MacBook Air SSD vs HDD Battery Life Revisted

[Pressure]

Anand from Anandtech has reviewed the MacBook Air.

Source: The MacBook Air: Thoroughly Reviewed

This is a 23-page review so brace yourself with your drink of choice and sip it slowly while digesting it.

He covers a lot of ground and even shows how to install a Solid State Drive.

The interesting part is that the MacBook Air beats the original MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.0Ghz in most things and as a result I feel fairly sad about my original MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.16Ghz

Enjoy

[MacRumors]

Anandtech provides another review of the MacBook Air, however, unique to their review is an objective battery test comparing the Solid State Drive (SSD) vs the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) of the MacBook Air. In this case, they actually installed the SSD drive (same as Apple's) into the MacBook Air themselves and kindly provided instructions for readers to do it themselves.

To review, their standardized battery tests involved the following scripted tasks:

1) Use Wifi to browse 20 pages in a loop, spending 20 seconds on each page, while playing MP3s in iTunes.
2) Play a DVD image (off the internal hard drive) in a loop.
3) Download 10GB of files, Web browsing loop from #1, play two 480p Xvid videos in a loop.

In running these tests on both SSD and HDD MacBook Air, they found that the Solid State Drive did make a difference in battery life (contrary to previous reports), with an improvement of up to 16.8% (43 minutes) in the best case.

Anandtech also compared the MacBook Air's battery life to the 2006 Core Duo 2.0GHz MacBook Pro and the current Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz MacBook Pro. Battery life on the previous generation Core Duo MacBook Pro was much worse than the Air, but the SSD Air's battery compared favorably against the new MacBook Pro -- besting it in Battery Test #1 and #2.

The SSD upgrade remains a costly ($999) upgrade for the MacBook Air, but prices are expected to drop over time.

Article Link

[bcgamer]

It seems the power-saving advantage of SSD is more effective when the file system is idle (web browsing), virtually no power consumption as opposed to the HDD.

[aLoC]

Why is the SSD improvement so small? I would have though taking out a component with a *motor* would make a huge difference.

[arn]

Originally Posted by bcgamer

It seems the power-saving advantage of SSD is more effective when the file system is idle (web browsing), virtually no power consumption as opposed to the HDD.

Originally Posted by aLoC

Why is the SSD improvement so small? I would have though taking out a component with a *motor* would make a huge difference.

I think the reason it makes more of a difference in the less-intensive tasks is that the hard drive is only a small portion of the power draw on the system. If you are taxing the system, the processor is using up more power, dwarfing any power savings on the drive itself.

arn

[davidjearly]

Also, as the standard drive is a 1.8" HDD and not a 2.5", wouldn't it be consuming much less power anyway?

In other words, are people expecting the difference to be larger as they are not taking into account that battery life would be much poorer if it was a 2.5" HDD that was installed by default?

I don't think I'm explaining myself very clearly, but it early here.

[SiliconAddict]

Originally Posted by arn

I think the reason it makes more of a difference in the less-intensive tasks is that the hard drive is only a small portion of the power draw on the system. If you are taxing the system, the processor is using up more power, dwarfing any power savings on the drive itself.

arn

I just want to ditto on this comment. The two biggest power draws in a laptop are the LCD and the CPU. Hard drives now a days have so much cache and are so fast that impact is virtually nonexistent. But overall speed is important. the faster the drive can get done doing its thing the sooner it can spin down.

I find it ironic that the MBA is the first Macintel to actually meet the battery life that was found on the PPC PowerMacs.

Originally Posted by Resolution

Probably as many times as necessary to somehow justify the ridiculous $1000 price tag.

Heh. For a second I thought you meant the system was $1000 not the drive and was going to object. If the MBA was $1000 I would have gone out and ordered one on day one. Instead I got myself a referb Tablet PC that was 3 figures, gets 4 hours on a 6 cell battery with its ULV Intel, isn't nearly as light as the MBP but is a far more feature rich, and allows me to take notes on the thing. Good supplemental system to my MBP.

[fblack]

An extra 31 minutes in DVD playback is not too bad imho.

[lazyrighteye]

Originally Posted by fblack

An extra 31 minutes in DVD playback is not too bad imho.

Worth the additional $999?

[fblack]

Originally Posted by lazyrighteye

Worth the additional $999?

I was responding to criticism about performance. For example:

Why is the SSD improvement so small?

I think an extra 31 minutes in DVD playback is not bad. As far as price v.s. performance, to me personally its not worth purchasing an SSD. I don't have that kind of money to blow. I think only people with deep pockets, or a lust for the newest tech are going to run out and get an SSD at this time. I don't think they are the regular consumer, so price may not be an issue for these people. These people may also have speakers in their home to complement the MBA. http://gizmodo.com/search/Gradient%20Helsinki

I find the technology interesting, but I also recognize its still new and very pricey. In another 2-3 years it should be much more affordable and I expect to find it in a very thin apple touchscreen tablet or slate.

