Will I be as happy with a 13" MBA as with a 15" i5 MBP?

[bamf]

I've got both machines, and I'll tell you that without an SSD the i5 will feel much slower than the MBA. Now, if you put a SSD into the i5 the "feel" of the computer will improve a ton.

So with both machines having a SSD, the real issue is weight, video card, and raw CPU power.

I've been really happy with the MBA as my travel machine, and my i5 as my "desktop replacement". It's really up to you what the important factors are for you, but you can't make a bad choice either way really.

 

[torbjoern]

Wow, all that for a backlit keyboard?

Yes, I simply don't want to let that go when I'm already paying through my nose for a computer.

 

[monaarts]

Go for the 13" Macbook Air. AMAZING! I had the 13" Macbook Pro and it was awesome but this runs loops around it and is a fraction of the size/weight!



- Joe

 

[torbjoern]

Go for the 13" Macbook Air. AMAZING! I had the 13" Macbook Pro and it was awesome but this runs loops around it and is a fraction of the size/weight!



- Joe

Wouldn't a MBP be equally fast and snappy with SSD installed?

 

[Psilocybin]

Wouldn't a MBP be equally fast and snappy with SSD installed?

Apple has a different firmware for the air which allows it to wake instantly and so on

 

[torbjoern]

Apple has a different firmware for the air which allows it to wake instantly and so on

Ok, but how to what extent is MBA better than MBP with SSD when it comes to booting, shutdown and launching heavy applications?

I'm not going to ask you about number-crunching, as I already know that MBP is superior on that point, I just wonder to what extent disk-intensive tasks go faster on the MBA than on a MBP with SSD installed. I haven't seen any such tests on YouTube, only how (obviously) MBA beats HDD-MBP and (even more obviously) SSD-MBP beats HDD-MBP. Makes me wonder if Apple has paid them to shut up about the answer to my question above, or if I'm really the only one who cares.