Im getting ready to sell my iMac today and am using the money i get to buy a used macbook air. Money is an issue so a new one is out of the question. I have been shopping around and ive looked on mactracker but what are the real world differences between the 2011 and 2012 airs? i wont be doing much on it...mainly music and web browsing and photos...will i really notice any difference in either?
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real world differences between 2011 and 2012 macbook air
- Thread starter adamj575
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I'd been wanting an 11" MBA since 2010 but the battery life was never acceptable for my needs until the 2013 models came out with Haswell...shop around and try to find a deal on a 2013 if battery life unplugged is a big concern for your needs!
I got mine for $809.10 and its the current 11.6" base 2013 model during Christmas (trying to hold out for a 2014 Broadwell model) = couldn't be more
If I need more BHP, RAM or SSD space I grab my 2011 MBP, jump over to either of my desktop (win7) builds or our house iMac.
The fans come on all the time on the 2011 model. Very annoying. The 2012 is quiet and so is the 2013. As others have said batter is much better on the 2013.
Just a couple weeks ago, I scored a 2012 with the 256gb ssd 8gb of ram. 9 cycles on the battery, 3 years of apple care (good till February 2016) for 700 plus 30 shipping (eBay). The refurb model of the base 2012 13 inch is 850 now refurbished from apple.
Cool. I almost got an open-box Air, but when my wife got there, it had already been sold. So she bought me a new one instead.
I was thinking Best Buy open box as I was making that post. But the available stock is limited to only what's on hand, and I wasn't sure the nearest BBY to the OP's location.
Cool. I almost got an open-box Air, but when my wife got there, it had already been sold. So she bought me a new one instead.
I was thinking Best Buy open box as I was making that post. But the available stock is limited to only what's on hand, and I wasn't sure the nearest BBY to the OP's location.
You can search on their site for open-box items within a certain radius now, you don't have to limit it to a single store
That's actually not true in reality.
I own both the 2010 and 2012, and the '10 destroys the '12 in actual gaming environments. As the demand on the GPU increases, the old nVidia model stays playable while the 2012 starts dropping into a 5-10fps slideshow.
I honestly thought the '12 would be better but even with an extra 2gb of memory over the '10, I much prefer the old model. The benchmarks do not reflect reality unfortunately, I think the CPU is helping bump its scores artificially.
Not too surprising since the '10s use a GPU(320M) that's only a step down from the 330M, which was used on the Macbook Pros of the same year.