MacBook Air 13" actual performance and internal details?

I'm strongly considering getting myself a MacBook Air 13" as it's one of very few notebooks out there spotting a tiny, but still high high-resolution and good quality screen!

We also got Lenovo with their ThinkPad X201 series, but these screens spots such a low contrast with such a poor feel to them that I wont really consider them as good as the MacBook Air screens and we also go Sony with their Vaio Z series that offers highest resolution and the best quality screens of all but it comes at a cost.

Which brings me back to the MacBook Air 13", but I'm not certain about buying a notebook spotting a Intel Core 2 Duo SL9300 processor in 2011 and GeForce 320M graphics with SHARED memory.. Doesn't feel right buying a notebook in 2011 which spots hardware from late 2009. Why did Apple use the nVIDIA GeForce 320M and the Intel Core 2 Duo SL9300 in the first place? Why didn't they go something UL or ULV Intel Core iX and GeForce 400 or 500 series?

I'm okay with the performance of GeForce 320M in such a small notebook as the MacBook Air but using shared memory only is making me doubt it's capabilities? And a low voltage Core 2 Duo CPU in 2011 feels like a wired move? How does it actually perform, does it feel slow for anything other than web browsing and small scale office work or does it actually get the work done rather quickly?


Also there is some serious lack in regards of the internal details on the MacBook Air 13", how does this new "Facetime" camera compare to the MacBook Pro's iSight camera? No mentioning of the resolution or anything? Is it a improvement compared to the slightly out-dated iSight camera in the MacBook Pro's or is it the same thing just different branding?

I also wonder what wireless card Apple has gone for this time around, is it the same rather sluggish Broadcom card or have they finally gone something new and better like Intel Centrino 5200 / 5300? Or perhaps the new Broadcom 3x3 wireless cards? Or do they stick with the same Broadcom cards found in todays MacBook Pro notebooks?

 

The Nvidia 320m can run Call Of Duty Black Ops in medium settings at 1024x768. Not the fastest GPU, but quite decent for a thin-and-lite notebook.

Here's my review of the http://forum.notebookreview.com/apple-mac-os-x/527864-2010-macbook-pro-13-graphics.html

It has the same GPU as the Air.

 

My wife has swapped her 13" MacBook Unibody for the 13" MBA and thinks it performs better. I've not really played with it, I'm not allowed to, so can't say. I can't say if she appreciated the better screen resolution, she's not sure what a screen resolution is, I did try to explain it to her once, but half-way through she has a look on her face like she was having a stroke, so I stopped

I have the 11" MBA and an Alienware M11x R2 with a Core i7. I tend to use the M11x for the heavy lifting (multiple VM's, gaming, image/video editing) and the MBA for pretty much everything else. But in day-to-day use I don't really notice the performance difference between the MBA and M11x.

OK, its not as fast as the Core i Series, but the Core 2 Duo isn't a slow CPU, its not an Atom. Also, the MBA is an ultra portable, high quality notebook. If you're looking for a high performance machine for serious gaming or whatever, then maybe the MBA isn't for you, there are better machines out there for that.

I wanted a small light weight machine I could take with me anywhere and do the day-to-day tasks, like mail, browsing, watching movies, dumping my pictures when away from home, light gaming, some image editing, running a virtual machine and good battery life. The MBA does all of this, and does it very well, for me (so much so that I'm using my M11x less and less). Your use case may vary.

The Alienware is much faster in benchmarks than my MBA, but as I rarely max out the CPU of either then the performance difference between the two is largely irrelevant.

- Colin

 

If you can wait you might as well just wait until the MBAs get there refresh in the fall when they will get new Core i processors based on Sandy Bridge now that Intel has much better graphics and nVidia can finally make Core i chipsets with the lawsuit settled. If you need it now don't be afraid because of the C2D. With the SSDs, the new Airs are plenty fast doing normal day to day tasks and even playing newer games at medium settings. If your looking for an ultraportable with a great screen you could do a lot worse than a MBA, especially the 13 inch.

 

I agree. For many tasks, it's quite a bit faster than a stock MBP 13. I suppose the OP has to decide whether his tasks are so CPU intensive that the other functional capabilities (which are plenty fast), would not adequately compensate.

 

where are people getting this from?

 

In regards of RAM and hard drive, this is something I manually upgrade myself after purchase anyway (not the SSD on the MacBook Air though as it's not a 2.5" SATA drive) so I would be using a Intel X25-M SSD in a MacBook Pro anyway being as fast if not faster than the SSD within the new MacBook Air.

 

I was wondering the same thing.