13-Inch Haswell-Powered MacBook Air With PCIe SSD Tested

MojoKid writes "In addition to the anticipated performance gains that Intel's new Haswell CPU architecture might bring to the table for their new MacBook Air, there are additional component-level upgrades that Apple baked in to their latest ultra-light notebook; namely a higher capacity 54 Whr battery and a PCI Express-based Solid State Drive (SSD). Apple still hasn't seen fit to up the ante on the MacBook Air's display, opting instead to stick with the 1440x900 TN panel carried over from the previous generation 13-inch machine, with the 11-inch variant sporting a 1366x768 native res. But in terms of performance, this is Apple's fastest Air yet, with storage throughput in excess of 700MB/sec for reads and 400MB/sec for writes, along with graphics horsepower that rivals entry level discrete GPUs, thanks to Intel's HD Graphic 5000 core in Haswell. Battery life has been improved dramatically as well, with the new Air lasting over 9 hrs on a charge, playing back 1080p video content. Apple also reduced their MSRP by $100 versus last year's model." Not too bad at around $1100. The 54Wh battery looks it improves the portability a bit.

seems the Mac premium is disappearing

[Trepidity]

That's actually a pretty competitive price. I can't find a way to configure, say, a Lenovo Ultrabook with an SSD and anywhere near comparable CPU for less than $1200.

Commercials again?

[fey000]

I thought I had disabled ads.

Re:Apple only do Mid range

[OzPeter]

IMHO the "Mac Premium"

Mac is "mid range" for exciting premium products you have to look at companies like google with the Pixel

Umm .. I'd suggest that you don't understand what is meant by "mac premium".

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/ [google.com],

The Chromebook is not in the same league as an Air .. they perform two different functions. If you don't have an internet connection then the Chromebook is somewhat crippled, whereas the Air is stand alone.

this low resolution laptop so electronics is not cutting it. no wonder Apple have had drops of 22%; 2; and 7% over the last three quarters...and the reason they are not selling is not the iPad which is down -14%.

I'm not disagreeing that Apple needs to pick up the pace, however those drops can be explained by commoditizing of the market, not that Apples products are suddenly inferior.

Re:seems the Mac premium is disappearing

[alen]

apple warranty is you take it an apple store and they fix it

lenovo means you have to send it somewhere

Re:Overpriced Apple

[Jerslan]

Apple's Strategy has never been Sales Growth (as that's not a sustainable long-term strategy). It has always been to make quality products that customers will pay a premium for. This strategy dug the company out from near bankruptcy and molded it into the industry power-house it is today. They don't need to have more than a 50% Market Share in order to make a ton of money and they don't need their profits to grow every quarter. The fact that they still had a VERY profitable quarter compared to most of their competitors should be evidence enough of that.

Re:seems the Mac premium is disappearing

[vux984]

Every time a competitor produces an Air apparent in a similar form factor the price comes in about the same.

For the base model. Just don't select any upgrades.

Especially don't select RAM upgrades. Apple charges $100 to upgrade from 4GB to 8GB of RAM... so effectively $100 for 4GB. You can get 8GB of brand name (Corsair, G.Skill, Crucial...) laptop ram at RETAIL for less than $70.

So... you can buy twice the amount of ram at -retail- for 30% less than Apple will charge you just to upgrade.

THAT is the 'mac premium'.

The other big piece of the mac premium is the comparative slowness with which apple refreshes specs combined with the complete lack of price updates. So today, at launch, the MacBook Air is a decent value. Six months from now it will be the same specs and the same price, while everything from everyone else has either gotten cheaper or better or both.

A year from now, its even worse. This is a decent site for tracking things.
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ [macrumors.com]

Where you can see on average many products go for over a year without an update, while the price doesn't change a penny. People buying a mac pro in May 2012 were buying the same specs for the same money as they were paying for a mac pro in July 2010. At launch the Mac Pro was reasonable value. By the time it got a refresh the Mac Pro was laughably expensive for a laughably out of date product. It wouldn't be so bad if the price drifted down, or if the specs got regular bumps... but they don't.

When a major new chipset is released everyone releases their new products based on it, and blows out stock on any old stuff. Not apple. Haswell is out, great. But the macbook pro doesn't have it yet, you still get last years chipset, and at last years prices.

Moral seems to be buy a mac product shortly after launch and its good value for the money; but pay attention to the upgrades. Hard drive capacity bumps, RAM bumps, and any adapters tend to be just stupid expensive from apple.

Re:seems the Mac premium is disappearing

[rsmith-mac]

For the base model. Just don't select any upgrades. Especially don't select RAM upgrades. Apple charges $100 to upgrade from 4GB to 8GB of RAM... so effectively $100 for 4GB. You can get 8GB of brand name (Corsair, G.Skill, Crucial...) laptop ram at RETAIL for less than $70.

Note that the Airs have their DDR3L memory soldered directly onto the motherboard to save space. You can't buy aftermarket memory for those models, so this advice is out of date at best.