While many PC makers introduce new or tweaked laptop designs just about every year, Apple tends to stick with the same design for a few years before changing everything all at once to reflect changes in internal hardware (the move from HDDs to SSDs, for example) and evolving design tastes (the move across the lineup to aluminum unibody chassis). 2013’s MacBook Air retains the same basic design that the laptops have used since their late-2010 rebirth, when Apple refined the design of the existing 13-inch Air and introduced the 11-inch model.
Set the brand-new Airs on a table next to last year’s models and it’s unlikely anyone could tell the difference. Even changes to the speeds of the I/O ports, like what happened in 2011 with the addition of Thunderbolt and in 2012 with the addition of USB 3.0, aren’t here to convince would-be upgraders. Everything that’s new about the 2013 Air is hidden away inside the laptop. While no one thing will convince 2011 or 2012 Air users to upgrade, the year-to-year improvements are still impressive when taken as a whole.
For the bulk of this review, we’ll be comparing the entry-level 13-inch 2013 MacBook Air to the equivalent 2012 MacBook Air. Both laptops’ 4GB of RAM have been upgraded to 8GB of RAM—$100 is a bit steep for this sort of upgrade, but since the MacBook Air’s RAM is soldered to the motherboard, this is an upgrade most of you will probably want to make. The 11-inch MacBook Air shares all of the same internal specs as the 13-inch model (with the exception of the battery), so most of the observations here will also apply to the smaller model.
This also serves as our first hands-on look at Intel’s new Haswell CPUs, the new integrated Intel HD 5000 GPU, and 802.11ac (aka Gigabit Wi-Fi), so it will be a bit more benchmark-heavy than some of our other laptop reviews. We’ll leave no stone unturned, because many of the upgraded technologies in this year’s Air will be making it out to most other Ultrabooks as the year rolls on.
Full Story: Same wrapper, all-new candy center: The 2013 MacBook Air reviewed | Ars Technica.