Apple new MacBook Airs boast better laptop batteries
Tim Cook took to the stage last night at Apple’s WWDC conference to announce, amongst a host of other things, a refreshed line of MacBook Airs.
The new skinny models pack in the latest Intel Haswell chips, which promise better performance with improved battery life. At the keynote, Apple reckons that the 11-inch model is now able to achieve up to nine hours of laptop battery life — up from five hours — while the 13-inch model has been taken from seven to 12 hours.
Those are best-case scenario times of course, so expect your own experience to differ depending on how demanding you are of the processor. Haswell chips also boast improved graphics performance — up to 40 per cent faster, Apple reckons. The standard clock speed is a fairly slow 1.3GHz but a 1.7GHz option is available for £130 more.
Apple didn’t see fit to improve the display however. We all thought it was a given that the Air range will be given the retina display sported by its MacBook Pro siblings, but that’s not the case. The Pro’s retina displays are undeniably fantastic, so it’s a real shame that Apple hasn’t given the same love to the Airs. The extra pixels do demand extra cash though — you would likely expect to pay at least a couple of hundred quid on top of the base price for a Retina Air.
Design-wise, nothing has changed. The MacBook Airs are still available in 11- or 13-inch varieties, with both models keeping their ridiculously razor-thin dimensions. Storage now starts at 128GB, with the option to configure it up to a 512GB SSD for an extra £240. 4 or 8GB of RAM is available too.
The base 11-inch Air with 128GB of storage, 4GB of RAM and a 1.3GHz Core i5 processor will set you back £850. The same spec 13-inch model will cost an extra £100. The top configured 13-inch Air, packing a Core i7 1.7GHz processor, Apple a1189 laptop battery, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD will cost a whopping £1,600. All models are available now from the Apple store.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.