of their shop. But when I told them about the battery life, they gathered around the familiar-looking machine with interest. “That’s longer than we stay open,” said one of the baristas, with a note in his voice somewhere between admiration and concern. The new Air is the first of a dramatic new breed of computer — it lets you set up a mobile office for a full day without concern for power — Nilay Patel, The Verge.
Source: tldtoday
• New Intel fourth-gen CPUs help the updated MacBook Air achieve amazing battery life. The multitouch trackpad is still the industry’s best, and even better, the 13-inch MacBook Air now starts at $100 less than the previous model — Dan Ackerman, News.com.
• The new MacBook Air isn’t a dramatic change, but it is a very good one. I’ve fallen in love with Apple’s Retina displays, so if I have one complaint about the computer it’s that there’s no ultra-high resolution display, but incorporating that kind of screen in this generation would’ve likely meant trading a big chunk of that new battery life away, and also increasing the price tag by around $400-500. For those who value the portability, flexibility and economy of the Air above all, the 2013 edition definitely hits all the right notes — Darrell Etherinton, TechCrunch.
• However, in performance terms, it’s comparable if-not-better than its heftier 13-inch MacBook Pro cousin. In short, we’ve come away thinking that the world’s best laptop just got better. When OSX Mavericks is available for (a presumable) upgrade later in the year, introducing more portable iCloud features, it might make the decision for those teetering on the Windows 8/Mac fence much easier — Luke Peters, T3.
As noted in the tidtoday (video) review, the 2013 MacBook Air offers excellent performance characteristics, especially on the SSD storage front — 700+ MBps read speed is impressive and better than most desktops, PC or Mac.
Obviously, Apple will release Haswell-powered MacBook Pros, iMacs, etc latter this year. In the meantime and/or if portability is your killer feature, the 2013 MacBook Air offers surprisingly good performance and absolutely top-shelf battery life.
That said, many expect this already superlative battery performance to get even better with the release of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, which includes advanced power management features like Compressed Memory, App Nap and Timer Coalescing. Another 25 percent increase? That’s not out of the question…
What’s your take?
Image: Highlight Press