13-Inch Haswell-Powered MacBook Air With PCIe SSD Tested 224
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.
Re:seems the Mac premium is disappearing (Score:4, Interesting)
My nearest Apple store is over 50 miles away. That's a day out of my life to take it there and maybe another day to go collect it later. Then again I'm lucky that I have an Apple store (just the one though) in my native country.
The Samsung monitor I've got hooked up to this machine as a secondary display blew out on me a year or so back, but it was covered by a 3-year on-site swapout warranty at no extra cost. I had to wait a couple of days for the swap to take place but I didn't have to waste my time travelling hundreds of miles to get the damn thing replaced and I didn't need to post it anywhere either.