@bounce08
Okay so here is what I got for you. I didn't exactly did your test, I can't find my Discord account but I think what I have is sufficient.
Just got the laptop today, I initially wanted i5, but I placed the wrong order with Costco, cancelled but for some reason they still went ahead and send me the i3, so I figured I'll keep and see how it goes. So what I have is the i3 base model. I'm coming from MacBook Pro 13" 2011, just to give you some reference.
Starting out I have whole iCloud thing going, Photo (7000+ photos and 600 videos), iMessage, and Email all syncing in the background. Also, whatever indexing people have been talking about (keeping in mind all this will be going on while I do everything else), page is also open. Also keep in mind, whatever process or program that I’m running or going to be talking about, it will all be open thought out (I’m not going to close any of the applications).
MBA ask to upgrade to 10.15.5 so I went ahead and did it. It TOOK almost 40 minutes, at one point the progress bar wasn’t even moving so I thought it was frozen. This was also the first time I heard a very little bit of the fan noise.
Install Eclipse IDE (for Java programming) first time the fan hit about 3800-4000 RPM, but so far no higher. However CPU is at ~100decC. Once Eclipse was done installing, the fan hit 4500 RPM while launching the application, now the fan noise is more auditable for sure. Loading a library into Eclipse, import MAVEN and build dependencies. This task caused the computer to go to about 5000-5500, and at one point it was at 6000 RPM (now you can really hear it). CPU load is at about 70% and 100 degC. While all this is going I have 7 Safari tabs opened, the fan then hover around 4500 RPM. I think anytime the fan is at about > 4500 RPM, you can start to hear it. Still no slowness is felt. I then did another installation of another application called Anaconda. I can tell, while the software installed fine, it does take a bit longer for it the installation to finish. I feel like sometime you can feel a moment of glitch like a pause.
So, at this point I think the indexing is done, I have mail, iMessage, photo, Eclipse IDE, Page, Safari with 11 tabs, notepad. My memory usage is at 6.78GB and temperature is at about 76 degC I’d say I consider this steady state at this point, as I’m typing this. I was also playing Netflix while all this is going and I also tried YouTube (1080).
I’m not a content creator, absolutely no photo editing, no video editing, I don’t have Zoom. I’m old fashion so I don’t turn on camera when I video conference, plus I like to sit in my underwear and believe me no one likes to see me in my underwear. I think I will conclude that i3 base is great for most users, I think at least for the next 2-3 years you would be okay. Palm rest is comfortable. After this test I’ll be removing the temperature and fan speed app. As long as it doesn’t bother me, I’m not going to moan about the temperature. I don’t care for the fact if its’ always 100 degC, if it’s stops working Apple will take care of it. I’m not a EE or Thermal engineer so I’m not going to go around and claim I’m smarter than they are. With that said, if you think you want to push more I also think the i5 16GB is also a good buy, but I’m very surprised now well i3 base is performing. Test is also done WITHOUT external monitor.
