MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro: The battle of Apple’s 13-inch notebooks

Broadwell Refresh

In early March, Apple updated its MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display notebooks with Intel’s latest fifth generation “Broadwell” processors. Broadwell is the codename for Intel’s 14-nm shrink of its Haswell architecture and is claimed to bring about significant gains in performance and power.

13-inch notebooks seem to be the sweet spot for many people as it offers the best combination of performance, portability and display size, and Apple has two very popular 13-inch models - the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Despite their names and its legacy products bearing the same names, the two updated models are actually more similar than you may think. Now, opting for the MacBook Air does not necessarily mean sacrificing on performance as you may think; likewise, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display is not as unwieldy as its name might lead you to believe. Today, we are going to take a close look at both 13-inch notebooks and find out which is the best 13-inch notebook in Apple’s lineup. Let’s begin with the MacBook Air.

13-inch MacBook Air

If there was a notebook that could claim to be "iconic", it would definitely have to be the MacBook Air. Who can forget the instance where Steve Jobs pulled the MacBook Air out of the envelope all those years ago? Come to think of it, it has already been seven years since the MacBook Air was released and its design has not changed much. In 2010, Apple updated the design slightly to give it a sharper wedge-shaped case, but that was it. So if you have ever handled a MacBook Air in the past five years, you’ll know what to expect.

That said, the MacBook Air’s design is still fairly attractive, but it is no longer the thinnest nor lightest. At its thickest point, it measures 17mm, and this tapers down to an incredible 3mm. In terms of weight, it tips the scales at 1.35kg - not featherlight by modern standards, but still pretty decent for a notebook machined out of solid aluminum.

The keyboard and trackpad are still the same, which is to say they are good. The keyboard is pleasant to use for a machine of this thickness and Apple’s trackpads are still the best by far and it is no different with this latest MacBook Air. Accuracy and responsiveness is first-class and multi-finger gestures worked without a hitch.

The 13.3-inch display is sadly still the same TN panel that puts out a resolution of only 1440 x 900 pixels. This is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the MacBook Air given that there are no shortage of comparable ultraportable notebooks from PC manufacturers sporting higher resolution displays. For example, the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro and Dell XPS 13 are both 13-inch notebooks that boast QHD+ displays of 3200 x 1800 pixels - more than four times the pixels of the MacBook Air. If its any consolation, the display is still pretty crisp and the viewing angles and colors are still good and amongst the best in the business.

The biggest changes are under the hood. Most importantly, the new MacBook Air is powered by Intel’s newest fifth generation “Broadwell” processors. All models in the MacBook Air line-up, both 11-inch and 13-inch, will get Intel’s new dual-core Core i5-5250U (3MB L3 cache) processor that runs at 1.6GHz. This particular processor features Intel’s new Intel HD Graphics 6000 integrated GPU, which has 48 execution units and is positioned towards the higher end of the spectrum in Intel’s integrated GPU hierarchy. It will be interesting to see how this new integrated GPU fares in our benchmarking section. Users who want more performance can choose to equip their MacBook Air the optional Core i7-5650 processor (2.2GHz, 3MB L3 cache), but that comes at a considerable price premium.

Unfortunately, the new models are still stuck with 4GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 memory as standard, though Apple will offer upgrades to 8GB but at a pretty hefty premium. On the bright side, the new MacBook Air gets upgraded PCIe-based SSDs that now use four PCIe lanes instead of two for even faster storage performance. Users can pick from models offering 128GB and 256GB storage, and for those who want more, an optional upgrade to 512GB is available. Our review unit came with 256GB of storage.

As before, the latest MacBook Air has two USB 3.0 ports, and the lone Thunderbolt port has been upgraded to the newer Thunderbolt 2.0 standard, which combines the two 10Gbps bi-directional channels of Thunderbolt 1.0 into a single 20Gbps bi-directional channel. The additional bandwidth is useful for professionals who want to stream 4K videos and write that same video to disk at the same time. The MacBook Air also has a SDXC card reader and a headphone jack. The MacBook Air has supported the wireless 802.11ac standard since 2013 and the latest model is no different. It offers data transfer rates of up to 867Mbps with a compatible 802.11ac router.

13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display

Alongside the MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (hereby referred to simply as the MacBook Pro) also retained the same design and chassis but received numerous hardware upgrades. Like the MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro should feel familiar to anyone who has ever handled one since 2012 - the year when they launched the 'slim' 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display.

