- The new MBA has a fan
- The new MBAs boost to 3+ ghz and the i5/i7 have 2x the core count. Yes boost is limited time, but even when running at base clock of 1.0 or 1.1 they're like an 8th gen part (i.e., i5-8xxx) at 1.2-1.4 ghz.
- Those cores are 15-25% faster clock for clock than the 8th gen parts - yours is older than that.
- the GPU is significantly faster
- A new MBA will be fine for your typical use if the current one is.
Thanks, this helps. Can you say something about the actual performance? Will there be negligible improvement in performance of the new Air over the older one? Or, will I notice obvious differences?
e.g. if I open 8-10 tabs in Safari, 2-4 in Firefox, all while working on a couple of complicated Word documents, what kind of difference in speed/smoothness should I expect to see?
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My use is much the same as yours. I am going to replace a mid 2012 i5 MBA and a mid 2013 i7 MBA with the base model 2020 the i3.
Yes the new MBA has a fan but there is plenty of discussion about how ineffective it actually is and particularly the thermal throttling which may occur with the more powerful quad core processors depending on your use.
As above if your current MBA does everything you want the base model new one will and some. Personally I am going to contain my enthusiasm for 3 or 4 more months just in case any early life gremlins surface. Once the next new OS is available around September I will take the leap.
That sounds like a plan. Best!
While my Air is doing fine, I do think the screen quality to be a big difference at this point. Then crucially, they've rectified the keyboard. Plus, I've had some system crashes and this could have to do with the HDD being nearly 70% full. I feel 256 GB of HDD will give me more breathing space. And of course, I could then keep just one 30 W charger for my laptop and phones.
I might just sit out for another 3 months or so!
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If your usage is browsing, YouTube, word processing and some occasional prosumer level picture editing the 2020 MBA i5 will do, heck even the i3 could haul up the hill if you wanted to..
I am thinking of the base model i3. So, what performance differences should I expect between the new Air no the i3 versus the old Core i5 Air?
Let's say, I have 8-10 tabs open in Safari, 4-6 in Firefox, a couple of complicated Word documents, and a few Finder windows.
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Comparing synthetic benchmark scores between MBA 2018 and MBA 2020 i7 (average numbers I’ve recently observed myself).
| MBA 2018 | MBA 2020 i7 |
Geekbench
(single-core) | 790 | 1200 (+51%) |
Geekbench
(multi-core) | 1650 | 3700 (+124%) |
| Cinebench R20 | 670 | 1120 (+67%) |
This is not real life usage, of course, but the new CPU is indeed about 50% faster, plus it has two more cores. The new MBA also has faster both memory and SSD, so it all comes to a much better overall performance.
But it is indeed restricted by throttling a bit and does require a mod (see
this thread) to make its performance more consistent.
Thanks. This is interesting. Can you run this comparison but with the MBA 2020 i3 vs. MBA 2018?
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I decided it is not worth upgrading based on what I read.
Compared to the 2019, battery life is worse in all cases, and
- i3 has comparable (slightly better) performance.
- i5/i7 have better performance but they tend to run hotter when pushed hard.
Edit: My comparison is with the 2019. I see the title says 2017, but the post says 2019. Not sure which one OP is comparing to.
Sorry about the inadvertent confusion. The thing is I purchased my MBA from Apple in March 2019. However, system information shows this as MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017). So, I am a little unsure about the date.
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I think the thermals are a non issue with these new Airs. I haven't been able to stress the machine with my current work flow.
Can you tell us what your workflow entails?
