2013 13" MacBook Air (i7) & FCPX Performance Question

[craighton]

I'm looking into selling off my Early-2011 MacBook Pro and getting the 2013 MacBook Air with the upgraded CPU (Intel i7) and RAM (8GB).

I do light video editing in FCP X and some Photoshop work usually.

I'm not sure if the new MacBook Air has been out long enough to get a proper answer to this, but I wanted to see if anyone here has had experience with what I do and can give me some feedback on weather or not the 2013 MacBook Air can handle video editing and Photoshop.

I'm mostly concerned with encoding times and smoothness of editing.

The Air would mostly be a secondary computer and I have a more powerful desktop that I use to take care of the heavier editing tasks.

So I'm looking to see if anyone has any experience or can shed light on if the MacBook Air would be able to handle my tasks.

Thanks.

 

[Astrofox]

The 2013 Air has no problems handling Photoshop. The i7 is about as powerful as the entry level retina MBP from last year in CPU benchmarks with a better GPU and a fast SSD - so it's no slouch. Only issue right now is a glitch in Mountain Lion where large brushes can crash the program (happened to me), but this is reportedly fixed in a driver update on Mavericks which I assume they will also release to ML in time.

As for FCPX I haven't used that yet, video can be quite demanding- but it depends on how serious you are. Based on my experience with older much slower Macs and FCP it should be fine. Logic Pro X works great- so again, pro apps appear to be more than doable.

 

[Dsteller]

I do video editing on FCP X and heavy photo editing on Photoshop and Aperture, and have found no problem what-so-ever with the new Air.

 

[Mike in Kansas]

I do video editing on FCP X and heavy photo editing on Photoshop and Aperture, and have found no problem what-so-ever with the new Air.

Are you using the i5 or the i7?

Thanks!

 

[m98custom1212]

I do cad/3d modeling/engineering on macbook air (windows 8) I have no problems till i get in 2000+ part assemblies.

I5 not the I7

 

[Dsteller]

Are you using the i5 or the i7?

Thanks!

I'm on a 2013 MacBook Air 128gb 8gb RAM i7

 

[CountBrass]

The 2013 Air has no problems handling Photoshop. The i7 is about as powerful as the entry level retina MBP from last year in CPU benchmarks with a better GPU and a fast SSD - so it's no slouch.

You mean the 2012 13" rMBP, which only has HD4000 graphics, as opposed to the 2012 15" rMBP which has a significantly more powerful GPU?

 

[Astrofox]

You mean the 2012 13" rMBP, which only has HD4000 graphics, as opposed to the 2012 15" rMBP which has a significantly more powerful GPU?

Yep CPU similar to, and GPU better than the 2012 13inch rMBP, no way does the new MBA HD5000 match last year's 15inch pro discrete GPU.

 

[Zaphyrus]

I use Photoshop heavily (multiple smart object layers/layer and clipping masks/large mos files you name it!) on my MBA and it stands tall. And most of the time this is on my 11" Air i7/8gb/512 hooked up to a Cinema Display so it's working even harder since its running at a higher resolution screen.

In regards to FCP, rendering and encoding times aren't the worst though since you've stated it would be a secondary computer I do feel its acceptable. I have a Mac Mini at home and use this as a rendering box for FCP and Blender when I do any 3D modeling.