[itickings]

Lots of negative votes as usual, as well as unrealistic expectations. The 11% improvement in the heavy-duty test is nothing but impressive. CPU and wireless in use draw lots of power.

Even removing the drive completely wouldn't increase battery life enough for people to vote positive

[achtung!]

Originally Posted by itickings

Lots of negative votes as usual, as well as unrealistic expectations. The 11% improvement in the heavy-duty test is nothing but impressive. CPU and wireless in use draw lots of power.

Even removing the drive completely wouldn't increase battery life enough for people to vote positive

the 11% improvement in the heavy-duty test is everything but impressive. for such a slow machine, compared to the the balance between speed and price of the macbook pro, it should have reached, at least, 6 hours battery life. and the expectations weren't unrealistic, unrealistic is this toys' price.

[flamejob]

OMG.. how many times does this need to get revisited???

The $1000 you pay gets you a small increase in battery longevity.

The end.

[Resolution]

Originally Posted by flamejob

OMG.. how many times does this need to get revisited???

Probably as many times as necessary to somehow justify the ridiculous $1000 price tag.

[jragosta]

Originally Posted by achtung!

the 11% improvement in the heavy-duty test is everything but impressive. for such a slow machine, compared to the the balance between speed and price of the macbook pro, it should have reached, at least, 6 hours battery life. and the expectations weren't unrealistic, unrealistic is this toys' price.

Slow machine? Have you compared it to other ultralights? Most of them are 1.0 or 1.2 GHz processors - the MBA has 1.6 to 1.8.

Unrealistic price? have you compared it to other ultralights - which invariably cost considerably more?

[matthewHUB]

i was in class this morning taking notes on Word 2008.

With Wifi and half brightness (perfect for the room i was in) i had 5:52

without wifi, it was 6:39 and then when i touched it after the display had been sleeping it said 8:54!!! so i'm guessing idle time of around 8 hours if the display sleeps.

this was really great.

[achtung!]

Originally Posted by jragosta

Slow machine? Have you compared it to other ultralights? Most of them are 1.0 or 1.2 GHz processors - the MBA has 1.6 to 1.8.

Unrealistic price? have you compared it to other ultralights - which invariably cost considerably more?

maybe you should read my post again. damn, what you people do to have more posts! LOL "compared to the balance between speed and price of the macbook pro". so i think that what macbooks pro have to offer is much more rewarding when comparing price tags. but hey, maybe i'm not too good explaining myself in english, so perhaps i could try in portuguese:

Se calhar ias perceber melhor o que te estou a dizer se voltasses a ler o meu post. Fiz a comparação apenas com o preço que o macbook pro tem, e naquilo que ele tem para oferecer. acho genericamente muito mais compensador. acho simples de perceber!

do i make myself clear now!?

Originally Posted by achtung!

(...) for such a slow machine, compared to the the balance between speed and price of the macbook pro, it should have reached, at least, 6 hours battery life. and the expectations weren't unrealistic, unrealistic is this toys' price.

[barefeats]

I was sorry to see Anandtech use Xbench for their disk tests. With all due respect to the author of Xbench, the hard drive test is quite limited in scope.

Take a gander at our MacBook Air HDD vs SSD test results using QuickBench 4.03 from SpeedTools.com:
http://www.barefeats.com/macair1.html

I've sent an email to Mr. Anand asking him to retest using QuickBench.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by barefeats

I was sorry to see Anandtech use Xbench for their disk tests. With all due respect to the author of Xbench, the hard drive test is quite limited in scope.

Take a gander at our MacBook Air HDD vs SSD test results using QuickBench 4.03 from SpeedTools.com:
http://www.barefeats.com/macair1.html

I've sent an email to Mr. Anand asking him to retest using QuickBench.

From the article: "NOTE: The 250G, 320G, and 200G notebook drives were empty. The 64G SSD was 31% full. " Hard drives are faster on the outside tracks, which are used when the drive is empty. As the drive fills, the inner tracks will be used which are slower. So the hard drives will be slower once they start getting full.

[Analog Kid]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

From the article: "NOTE: The 250G, 320G, and 200G notebook drives were empty. The 64G SSD was 31% full. " Hard drives are faster on the outside tracks, which are used when the drive is empty. As the drive fills, the inner tracks will be used which are slower. So the hard drives will be slower once they start getting full.

Anybody know how the SSDs handle dirty blocks? The slowest operation on Flash is erasure, so if that isn't being handled while idle then the SSDs will also slow down considerably when full...

[MacFly123]

My question is how long are they going to leave that freaking MWSF tab up??? It is beyond ridiculous now!

[twoodcc]

better news for the Air. the SSD still isn't worth the price, at least to me

[amacisbetter]

I'm suprised at the battery life. The typical person buying a Macbook Air would probaly just use it for internet browsing/email/listening to music and when doing that with the SSD it almost made it to 5hrs. I don't think the average user will buy the SSD though so the battery life isn't as great with the hard drive, but still. Not a bad estimate in my opinion.