Though its design is getting stale, there can be no faulting the MacBook Pro’s impeccable build quality. It feels super solid and remains to be the yardstick by which all other 13-inch notebooks are judged, plus it is also relatively compact and portable considering the hardware it packs. It is only 18mm thick and weighs just under 1.6kg.

The Retina display continues to output a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, giving the MacBook Pro a pixel density count of 227 pixels per inch. Though this means it is outclassed by newer models with QHD+ displays - such as Dell's new XPS 13 - the fact is with pixel count approaching such high numbers, most people will be hard pressed to tell the difference, unless your face is pressed up next to the screen. Colors are brilliant and viewing angles, both horizontal and vertical, are very good.

The keyboard is the same, which is to say that they are nice to use. But the trackpad is the all new Force Touch trackpad. On first impressions, the new Force Touch trackpad looks just like any other Apple trackpad that came before it, it even feels the same since its made out of glass. But then you push and you realize that it doesn’t click. The trackpad stays resolutely still and only budges slightly after the firmest of push. You power up the MacBook Pro up and suddenly, the trackpad clicks just like you expect it to, which leaves you wondering, "what the heck just happened?"

The Force Touch trackpad actually features sensors which detect your inputs and triggers electromagnets underneath the trackpad to vibrate the sheet of glass that is the trackpad. This vibration generates a haptic feedback that leads you into thinking that it is a click. Apple calls this its "Taptic Engine", which you might have heard of from the Apple Watch. Ah, haptic feedback, you might have experienced before on numerous other devices such as phones, but let us tell you, the haptic feedback from the Force Touch trackpad is unlike any you have experienced. It feels like an actual click and it even makes an audible "click" sound when you use on it.

This special trackpad was actually specially designed for the new super-thin MacBook. The MacBook’s slim chassis necessitated a design that did not take up much space as it would have added to its thickness. But more importantly for MacBook Pro users, the Force Touch trackpad opens up new ways to interact with their device. To activate a Force Click, simply give it a firm click and you can use it to quickly do contextual tasks. For example, force clicking on a word can quickly show the definition of it. When browsing, one could force click on a link to preview them. And during video playback, force clicking on the progress bar can speed up playback depending on the amount of pressure exerted. It is nifty that’s for sure, but it is dependent on app support, and right now, not many apps outside of Apple’s own support it.

As for other hardware upgrades, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro models are now powered by Intel’s new Broadwell processors. As usual, Apple is offering three off-the-shelf variants of the MacBook Pro and these will use either the Core i5-5257U processor (2.7GHz, 3MB L3 cache) or the Core i5-5287U processor (2.9GHz, 3MB L3 cache), which are both dual-core parts. Apple also offers users the choice of equipping their unit with the top-of-the-line dual-core Core i7-5557U processor (3.1GHz, 4MB L3 cache), but again at a premium.

Our review unit came with the dual-core Intel Core i5-5257U processor (3MB L3 cache) that runs at a pretty high clock speed of 2.7GHz. It is also one of the few new dual-core Broadwell processors to feature the new Intel Iris Graphics 6100 integrated GPU. Like the Intel HD Graphics 6000 integrated GPU powering the MacBook Air, this particular model also has 48 execution units, but because of the Core i5-5257U’s higher TDP (27W vs. 15W), the Intel Iris Graphics 6100 integrated GPU can offer better graphics performance by achieving a higher maximum clock speed of 1.1GHz - the Intel HD Graphics 6000 tops out at 1GHz.

Claimed battery life is up one hour to an impressive 10 hours and most of this can be attributed to the new Broadwell processor, even if the new model does have a marginally larger capacity battery. Battery capacity is now up to 74.9Wh from 71.8Wh, which is staggering for a notebook of its size.

Apple has offered 8GB of memory as standard on all 13-inch MacBook Pros since last year and this practice has been carried forward. However, the latest MacBook Pros are outfitted with faster and more energy efficient 1866MHz LPDDR3 memory. And like the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro’s PCIe-based SSDs have also been improved and use four PCIe lanes instead of two for faster transfer speeds. Users can choose from off-the-shelf models with 128GB, 256GB and 512GB of storage, with a 1TB option also available for users with capacious storage needs. Our review unit has 256GB of storage.

Connectivity remains unchanged so the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro still gets two USB 3.0 ports and two Thunderbolt 2 ports as well as a single HDMI port and an SDXC card reader. 802.11ac of up to three spatial streams is supported so a maximum speed of 1300Mbps is possible if you have the right router.

