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The anandtech macbook air review is up!

PaulWog said:
My test was simple. I had screen brightness at 5 bars, I had keyboard lights off, I had nothing running in the background, and I had flash blocker off. I simply was typing and viewing the internet, and that's it. Forum browsing. I lost approximately 20% battery life per hour. One hour (the first) I went from 100% down to 80%. The next hour I went from 80% to 62% (improved from 20%). It all evened out to approximately 5 hours.

I don't see how in the hell he could get the amount he's claiming. And again, he says he used an automated loop: but did he ensure the screen didn't go to 0% brightness during this loop. Hope he made sure of that. It's just odd... his claims are far higher than Apple's claims, and the majority of people here on these forums are even looking at Apple's claims as a higher-end hope-to-reach-it ideal amount.
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Was the browser the only app you had open? And only one tab and window? Also, absolutely no Flash? Benchmarking is extremely pedantic. Like I said above, it's likely that you have something else open or more than one tab. While it may seem small, it all adds up and produces the end result.

I would consider Anand's light web browsing test more as a synthetic benchmark. You won't be getting that battery life in real world. Maybe with text editing but that is it. There is no need to bash the whole review because of that. Anand doesn't have a reason to cheat on the reviews, he won't be gaining anything from that.

The best way to make research before buying is to read as many reviews and visit forums. One review isn't enough as there can always be mistakes, or it may miss an essential part.
 
Hellhammer said:
Was the browser the only app you had open? And only one tab and window? Also, absolutely no Flash? Benchmarking is extremely pedantic. Like I said above, it's likely that you have something else open or more than one tab. While it may seem small, it all adds up and produces the end result.

I would consider Anand's light web browsing test more as a synthetic benchmark. You won't be getting that battery life in real world. Maybe with text editing but that is it. There is no need to bash the whole review because of that. Anand doesn't have a reason to cheat on the reviews, he won't be gaining anything from that.

The best way to make research before buying is to read as many reviews and visit forums. One review isn't enough as there can always be mistakes, or it may miss an essential part.
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I could get into the other points I dislike, but that was the main one. So I won't flood this thread with negative comments. It'll just spur a debate. And internet debates are rather boring.

Though I mean I look at it this way: If you see that kind of battery life, you wonder what's up. You are left expecting a little bit more out of the product, and what happens in real life is you just don't get anywhere near that (unless if you consider 5 hours near the reviewer's numbers).

I had flash blocker on, so unless if flash blocker doesn't work, then there was zero flash. And there was absolutely nothing running in the background. Errr... I did have iStat Pro on, though I wouldn't attribute that to amounting to an hour and a bit worth of battery difference.

I'll do for myself a quick 20% battery life test. I'll see how many minutes it takes to achieve a 20% discharge with Wi-Fi off, everything off, and screen brightness down to 5 bars (just under 40%). If I get over 6 hours worth (by multiplying the amount of time I get by 5 to equal 100%), then I'll be amazed; either way I'll post my results. I've tested the battery life at each point, and it appears that no matter where I am (100%, 80%, 40%, whatever), the battery life indicator is pretty accurate, and generally the battery life decreases at an equal rate at any given percentage (there's no hitting 30% then starting to drop super fast or anything like that which would skew the results). So to get a general idea I'll just test this and see.
 
The majority of these reviews can be summed up into one statement:

Tom: "Hows the new Macbook Air Ollie?"

Ollie: "It's Fast!"
 
KPOM said:
He only had 2 base models to review, but then borrowed a friend's i7 to get some of the benchmarks in. Reviewers can only review what they have. I thought it was nicely done. If Anand were in NYC, he might have an 11" i7 to play around with for a day. :)
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I would have thought with a web site like his, contacts, financial resources, etc.,
he might have gotten a hold of a i7 long enough to fully review it with the others?

Same with respect to models with different screen types?

Love his detailed reviews but in this case it was missing detail
on what many here are most looking for in a review.
 
