Notebookcheck's MacBook Air i3 review is up (in German)

[landale]

I know a lot of people had been waiting for this as it would compare the thermal performance directly to the i5 model. Currently the review is only in German but you can run it thought translate if you don't want to wait a day or two for the English version to post. Long story short the i3 model does dramatically better in terms of overall fan noise and temperature especially on average load where the i3 model is 33% quieter and 8 degrees F cooler at idle. Their summation is that they don't understand why Apple doesn't use proper cooling on the MBA and that similar priced Windows laptops blow both models away on performance however they still like it for its great build quality and screen but recommend those considering it get the i3 or spend the extra money for the MBP.

Apple MacBook Air 2020 im Test: Ist der Core i3 die bessere Wahl?

Die Einstiegsversion des aktuellen Apple MacBook Air 2020 stellt sich unserem Test. Reicht der Core-i3-Prozessor für den Alltag?

www.notebookcheck.com

 

[Blueberry123]

Thanks for posting Notebookcheck's review of the i3! Very useful to compare with the i5, especially fan noise and temps.

I have been happily using a 11 inch MBA 2013, 8gb ram, i5, for the last 7 years. Still working great, had a new battery and a screen cable repair 2 years ago. I now want to buy a 13" and enjoy the retina screen.

My use case is email, browsing and watching youtube mostly, although I do prefer to use chrome with multiple tabs. I use safari on my ipad mini and iphone x, but find safari to be slow on the mac. Trying Brave as an alternative browser.

Having trouble deciding between MBA i3 or the base MBP 13. I wish the new MBA had a heatpipe so that the thermals were not a concern. I like the shape of the MBA and having the functions keys, but above all I want a quiet and cool laptop, as I use it sitting on the sofa or in bed. Because of the heat management, I may have to buy the base MBP.

 

[twintin]

Having trouble deciding between MBA i3 or the base MBP 13. I wish the new MBA had a heatpipe so that the thermals were not a concern. I like the shape of the MBA and having the functions keys, but above all I want a quiet and cool laptop, as I use it sitting on the sofa or in bed. Because of the heat management, I may have to buy the base MBP.

Have been using mine Air base for roughly 2 weeks now for remote work. I mostly sit in my bed or my sofa as well (sometimes the room is quiet) and have so far never heard the fan once nor have I felt any heat either.

 

[RiaKoobcam]

For those who care about fan noise, the numbers will help you make your decision. Decibel wise, the i3 max dB is 39.4, and the i5 is 45.8.

It gets even more stark when you look at the load average instead of maximum: 31.6dB on the i3 (30dB is the threshold for human hearing), 45.5dB on the i5.

The decibel scale is logarhythmic, not linear, so what theat means is the six decibel difference makes the i5 twice as loud at maxmimum load to the average human ear.

I didn't do any max-load stress testing with my i3 or the i5 I returned, but anecdotally, my experience of noise average aligns with this data.

 

[jgorman]

Notebookcheck's review of the 2020 i3 MBA is now available in English.

Another aspect that jumped out at me is performance. The i5 has a clear performance advantage on paper, but when you use both the CPU and GPU at the same time, the i5 CPU can only sustain performance at about 400 MHz.

However, under a similar load, the i3 CPU can sustain performance at about 1.5 GHz, which is still above its base clock speed of 1.1 GHz.

Maybe this is why some people have reported being able to run simple games on the base model.

 

[Blueberry123]

Thanks @twintin. Good to hear the i3 is quiet and cool to use.

 

[Ryguy18]

Interesting they have FPS metrics for BioShock Infinite. My Steam version can't be run due to Catalina not running 32-bit games. Not that I'll be gaming on an i3 notebook but still.

 

[Pugly]

The default recommendation to go with the i5 seems good on paper, but there are certainly some tradeoffs going to the quad core. I think the benefits come more when it's not being pushed to it's max though, tasks that are multithreaded but don't need 100% CPU all at once.

The heat and noise of my i5 are not a problem.

 

[Falcon80]

Notebookcheck's review of the 2020 i3 MBA is now available in English.

Another aspect that jumped out at me is performance. The i5 has a clear performance advantage on paper, but when you use both the CPU and GPU at the same time, the i5 CPU can only sustain performance at about 400 MHz.

However, under a similar load, the i3 CPU can sustain performance at about 1.5 GHz, which is still above its base clock speed of 1.1 GHz.

Maybe this is why some people have reported being able to run simple games on the base model.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[magbarn]

Notebookcheck's review of the 2020 i3 MBA is now available in English.

Another aspect that jumped out at me is performance. The i5 has a clear performance advantage on paper, but when you use both the CPU and GPU at the same time, the i5 CPU can only sustain performance at about 400 MHz.

However, under a similar load, the i3 CPU can sustain performance at about 1.5 GHz, which is still above its base clock speed of 1.1 GHz.

Maybe this is why some people have reported being able to run simple games on the base model.

In other words, the i3 fits the 2020 mba's mission best, if you truly need quad core performance, pony up the $200 for the mbp13

below is taken from the notebookcheck.net reviews sound measurement

Notice the i3 is basically at ambient noise most of the time it is being used. Even on average workloads it’s still at ambient sound levels. The poor i5 is running at 45dba. That is much more noticeable in a quiet environment.

I’m not sure if the i7 I had made a difference but my 2020 mbp i7 is quieter than the i7 mba I had during moderate loads. But the mbp also does run hotter around the casing and definitely puts out more heat so there’s trade offs. In other words more performance=more heat.