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11" - i5 vs i7 battery life and heat difference

PaulWog said:
Honestly I'm a poweruser. I have an i7 2600k at home (highest end Sandy Bridge processor on the market currently). I have it over clocked by approximately 41% (from 3.2GHz to 4.8GHz). The rest of the computer reflects the processor in terms of performance, aside from having no SSD (I used to, but I swore SSD's off for now... aside from the one in my Air).

Anyways, my point is: As a power user (I use photoshop, encode things, game relatively often, run lots of stuff, etc, etc), using the Air is a delight. I can have iTunes open while running 10 browsers, while having a game sitting minimized in the background (not an intense game... but a game like Angry Birds), while having something else going on, and the i5 processor on my 11-inch handles it just fine. Everything gets by awesomely. Obviously this gets the processor hot (as it would the i7), but that's not part of the discussion since we're comparing the differences, instead of the similarities.

So I'd say unless if someone needs quicker processing power, they should just stick with the i5. I mean, I can only see someone needing an i7 if they're doing one of the following things:
- using the Air as a desktop replacement solution, where when hooked up to a power source, they're doing a lot of processor-intensive work; in this case, that individual shouldn't have purchased an Air in the first place... or, if it works fine for them, I certainly hope they purchased the AppleCare. Excessive heat will ruin a laptop over time.
- using the Air for tasks from time-to-time that really do require to be finished as quickly as possible. Ex. on-the-go work of some sort that really is best finished in the shortest amount of time (idk... some sort of photoshopping or I don't know what would fit into this category).

I can't see anyone really needing an i7 over an i5 in any given situation for the most part. It's more a psychological thing, as both processors handle the same tasks just as well. The only truly measurable scenarios are when there's longer tasks (encoding/etc), where an i5 may take 10 minutes, while the i7 only takes 7.5 minutes.

For me, it was worth saving the $135 + taxes (which would amount to $151). That money I can put toward an iPad purchase if, ever in the future, they release a version (iPad 3 or iPad 4) which I feel has improved to a standard of my liking (currently I feel like it is an oversized iPod... fun... but not quite fun or useful enough *yet*). Or I could put it toward any other number of things. The i5 gets all my stuff done great. Even gaming when I want to.
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entatlrg said:
I've had my 13" i7 since Monday, CTO direct from Apple. Compared to my 2010 13" ultimate it ran much warmer, fans kick in more often and at a higher (louder) speed even when moderately pushed.

When idling or sending an email it's no problem and it didn't bother me until last night when using it on the couch. When emailing, surfing, design in CS5, video playback ... it gets toasty, hot on the bottom and very warm on the palm-rest.

That and reading here convinced me to head out and buy a 13" i5/4/256 today.

YES, there is FOR SURE a difference. The i5 is cooler and quieter. I noticed that the moment I started sycning my Evernote and Dropbox database while installing CS5, Fusion/Win7, and Office, to tax it more I played back video at the same time too.

From install to using the i5 on my lap the last few hours it's noticeably cooler and silent. I'm surprised there's such a difference.

I don't have statistics, benchmarks, iStat installed and that's not my concern. 'Real world day to day use is.

Bit of a hassle ordering a CTO i7, installing everything, then phoning around to find a store with an i5 in stock, installing everything again ... but I'm happy to say it was worth it. I'll package up the i7 on the weekend and back it goes.

One a side note, today Apple delivered our 11" i5/4/256 today as well ... it's all set up now too ... very HAPPY to say no problems with heat, the fan didn't come on during install any more than it did with the 13" i5. I'd say the 11" i5 runs surprising cool and quiet and it is very fast compared to the 11" 2010 Ultimate.

So far so good. For me the i5 was an huge upgrade from the i7.

That's all the testing for me ... I have a company to run ... so I can pay for this Apple obsession :)
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Thanks to both you guys, going to look into ordering and returning the i7 for the i5 in the morning.
 
VMMan said:
Can anybody comment on the 11"'i5 vs i7 battery life?
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To be quite honest, I'm not sure about how the battery life is for the i7 11-inch. I can tell you that the best battery life I've gotten while browsing is just over 5 hours worth at 40% brightness. The worst battery life I've had would probably amount to just over 2 hours, and that's gaming at full-blast. So the battery life is good.

