Now, before we get too excited, there are a few caveats for that number. That's better than Apple's estimate of 12 hours, and one of the only times our tests have indicated longer battery life than a manufacturer's claims. The 2013 version blows that out of the water, with an astonishing 14 hours and 25 minutes on the same test. The previous-generation 13-inch Air ran for 7 hours and 27 minutes in our video playback battery drain test. Neither is a gaming machine (and you'll have to move all the way up to the 15-inch Retina Pro to get a discrete Nvidia GPU), but our anecdotal gameplay tests in Portal 2 show that the Air can handle mainstream games that lean a bit more on the casual side.īattery life is where the new MacBook Air (both the 11-inch and 13-inch versions) really stands out. In our older Call of Duty 4 test (one of the few standard gaming benchmarks for OS X), at the native 1,440x900-pixel resolution, the game ran at 39.0 frames per second on the 2013 Air and 21.9 frames per second on the 2012 Air. What is decidedly different, however, is the integrated HD 5000 graphics from Intel, a step above the HD 4000 in the previous Air. Any of the past few generations is more than powerful enough for mainstream users. As a longtime MacBook Air user, in everyday use - Web surfing, social media, HD video playback - the 2013 MacBook Air didn't feel any different than the previous version.

Year-over-year application performance doesn't show any real improvement, and the new Air actually ran some tests a hair slower. The actual difference in our test results between the 20 models was minor. The MacBook Air keeps the same external look as the previous couple of generations, a look that still rivals the newest ultrabooks, although some new systems, such as Sony's Vaio Pro line, are getting thinner and lighter without sacrificing much in the way of productivity. If you add Haswell to Apple's already-stellar battery life reputation, you get a system, in the 13-inch Air, that Apple claims will run for up to 12 hours, and in our tests (spoiler alert) ran even longer. We've previously tested Haswell chips in a few laptops and been impressed by both the performance and battery life gains (to be realistic, the latter is much more important for consumers).

There is, however, one very important difference in the new models, and one that's especially noteworthy if you spend a lot of time on the road and away from your power adapter.

At first glance, it looks like a relatively minor set of changes, with the primary selling point being a move to Intel's new fourth-generation Core i-series CPUs, also known by the code name Haswell. The Air was the only Apple laptop line to get a June 2013 update at Apple's WWDC conference. The new 2013 versions of both the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air look very familiar indeed, as these slim systems have hardly changed at all physically over the past few generations.

Macbook air 11 inch 2013 battery