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thadoggfather

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 1, 2007
15,539
16,253
Just curious,

I have no interest in upgrading to a 2013 air anyways but I was just wondering how much quicker the 2013 13" base is relative to the 2011 13" base because that's what I have.

I think battery life is the main difference, and PCIe SSD is supposedly quite a bit faster. But for what I'm doing, not sure I'd notice the difference besides benchmarking.

I hope to ride my laptop out for a long time.

Also is it true they aren't as well constructed as before? Thought I read somewhere the shell is thinner to accommodate a slightly thicker battery.
 

falconeight

Guest
Apr 6, 2010
1,866
2
Just have someone hand you your old air but tell them to tell you its a 2013. You won't know the difference.
 

calvol

macrumors 6502a
Feb 3, 2011
995
4
You won't see much difference in performance unless you're doing video encoding/decoding tasks due to the hd5000 > hd3000. Otherwise, apps may open 1/2 second faster. Not worth it for me, keeping my 2010 13 Air couple more years at least, until the screen is upgraded to IPS or IGZO.
 

Mezmorizor

macrumors member
Jul 1, 2013
33
1
Other than battery life it looks and feels the same.

And the CPU is more efficient(granted that'll mostly show up in battery life), the SSD is faster, significantly better for light gaming, faster wifi, and the microphone works better.
 

falconeight

Guest
Apr 6, 2010
1,866
2
And the CPU is more efficient(granted that'll mostly show up in battery life), the SSD is faster, significantly better for light gaming, faster wifi, and the microphone works better.

I don't notice a difference. Feels exactly the same, even when encoding video its still as noisy and slow. I still love my air its just other than battery life I see no difference.
 

Booji

macrumors 6502a
Nov 17, 2011
790
516
Tokyo
I went from a 2011 13" i7/4GB/256 to a 2013 11" i5/8GB/256 and really can't tell the difference in performance at all. Like the others who have responded, I don't do video encoding or anything like that.

So the real reason to upgrade to 2013 is the battery life, which is really amazing. I can easily get 10+ hours on the 2013 11" and while I was lucky to get 5 on the 2011 13". Battery anxiety is a thing of the past!
 

Yggbert

macrumors regular
Jul 22, 2011
158
16
I know this is an old thread but I feel the only people that should be upgrading are the ones that are often away from an outlet or if you have a 11", because the battery life on the 11" model has sucked since 2011.

I'm hoping to get a few more years out of my 2011 13", it'll be the first time I haven't changed laptop once a year. Superb machines!

and I regularly get around 7-8 hours on my 13", but I admit that is not constant use, it'll max out around 5-6 hours if I constantly browse the web. (but that's not an accurate way to gauge it because I'd never do that constantly without any breaks in between)
 
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