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Honest Steve's review of MacBook Air 2013

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SteveJobs2.0

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 9, 2012
942
1,716
I have been testing two i5/8gb ram machines. One has 128gb sad storage and the other 256 ssd. I have Mountain Lion and Windows 7 installed on both. Both the screens and the ssd drives are Samsung.

Likes:

- Excellent performance. I am getting the same windows experience score as my 2010 quad i5 iMac with 8gb ram and HD5750 1gb ram video card. I doubt that the average person will need more than the basic specs.
- Gaming performance in windows is impressive
- Screen has a nice contrast and is sharp enough for most people
- Sound is loud
- Computer is ultra quiet under light and medium load


Don't Likes:

- Keys are a tad mushy despite being very responsive and easy to type on
- Not used to the trackpad yet since sometimes it doesn't register right clicks properly. I might need more time with this.
- Drivers for windows are not 100% there yet. Keyboard backlight keeps on resetting to max brightness after every restart and I cannot connect to any wifi networks occasionally. Restarting the system seems to restart the wireless adapter inside the machine which fixes things.
- Despite the impressive gaming performance, the machine does get very hot and loud. This necessitates removing the laptop off the lap and onto a table to allow for better air flow.


128GB vs 256GB:

- 256 gb ssd definitely has faster write speed (700MB/s vs 400MB/s)
- 256 gb machine keep on getting a higher windows experience score (6.7) than the 128 gb machine (5.9)
- You can't help but feel that the 256 gb ssd should cost around $100 more than the 128 gb sad, not $200.
 
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AXs

AXs

macrumors 6502a
Sep 7, 2009
515
2
Thanks for sharing your feedback, but honestly- why are you primarily giving us gaming feedback and windows feedback?

It's a...MACbook....AIR.
 
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Ztormie

macrumors regular
Oct 30, 2009
119
5
When you say that the 256 is faster, does that mean "faster in benchmarks" or is it such a difference that a casual user would actually notice it in normal (not heavy) usage of the computer?
 
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SteveJobs2.0

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 9, 2012
942
1,716
AXs said:
Thanks for sharing your feedback, but honestly- why are you primarily giving us gaming feedback and windows feedback?

It's a...MACbook....AIR.
Click to expand...

Good call. I find that games in general run better in windows so that is where I focused on the gaming performance. If you have a good way to test the performance on a mac using free software I will do it. Most of the things that I do on the osx side of things are not demanding enough where these differences would be appreciable.

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Ztormie said:
When you say that the 256 is faster, does that mean "faster in benchmarks" or is it such a difference that a casual user would actually notice it in normal (not heavy) usage of the computer?
Click to expand...

It was in benchmarks, I will time how long it takes to move a 10gb file from one folder to another in osx later today. However, I doubt that this would have a large impact on the casual user since people tend to copy things to usb sticks etc which would become the bottleneck and not the ssd speed.

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radiohead14 said:
huh.. interesting.. and you're sure both have a samsung drive? here's a vid that reflects your finding on the 128GB also:

http://youtu.be/30T_ujbBkuw?t=13m50s

i wonder if all 256's are considerably faster
Click to expand...

I believe that it is not the manufacturer that determines the speed but rather the size due to the nature of the connection to the motherboard.
 
S

SteveJobs2.0

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 9, 2012
942
1,716
Stetrain said:
Are you using tap-to-click or the physical click?
Click to expand...

I made a mistake. I meant "right clicl" not double click. I am using the physical click. It works 98% of the time in OSX but in windows I will get an occasional time when it will work only 10% of the time. I am sure that updated driver would fix that. I know that in OSX you can do control-click and even set the bottom-right portion of the trackpad to active that right click.
 
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Stetrain

macrumors 68040
Feb 6, 2009
3,550
20
SteveJobs2.0 said:
I made a mistake. I meant "right clicl" not double click. I am using the physical click. It works 98% of the time in OSX but in windows I will get an occasional time when it will work only 10% of the time. I am sure that updated driver would fix that. I know that in OSX you can do control-click and even set the bottom-right portion of the trackpad to active that right click.
Click to expand...

It's personal preference but I find using tap-to-click and the two-finger-right-click to be a lot more usable for me.
 
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iStiggy

macrumors member
Mar 24, 2013
42
11
radiohead14 said:
i wonder if all 256's are considerably faster
Click to expand...

The Apple 256GB will always be faster than the Apple 128Gb. Because the 256GB SSD is made up of 32 independent NAND die, clustered into 8 discrete packages. Where as the 128GB is made up of 32 independent NAND die, clustered into 4 discrete packages. The number of discrete packages is relative to the speed of the SSD. I read it somewhere on AnandTech.
 
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R

radiohead14

macrumors 6502a
Nov 6, 2008
873
42
nyc
iStiggy said:
The Apple 256GB will always be faster than the Apple 128Gb. Because the 256GB SSD is made up of 32 independent NAND die, clustered into 8 discrete packages. Where as the 128GB is made up of 16 independent NAND die, clustered into 4 discrete packages. The number of discrete packages is relative to the speed of the SSD. I read it somewhere on AnandTech.
Click to expand...

ah.. good to know. thanks
 
throAU

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
8,817
6,985
Perth, Western Australia
B... said:
I believe the disctete clusters are in RAID, so more=faster.
Click to expand...

Not RAID, as RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, and they're not redundant (i.e. fault tolerant), inexpensive or disks.

But they are addressable simultaneously, which means 2x the throughput on the 256 GB drive.

Reads/writes are striped across the clusters.
 
A

alexandermont

macrumors newbie
Aug 6, 2013
12
0
What kind of usage makes the laptop heat up and the fan start?

I want to use the new model for light video editing. I'm hoping it will be powerful enough to run silently. Just making screencasts with screenflow.

Also, what do you mean about they keys being mushy?
 
S

SteveJobs2.0

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 9, 2012
942
1,716
alexandermont said:
What kind of usage makes the laptop heat up and the fan start?

I want to use the new model for light video editing. I'm hoping it will be powerful enough to run silently. Just making screencasts with screenflow.

Also, what do you mean about they keys being mushy?
Click to expand...

I find that the keys seem to have a bit less travel than the iMac bluetooth keyboard so they feel softer. I can write just as fast and they are responsive, however.

I think that the fans will run when you start encoding etc. Basically, the fans are silent when you are not using much CPU power. When you start doing demanding things that fully utilize the CPU the fans will come on. The fans on my iMac come on during video encoding so I have no doubt that they would spin up on my Air also. However, I have the i5, so your results might vary with the i7.
 
A

alexandermont

macrumors newbie
Aug 6, 2013
12
0
SteveJobs2.0 said:
I find that the keys seem to have a bit less travel than the iMac bluetooth keyboard so they feel softer. I can write just as fast and they are responsive, however.

I think that the fans will run when you start encoding etc. Basically, the fans are silent when you are not using much CPU power. When you start doing demanding things that fully utilize the CPU the fans will come on. The fans on my iMac come on during video encoding so I have no doubt that they would spin up on my Air also. However, I have the i5, so your results might vary with the i7.
Click to expand...

Ah, so almost any option will have a fan issue if I need that kind of processing. Ok, thanks.
 
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