Product Listing

Apple MacBook Air

By Zachary Chan - 13 Mar 2008

Air Testing

Air Testing

Obviously, benchmarking the MacBook Air would be a different affair from our usual Windows notebook reviews. We didn't have enough time with the MacBook Air to Boot Camp it with Windows for extended testing anyway. We were able to run some mac compatible scenarios for some performance indications. However, the only other Mac we have to compare it against is a last generation 2.2GHz MacBook Pro 15-inch (as in the Merom based ones, not the just-launched Penryn models). Due to the gap in specifications, the MacBook Pro will only serve as a gauge as to where the MacBook Air stands.

Notebook Comparison Table
Specifications/Notebook Apple MacBook Air Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz, 4MB L2 cache Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz, 4MB L2 cache
Chipset Intel GM965 Intel PM965
FSB 800MHz 800MHz
Memory 2GB DDR2-667 2GB DDR2-6667
HDD 80GB IDE - 4200RPM 200GB SATA - 5400RPM
Video Intel GMA X3100 144MB (shared) NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 128MB

Cinebench 10

With a 600MHz gap, the MacBook Air looks pretty slow when compared to the MacBook Pro in terms of Cinbench's CPU scoring. In real time, the gap between the two notebooks was around two minutes for both single and multi-threaded tests. As for the OpenGL graphics benchmark, it is only expected that the GeForce 8600M GT on the MacBook Pro would trounce the onboard Intel GMA X3100.

H.264 Transcoding

For a real world scenario that requires some processing power, we use iTunes to compress and encode a QuickTime movie using the 'Convert Selection for iPod' option. The file chosen for compression was a 197MB H.264 encoded 1080p QuickTime Trailer of Iron Man. The MacBook Air took a 4min 06sec complete the conversion, while the MacBook Pro managed the same conversion in 3min 18sec.

DVD Battery Drain Test

For our usual DVD battery drain tests, we turn monitor brightness and audio down 50%, disable onboard features such as WiFi and Bluetooth, and power saving features to prevent the notebook from shutting down early. For the MacBook Air however, we were unable to run our usual DVD drain test because we were not supplied with a SuperDrive. Instead, we looped a standard definition Quicktime movie from the HDD. While the results are comparable, HDD looping does drain the battery faster. The MacBook Pro's results were collected from a normal DVD drain test.

Compared together, both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro were almost similarly matched. While a three hour run-time for the powerful MacBook Pro is decently impressive, the MacBook Air comes off short. This is much less than Apple's five hour claim, but we do expect battery life to last at least four hours or more with a less intensive usage model, such as surfing the net or office productivity. Still, if you look at the power consumption chart, the MacBook Air sucks less energy on average, but because of its smaller battery size (37 watt-hour) compared to the MacBook Pro (60 watt-hour), we still end up with similar battery performance overall.

Portability Index

The Portability Index is our own little algorithm intended to determine just how 'portable' a notebook is, taking into account details like weight, volume and battery life. Since the Portability Index is a universal calculation, we've also included some recent ultra-portable notebooks we've tested just to put some light as to where the MacBook Air stands as far as being the 'thinnest' notebook in the world.

From the graph below, the MacBook Air is in excellent shape as one of the highest portability ratings we've come across in quite a while. So, while it may seem that you get short changed in battery life compared to a full-fledged MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air is really a much more ideal travel companion, though it is still no match for the Sony VAIO VGN-TZ18GN .

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