Performance Benchmarking

We have installed Windows 8 on both machines and will be testing them using our usual suite of benchmarks. This will allow us to peg its performances against comparable Windows notebooks that we have reviewed. At this point it is worth mentioning that the latest 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks will drop Bootcamp support for Windows 7 and will only support Windows 8. We have also included results from the recently reviewed Dell XPS 13 and other comparable notebooks such as the ASUS Transformer Book T300 Chi and Microsoft Surface Pro 3.

• PCMark 8
• 3DMark 2013
• Tomb Raider
• Far Cry 2

Here is a quick overview of how the two 13-inch Apple notebooks matches up against each other and also other comparable Windows notebooks.

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PCMark 8

Bearing in mind that the MacBook Pro has a faster processor, speedier and more RAM than the MacBook Air, is it any wonder that its scores on PCMark 8 was consistently better? The gulf in performance varies across the different workloads, but it was most noticeable on the two “Apps” workloads. When running Microsoft Office, the MacBook Pro’s scores were about 15% greater; and on Adobe, its performance advantage increased to an even greater 31%. In fact, the MacBook Pro’s scores are only matched by the Acer Aspire R13, which has very high specifications, including a high-end Core i7-4510U processor and a storage system that is made up of two PCIe-based SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration.

3DMark 2013

We had high hopes of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro because they were using Intel’s latest integrated graphics solutions and they did not disappoint. The MacBook Air’s scores were significantly better than the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 and also the Acer Aspire R13, both of which are equipped with older Intel HD Graphics 4400 integrated GPUs. However, the undisputed leader here is the MacBook Pro and its new Intel Iris Graphics 6100 integrated GPU. On average, its scores were about 13% greater than the MacBook Air’s. Also note that it's about 25% better than the Intel HD Graphics 5500 (also a new generation integrated graphics engine) that's found the new Dell XPS 13 ultraportable.

Far Cry 2

Moving on to real-world gaming benchmarks, it is encouraging to see that both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro could comfortably achieve playable frame rates on Far Cry 2 at a respectable Full-HD resolution even if it is only at “Medium” graphics settings. Looking at the results of the other notebooks, you can see that it was previously not possible with Intel’s integrated GPUs. The MacBook Pro was about 17% faster overall than the MacBook Air. The other result worth noting comes from the Dell XPS 13, which also managed above 30 frames per second. It is powered by the new Intel Core i7-5500U, which has the new Intel HD Graphics 5500 integrated GPU.

Tomb Raider

Despite the encouraging performance on Far Cry 2, it looks like it will still be some time before Intel’s integrated GPUs can handle modern games at Full-HD resolutions. Though the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro achieved double digit frame rates, they were far from playable. On the bright side, the improvement in performance over Haswell’s Intel HD Graphics integrated GPUs is very significant. For example, the MacBook Pro was about 50% faster than the Acer Aspire R13, and even the less powerful MacBook Air was about 30% faster.

Battery Life & Power Consumption

The MacBook Air and MacBook Pro recorded the longest battery lives of any notebook of its class that we have tested. Coincidentally, both machines came in at 323 minutes or five hours and 23 minutes, which is very impressive considering our battery test regime consists of a wide range of tasks including video editing and gaming. That said, it's worth noting also that the two machines also have very large battery capacities. The MacBook Air’s 54Wh is surpassed only by the Acer Aspire R13’s 61Wh battery unit, whereas the MacBook Pro’s whopping 74.9Wh battery rivals those found in larger 15 and 17-inch notebooks.

Still, a large battery alone is not going to cut it and Apple’s latest notebooks are truly power efficient. The MacBook Air power consumption works out to just over 10W, which is comparable to the Core M-powered Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro. On the other hand, the MacBook Pro’s figure of 13.91W is even lower than the Dell XPS 13 and substantially lower than Acer Aspire R13. Clearly, the new Broadwell processors have delivered on Intel's claims of improved power efficiency.

Portability Index

Our Portability Index factors in battery life, weight and volume so you can see which notebook is the most worthwhile to carry around. Even though the MacBook Air has been surpassed by thinner and lighter notebooks, its outstanding battery life allowed it achieve a respectable ratio of 3.18 on our Portability Index. This means it is just about as portable as the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 and only very slightly behind the extremely compact Dell XPS 13. The MacBook Pro fared well too thanks to its long battery life, and its score of 2.753 is miles ahead of the Acer Aspire R13, which is its closest rival in terms of performance.

