2011 13-inch Macbook Air vs Early 2011 15-inch Macbook Pro 2.0 GHz

[Brandon263]

I have a 13-inch baseline MacBook Air (mid-2011) but I found a great discount on a new 15-inch baseline Macbook Pro (2.0 GHz, early 2011) and was considering buying it. I have a few questions I was hoping you guys could help me out with:

1. How do these two machines compare in terms of day-to-day performance? (By day-to-day performance I mean watching videos, surfing the web with more than 20 tabs open, occasional gaming, listening to music, etc.)I'd like to hear especially from someone who has used the two laptops. Does the SSD speed things up on the MacBook Air (I have the slower SSD on my MacBook Air)?

2. How do these laptops compare in terms of graphics performance (in actual use, ie. gaming, etc)?

3. How do these laptops compare in terms of resale value? I may sell whatever machine I decide to go with and get the new MacBook Pros when they come out later this year.

4. Besides all of the performance and resale issues, which one do you prefer? Why?

Thanks

 

[Jb07]

1.) In day-to-day usage, the MBA is much snappier overall. Opening applications, waking from sleep, photo editing, etc. is all much faster. I'd imagine that they would both be about equal with 20 tabs open. The MBP has an advantage with gaming, though. The SSD makes things MUCH, MUCH faster than my mid-2010 MBP. Boot up is 13 seconds vs 59 seconds.

2.) For gaming, the MBP. It has more graphics memory, but the MBA should be fine for non-intensive games.

3.) I don't know about resale value, I'd imagine they'd lose the same amount per year.

4.) I prefer the Air because of the portability and the speed.

 

[robbie12345]

in day to day the mba is much faster becus of ssd for gaming you probably won't be bake to game on either of them because they both have very bad graphics performance but the mba is worse by a little, note the mba has a higher screen resolution too.

for short term resale the mba will be better because it is still the newest model and for long term also because of the ssd.

the mbp though has a bigger screen much faster processor, bigger hd upgradability to ssd and higher ram so the mbp is a powerhouse and the air is a portable