PaulWog said:
I had flash blocker on, so unless if flash blocker doesn't work, then there was zero flash.
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Every time you load a page, doesn't the flash blocker have to parse it, looking for Flash to block?

I wouldn't imagine the CPU cycles for that are strenuous, but in a battery test where a new web page is being loaded every 20 seconds, it seems that a Mac without Flash is still going to have an advantage over a Mac running a flash blocker.
 
OSMac said:
I would have thought with a web site like his, contacts, financial resources, etc.,
he might have gotten a hold of a i7 long enough to fully review it with the others?

Same with respect to models with different screen types?

Love his detailed reviews but in this case it was missing detail
on what many here are most looking for in a review.
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Last time he did a review on the upgraded model separately (came roughly 2 weeks later). I wouldn't be surprised if he did it again, and hopefully he does. The panel lottery is also an important part and worth an article (he already said he is trying to get his hands on one).
 
I love it. PaulWog is wondering if Anand did the dumbest mistake that a reviewer can make (he left the room and let the laptop fall asleep for hours).

Sorry, but that's a bit of a stretch when trying to make a point. Anand knows what he's doing. If there was anything questionable happening, I'm sure he would have investigated a bit.


I doubt the times Anand gets on his laptops, but only because I can't imagine any situation where I can get that battery life while using it in a realistic situation. For example, Anand got a ridiculously high battery life on the 2010 15" i5 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro, which is the same laptop I have. I never get over 5 hours, but he got ~7 hours (I can't remember). I know I could possibly squeeze 7 hours out of it, but I'm not going to use a laptop on 2-bar screen brightness, web surfing sites that don't have Flash. I don't know which sites use Flash because it's never something I'd consider. I visit the webpages I want to visit, whether it affects my battery life or not.

To me, the situation in which Anand gets his battery life is completely unrealistic. If anything, it's an idealized situation, and it's just to prove a point. So rather than leave the laptop idle for 5, 6, or even 7 hours to show what the idle battery life is, he surfs a bit just to say he uses the laptop during the test.

I could run the same test, but I'd do it at 60% screen brightness, and I couldn't guarantee that a website I go to doesn't have flash. Whether the site has Flash or not isn't something I pay attention to. I could run his test using random websites, but I'm sure the controlled test used very specific, non-Flash websites.


I'm hoping to get 5 hours, since that's what Apple advertises. Even if a reviewer has managed more than 5 hours of battery life, Apple's not lying by saying their 11" MBA gets only 5 hours of battery life. They must be using the laptop in a more realistic situation.

You just need to know how to interpret the tests, AFAIK.
 
Just to add to the SSD discussion. I just popped into an Apple Store (Toronto, Eaton Center) and every single macbook air except one has the Toshiba drive. Only one 13" had the Samsung SSD. I was thinking of switching mine out but doesn't look like odds are in my favour so I didn't bother as I am not buying multiple laptops just to get a Samsung SSD.

I wonder if certain waves of shipments are more heavily weighted to one particular drive.

Was about 14 Toshiba Drivers and 1 Samsung Drive

Mike
 
UPDATE 2

Anand will also test the thermals of 11" MBA with i7 so looks like you guys are getting what you want
 
Wish he'd test thermals and battery life on the 13" i7 as well :p At the moment it looks like the upgrade isn't worth it though.
 
If you buy it, you will see that the upgrade is more than worth it ;).
Mine's is quite as a church mouse and it is considerably faster than a 2010 model we had at work today. Cpu is at 50 C with Adium, a pdf opened in Preview and Safari with several tabs... No noise...At all...

mitup said:
Wish he'd test thermals and battery life on the 13" i7 as well :p At the moment it looks like the upgrade isn't worth it though.
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Multitasking battery life is similar with i7

40007.png
 
From Anand's twitter:

"I'll be publishing an update tomorrow, but real quick: the 11-inch i7 has the same battery life as the i5 in our tests"

Apple Expert said:
To bad they didn't add the 13" i7 in that chart. :(
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I don't see why it would be radically different.
 
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