Still one of the best

Apple’s latest notebooks are a testament to the company’s commitment towards creating well thought-out devices. Even though the designs of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are getting stale and out-of-date, it is hard to argue against their high build quality and usability. The chassis feels ultra sturdy and the keyboard and trackpad are still amongst the very best in the business. While many brands are catching up in this area, Apple is still the yardstick by which all other brands are judged, and the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro remain to be finely crafted notebooks built to the highest standard.

On the performance front, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are amongst the most competitive notebooks around. Apple’s choice of processors is astute and it gave the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro a significant advantage when it came to graphics performance, where the two notebooks comfortably outpaced the competition. What’s more, all of this has come at little or no cost to battery life and power efficiency, which is really impressive. Furthermore, the fact that both machines are equipped with fast and power-efficient LPDDR memory and have ultra-fast PCIe-based SSDs that utilize four PCIe lanes instead of the more common two found in other notebooks is just icing on the cake.

Taken as a whole, it is hard to fault Apple’s latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Our harshest criticism against them would probably be for their aging design, and the MacBook Air’s outdated display resolution, otherwise, the two notebooks are excellent. Apple offers a couple of different variants of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro and we have summarized their key differences and pricing in the table below.

With prices beginning at S$1328 for the MacBook Air and S$1688 for the MacBook Pro, the two notebooks are even quite attractively priced. For example, Dell’s entry-level XPS 13 comes in at S$1699, but uses a less powerful processor, has lesser memory and a lower resolution display than the equivalently-priced entry-level MacBook Pro. And if you opt for the top-of-the-line off-the-shelf models, the MacBook Air tops out at S$1618 whereas the MacBook Pro maxes out at S$2388, which is still very reasonable in the grand scheme of things.

Pro > Air

Moving on, if you are in the market for a new 13-inch notebook from Apple, our pick would be the MacBook Pro. Though the MacBook Air does about everything the MacBook Pro can, but at a lower cost, we feel that the MacBook Pro offers a lot more in terms of performance and features and with little drawbacks.

To begin, the MacBook Pro is clearly the better performing notebook, though it may be hard to tell from just normal usage as the MacBook Air handles most applications just as well as the MacBook Pro did. However, the results from our testing showed that the MacBook Pro is a considerably more powerful machine, thanks to its more able processor and integrated GPU. It also benefits from having not just more, but also faster memory. And performance aside, the MacBook Pro has a superior display. The Retina display is a thing of beauty, and the difference in quality between it and the MacBook Air’s display is more than just day and night. Display aside, the MacBook Pro also has better connectivity options - an extra Thunderbolt port, HDMI port, faster wireless performance - and the new and very cool Force Touch trackpad. And yet despite all of this, the MacBook Pro still offers battery life that rivals the MacBook Air. The only trade-off is the MacBook Pro’s added heft, but honestly, it is only just a tad thicker and heavier - 1mm thicker and 230g. We think most people would not mind sacrificing this for all of the MacBook Pro’s advantages.

Extreme portability used to the be the unique selling point of the MacBook Air, but the MacBook Pro has quickly caught up in the area. The MacBook Air is still lighter, yes, but the difference is no longer as significant as you may think. The display is our biggest gripe with the MacBook Air and we have been clamoring for a higher resolution display for quite some time now. Furthermore, we are also hesitant to recommend any notebook that only has 4GB of RAM as it is really the bare minimum these days. As a result of all these considerations, we have no problems recommending the MacBook Pro over the MacBook Air as it is simply one of the top 13-inch notebooks in the market today. It might be thicker and heavier than comparable notebooks, but we think the added heft is more than justified if users were to considers its performance and features.

The MacBook Air has long been the recommended notebook to get if you are just a casual user looking to browse the web, run some productivity applications and watch some videos, but as it is, it would be quite foolish if one was to overlook the MacBook Pro as a viable alternative. It might cost more, but we think the experience that it offers is more than worth it. And if portability is your key priority, there's the new ultra light and slim MacBook to keep your eyes peeled for. That notebook is just 13.1mm thick and weighs an unbelievable 920g. If you are interested in the MacBook, stay tuned as we have a review of that coming up soon.

	Click here for detailed results break-down
	Click here for detailed results break-down

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