I have seen one benchmark chart which put the i7 ahead of the i5 by half an hour... but that's one benchmark chart, and it might not be accurate. Not all batteries are going to be equal, and benchmarks can easily be skewed if the reviewer isn't being careful. (example: If you charge your Air to 100% battery life, and then leave it on standby or off and turn it on later and it has lost battery life to anywhere between 96% and 99%, it will still read "(Charged)" and will not charge to 100% when plugged in until it reaches 95%. So if a reviewer starts at 96% battery charge, not taking this into consideration, there's 4% right there which has been missed... and it could be 4.99% in a worst-case scenario).

The battery life between the two shouldn't really be very different either way though. Since I'm no engineer (and I assume you or many/any others on macrumors are hardware engineers), I don't think anyone can really give you a good in-depth idea as to which processor has the technically better this or that in it for battery life. Sooooo I guess if you can find a few benchmarks that'd be good... but I'd say honestly you shouldn't sweat the difference in terms of battery life. It's heat that you might want to look at more-so.
 
KPOM said:
Side topic, but why have you sworn off SSDs? Is it the security? Reliability concerns? Something else?
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The reason is (and this is currently anecdotal, so I don't impose the view on anyone outside of my family) is that I've known a lot of people (both on forums and real life) who have had SSD's break down on them. Solid state drives are rated for and are supposed to last for years and years and years, yet there's such a high failure rate that is unspoken of a lot of them. That's not to say that all SSD's will break. But a lot do. Particularly I will never buy an OCZ product ever again (if you want to know why you can pm me... I could go on a long rant about it... to summarize it, they sell lower than B-grade products and base their business off of RMA's).

SSD's are still relatively expensive, not necessary yet (their speed increase doesn't put regular hard drives in the past yet), and the tech is relatively new. There will be new stuff to come yet. So for me, I try to avoid solid state drives when I can. Once they are economical in terms of price, and the technology has aged a bit and been refined to be quicker, then I will be more interested in it :D

For now I'm just enjoying my SSD in my Macbook Air. I intend to resell my Air before my warranty is up though, so that I can purchase the next Macbook Air right after. I hear Mac laptops have great resale values, so I will hopefully be able to keep up with all the refreshes :) The reason I mention this is because if the SSD does break down, it will be within my warranty period (that is, unless if I require the Air and they don't refresh within a year's time).
 
vader_slri said:
Just a quick bump for this thread to mention that Anand has an updated review where he compares the 11" MBA i5 and i7 in terms of performance, power consumption and battery life. He also throws in a word about LG vs. Samsung 11" panels.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4554/apples-11inch-macbook-air-core-i7-18ghz-review-update
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Summary for those who don't want to read through it:

The i5 runs slightly cooler. The battery life however is basically equal between the two under normal use, though the i7 might have slightly less battery during intensive use. Overall there is hardly any disadvantage to getting the i7, the heat difference is about 5ºC hotter at worst which is somewhat noticeable.

Personally though I have decided to exchange my i7 for an i5, not because of the heat, but because I don't need as much storage or processor, so going down to the i5+128gb will save me $450 that I would rather go towards the iPhone 5 in a couple months.
 
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ok calm down everyone, I have purchased both 11" MBAs and have compared them running the same programs.

First there seems to be no diff in the batteries, the i7 lasted about 10 minutes less but that could have been down to testing error, it was not a significant time difference

Second, yes the i7 runs a little hotter than the i5 but the i7 is also noticeably faster than the i5. Some people say it only makes a diff when your video and audio encoding but I definantly noticed webpages and flash video loading faster.

note that the i5 I was comparing only had 2GB of ram and the i7 had 4GB so that might scew these results except for the battery life.
 
themoneyman541 said:
ok calm down everyone, I have purchased both 11" MBAs and have compared them running the same programs.

First there seems to be no diff in the batteries, the i7 lasted about 10 minutes less but that could have been down to testing error, it was not a significant time difference

Second, yes the i7 runs a little hotter than the i5 but the i7 is also noticeably faster than the i5. Some people say it only makes a diff when your video and audio encoding but I definantly noticed webpages and flash video loading faster.

note that the i5 I was comparing only had 2GB of ram and the i7 had 4GB so that might scew these results except for the battery life.
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Of course the i7 is going to run faster. Your comparing it against 2GB! When compared to the i5 with 4GB they are very similar. Some say it's worth it and others don't. I'm in the camp that feels the i5 is great speed with no excessive fan or warmer temps. But to each is own.
 
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