“There’s not much new about Apple’s updated MacBook Air lineup,” James Galbraith writes for Macworld. “Fortunately, the Air was already a top-notch portable computer… Across the line, the mid-2014 MacBook Air is priced $100 lower than the corresponding configurations from mid-2013.”
“The subtle increase in processor speeds, along with a respectable decrease in price, are obvious positive steps for consumers,” Galbraith writes. “And while the faster processor did help the new MacBook Air in our application tests, the flash storage didn’t always perform as well as we’ve come to expect.”
“In our tests, the new $899 11-inch MacBook Air with 128GB of storage and the $1199 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB of storage outperformed the previous systems in most tests, if only by a few seconds,” Galbraith writes. “Storage performance tests, on the other hand, showed the flash storage in these new systems to be slower than last year’s. Slow enough to drag down the overall Speedmark score, despite the faster processors found in this year’s models.”
Much more in the full review here.
Perhaps paying less for slower storage is where they found the margin to lower prices overall?
Canadians didn’t get a price drop. For the countries that did not get a price drop, this overall update is disappointing.
Most people will never notice the .1 GHz processor difference, but they will notice a slower flash drive.
According to a popular rumor site, it appears that drive performance is similar in the 2013 vs. 2014 models if you are comparing models with SanDisk drives vs. models with SanDisk drives and I assume Samsung equipped models are comparable,
I’m not sure what is news vs. rumors, or what to believe at this point.
Why didn’t they upgrade to Thunderbolt 2? Why continue to put “old” technology in their “upgraded” gadgets? It has frequently kept me from upgrading my stuff for a cycle or two. I just don’t understand why they do this.