How's the performance of 2018 MBA 16GB running 5K display?

[pubmsu]

Anyone has this setup? Curious if it there is any lagginess/choppiness with 16GB RAM

 

[ManuCH]

I have tried using it with a 4K display (not 5K). It's fine as long as you do some light usage. It starts becoming laggy/choppy if you use, say, iMovie. But with regular "office work" it was quite good.

 

[pubmsu]

I have tried using it with a 4K display (not 5K). It's fine as long as you do some light usage. It starts becoming laggy/choppy if you use, say, iMovie. But with regular "office work" it was quite good.

16GB RAM?

 

[ManuCH]

16GB RAM?

Yes, I have bought the 512GB/16GB.

 

[Ghost31]

I don’t mean to get any hate for bringing it up, but it’s crazy and a little weird to me that the MacBook Air which is a full on laptop can barely run a 4K display without g thing all choppy but a iPad Pro can do it no problem.why is that? Is it because iOS is so limited and optimized?

 

[kreasonos]

I don’t mean to get any hate for bringing it up, but it’s crazy and a little weird to me that the MacBook Air which is a full on laptop can barely run a 4K display without g thing all choppy but a iPad Pro can do it no problem.why is that? Is it because iOS is so limited and optimized?

It's because the ipad pro is a far more powerful machine. Look at the hardware specs.

 

[Jimmy James]

This is a concern for me. I’ll probably always use my computers on external screens. Since they’re inexpensive I’m not buying anything lower than 4K at this point. I’d hate to find out that it stutters streaming 4K now, let alone a few years in the future. This feels like the 1980’s and 1990’s where a computer was barely adequate for this year let alone next.

 

[AlexJoda]

I think it's not a good adea to max out the MBA because the CPU/GPU is not that much scalable compared to the the Pro's. It's only a 7W Y Processor that has only the marketing name from the i5. If you are planning to use 16 GB RAM and big external displays you might better get the MBP without touchbar. It cost nearly the same than the MBA and has a much better display too...

 

[iMi]

I think it's not a good adea to max out the MBA because the CPU/GPU is not that much scalable compared to the the Pro's. It's only a 7W Y Processor that has only the marketing name from the i5. If you are planning to use 16 GB RAM and big external displays you might better get the MBP without touchbar. It cost nearly the same than the MBA and has a much better display too...

It's a Y processor but has been customer tuned for Apple and pulls only 5W. No other notebook uses this exact version and while the machine has a fan, there is no heatsink linking it to the CPU. The fan is literally just there to pull excess heat from the inside of the enclosure, so any pressure on the processor will be throttled. I found it insufficient on it's own, so I cannot imagine doing any real work on it while running a 5K display.

 

[AlexJoda]

It's a Y processor but has been customer tuned for Apple and pulls only 5W. No other notebook uses this exact version and while the machine has a fan, there is no heatsink linking it to the CPU. The fan is literally just there to pull excess heat from the inside of the enclosure, so any pressure on the processor will be throttled. I found it insufficient on it's own, so I cannot imagine doing any real work on it while running a 5K display.

I don’t think the MBA intended to do „real work“ with 5K displays and heavy CPU/GPU usage. The reason why people are thinking this is the price. It costs nearly the same as a real heavy duty notebook like the MBP or the most powerful Windows notebooks if you are not buying the very basic configuration. If this thing cost under $1000 with a usable configuration nobody complains about the CPU, the dim display and so on. It will be used as a very mobile device for the light computing it was intended for and might be even loved as the classic MacBook Air....