i5 or i7 MBA 11" ???

[harleymhs]

Hey guys.. I need a little help.. On the way to get an 11" this AM.. Not sure which way to go.. i5 or i7 .. Ultimate. I heard some stories that the i7 will run hot and battery life wont be as good as the i5 ... Just useing for web surfing and email ... Would like to have the 256 SSD but rather have better battery life and do not need to fry eggs on it.. Any input would be great! Before I head over to apple..

 

[bigp9998]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1193072/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1192858/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1191064/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1192062/

 

[Young Spade]

Hey guys.. I need a little help.. On the way to get an 11" this AM.. Not sure which way to go.. i5 or i7 .. Ultimate. I heard some stories that the i7 will run hot and battery life wont be as good as the i5 ... Just useing for web surfing and email ... Would like to have the 256 SSD but rather have better battery life and do not need to fry eggs on it.. Any input would be great! Before I head over to apple..

If you're only doing that, get the i5 baseline. You could even get by on 2 gigs of RAM but I suggest getting an 11 inch, 4 gig RAM model with an i5. Call ahead and see if they have that in the store.

 

[MRU]

The i7 theories are all based on 'assumptions' rather than evidence.

So ill make some more

From reviews of other i7 devices there should not be a dramatic difference in heat, and likewise whilst working on basic stuff such as browsing the web, checking email etc.. Then the i7 will also give you the same amount of battery life as the i5 as it is not being stressed and they draw the same power.


However when you really need that extra power and you are stressing your hardware, then yes the i7 will likely reduce the overall battery life in comparison to the i5 - however if your running on full tilt CPU wise I'm sure you will also not get anywhere like 5 hours even with the i5 so the difference may not be that dramatic anyway.

More importantly though, The big difference though is that the i7 running full CPU has a 600mhz speed advantage (when turbo boosted) and that will have a big difference in performance over the i5 and I as a user would rather take the extra grunt when I really need it over the small difference in battery life between the two.